Carbon Market

Cebu City’s frenzied Carbon Market and many of its residential neighbourhoods share something in common: behind the initial street façade lies an enormous maze of informal settlement, stretching all the way to the façade on the other side, filling blocks like chaotic honeycomb. Penetrating Carbon’s exterior by slipping into one of its many alleys is like opening a gift that is wrapped in a thousand layers of curious faces, live roosters, sparkling dried fish, improbable videoke, baby Jesus statues and every colour in the world set against a backdrop of grey. It is an exciting and overwhelming, cheek-to-jowl place. In that way it is like many of the neighbourhoods that make up this city; you don’t know they’re there until you slip in and subtly discover the labyrinth.

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