Day 7 – Manila

After a leisurely start to the day, we decided to go to Mall of Asia which is the largest and most modern mall in Manila. It is not very far from the hotel, so the 12 of us hopped into 3 cabs which the hotel hailed for us. What we learnt is….

• most taxis in Philippines don’t have meters, the cab drivers set a price based on who you are and where you are going. When we hopped out, the cab drivers charged each of the cabs 300pesos which is just under A$10. We paid it then learnt that it was waaaay over priced. It should have only been just over 100pesos. We got ripped off badly and chalked it down to a lesson learnt. The Mall of Asia is fabulous….sooo huge and absolutely gorgeous.
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• People here carry firearms…..yah…bit scary. At all the shopping centres, security guards check you. Males go in one side and get patted down. Females get their bags searched.
• Krispy Kreme and Starbucks are here!!!! Soooo rapt over the starbucks!! I didn’t have one as I was a bit hot, but went in to check out to see if they have giftcards. When I left Australia, I bought my Melbourne and Sydney giftcards hoping to collect one from each starbucks that I visit in each city. Sadly, they don’t have giftcards.
• Getting used to the currency is a bit of a learning curve, we went to the Hypermarket (supermarket) and bought a basket full of groceries…cereal, milk, bread, some fruit etc and I nearly fainted when the checkout girl pointed her finger to the total…..1560….wtf was the first thought into my head!! Then I remembered it was pesos. Tee hee-
• Filipino notes are all the same size. 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50 & 20 pesos are notes. Coins are 25c, 1, 5 and 10 pesos.
• Learnt that although the money changer gives you 1000 notes, not many little shops that you try to buy drinks and snacks from can change 1000 peso notes. Tee hee-
• tipping is quite the norm here. Hotel staff bend over backwards to help you in the hope of getting tips. Their daily wage is quite small and they rely on tips to make ends meet.-
• Manila smells. You get a mixture of pollution, food, dirt, urine, smells. It’s quite an assault on the nose!!!-
• No Filipino uses their indicators. It’s like indicators are totally optional. Car lanes are totally optional too. It’s like the lines on the road don’t mean anything….like it’s just there to decorate the road! Cars jump and push into your lane. They beep their horn when they want to cut in front of you. It’s totally crazy!!! I swear, you would find a 50 year old rust bucket and the indicator would be in perfect working order and the horn would be totally dead!!!
• Crossing big streets here is like having a death wish. There are hardly any pedestrian crossings…so you just have to chance it to cross the road…you truly don’t know if cars are going to slow down for you or run you over without batting an eyelash. The only thing to do is find another group of people who are going to cross and get on the side of them….so you at least have some buffer from the oncoming cars. hehehe….human shield!
• Our lunch today was fabulous. We chanced upon an Inasal restaurant which is basically filipino bbq. It’s a very clean fast food place with air conditioning…..just like mcdonalds except they sell bbq pork, fish and chicken with rice wrapped in banana leaves. We had to try them all. The fish was fabulous. The fish is a traditional filipino fish called Bangus which is a milk fish and is usually very very very boney. Somehow, somewhere, someone has the patience of a saint and has butterflied the fish removed all the bones!!! It is then marinated and charcoal grilled to perfection and then served with a big bowl of kalamansi limes. I’m salivating while typing this…it was that good.
• Then not wanting to get ripped off again, while waiting in the taxi queue, we were talking about how to approach the taxi drivers for a fixed fare to get back to the hotel when I spotted a whole row of vans and a big group of drivers just hanging around. We weren’t sure if they were waiting for their owners….so we sent Stella to ask and she came back and happily told us that one was for rent and that the driver would drive us back to the hotel for 350pesos. yah….350 pesos for 12 people…compared to the 900 we paid to get to the mall!!We got back to the hotel mid afternoon and rested our weary legs and waited for all the food to digest…then before we knew it…..it was dinner time and we decided to go for a walk to a restaurant called Aristocrats which Stella said did fabulous Filipino food in family restaurant. She knew it was off Roxas ave and I had seen it on the way back from the Mall of Asia….so we set off for a walk. Little did we know it was going to be a long 2km trek….only the promise of fabulous filipino food kept us going!! When we got there…it was soooo worth it. The Sinigang, Crispy Pata and Crispy squid are some of my favourites. With bellies full of heavenly food, On the way home, we decided to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing….well….it was a zebra crossing……of course, white lines on the road don’t mean anything to drivers. They still barrelled down the road!! So we played a dangerous game of jeopardy crossing the road….hehehe and it was soo worth it because the other side of the road is waterfront and if I ignored the smell, I could almost pretend I was in St Kilda walking along The Esplanade! Everyone enjoyed walking off the food especially Jeromel who kept asking us to take photos of him. Jordan and Jarryd are especially surprised that the weather is sooo nice. It’s not overly hot or humid. It rains almost everyday and the breeze is lovely and cool (but it smells!).

• On the way back, we stopped at the 7-11 near us. Yup!!! Not to eat but to get a few essentials. Hehehe…my first time in there and it was such an eye opener!!!
• Learnt a few more things: – You can get sachets of just about anything in the Philippines. I’m talking about small sachets of obvious things like coffee, tea, cereal, but also small sachets of shampoo, fabric softner, toothpaste (yes it comes in sachets), gel, deodorant etc.- Alcohol is sold in 7-11 and it is sooo cheap. A can of San Miguel beer is 28 pesos….a can of soft drink is 25 pesos. Yah, alcohol is about the same price as soft drink!!! Vodka and whiskey is very cheap too….about A$10 for a 500ml bottle!!! Jarryd told me later that he was offered a sampling of Baileys which he of course accepted (naughty boy!!)….and he had a really good laugh when I innocently asked if the sampling was in a sachet!
• Mammoth post. Leave a comment if you’ve made it this far!!