Back to the Philippines

Long time readers might remember that I went to the Philippines back in 2015. In August I went again. I was pleased to get the same flight schedule as last time but in the intervening years my employer has updated their policy so that flights of more than 6 hours allow us to book premium economy. I flew Japan Airlines (JAL) and, while I was impressed with them last time, the premium economy experience was even better.

Premium economy gets you lounge access but JAL doesn't have a lounge at BOS so you get entry to the British Airlines lounge which is pretty great. I had a bite to eat and a couple of glasses of wine which was lovely to relax me for the flight.

The seats in premium economy were like first class seats on domestic flights in the US. The seats weren't lay-flat but they laid out pretty good and included an eye mask and noise canceling headphones that, for being free, were pretty good. I even got a couple hours sleep which is unusual for me.

Our office is in Taguig which is part of metro Manila. We're in a big office building, the first 4 floors of which are a mall. For breakfast many of the mornings I opted for a taste of home:

If you're not from near-Canada you might not recognize Timmy's but its a Canadian staple. After a few breakfasts I actually switched to Starbucks, I did that for a couple reasons:
1. Starbucks would do coffee with no sweetener. I had a helluva time convincing the workers at Tim's that I didn't want sweetener in my iced coffee.
2. Starbucks has oatmeal. I can only eat so many egg sandwiches...

This cooky building is "SM Aura" and is actually a 6 story shopping mall. The end bit that goes up purportedly has dining facilities on top but I didn't go up there. Filipino's love their malls and I discovered that the part of the mall I was most interested was actually underground. So in this 6 story mall there are 4 stories up and 2 stories (plus the car park) underneath. There reason I like the below stories better is thats where the grocery store and the bookstore are. Its where the regular people shop. The stores up top are the same as we have in the US and just bore me to tears.

I did go to another mall I didn't get a picture of "Market Market" which is much more asian and clearly priced better because it was PACKED. They had a big outdoor section for fresh produce and then inside had market stalls. At one point I was wandering in market stalls and realized I'd gone into a bad place, there weren't many people and those that were there were staring at me. My technique in those situations is the old "Fake it until you make it", just plow on like I know what I'm doing and hope things get better on the other side. They usually do and they did this time.
I really wish I'd gotten a picture of "The American Store" which was what we would call a dollar store...

My favorite Manila restaurant is "Mary Grace" which is decorated like generic granny's house with (I guess) Filipino granny's food. This is beef tapa which is dried beef thats been rehydrated and is served with a sweet sauce. This was breakfast so it came with egg and, of course, rice. This was one of my favorite meals during my 2 week trip.

I went to several grocery stores and one of them had ice cream freezers at the beginning of the checkout lane. This one was coconut milk with chocolate in the center.

This is coffee with coffee jelly. If you've ever had boba this is similar.

The "jelly" is actually more like "jello" made with coffee.

This is gelato. I found a Gelateria which, considering our recent trip to Italy, was really nice.

Snacks! If I'm honest my favorite part of travel is buying snacks. Korean snacks are apparently really popular in the Philippines, the Pepero in the picture is Korean. Its a lot like Pocky but with a pretzel stick instead of short bread. I'm not prepared to say that I like one better than the other. :)

Speaking of snacks I ended the trip buying all the varieties of Kit-Kat I could find in the Tokyo airport. I think I ended up with 17 or 18 different kinds of Kit-Kat including:
Green tea, wasabi, hot pepper, banana, dark chocolate, melon and marscapone cheese, grape, peach, apple, and strawberry. The variety is amazing although I'll admit to liking some a lot more than others, the banana, for instance, I quite like.

Wrapping up the Asia trip

After I got sick the rest of my trip was basically about surviving, I went to work, went back to the hotel and slept, then repeat. The worst was that the housekeeping people insisted on cleaning the room after noon each day despite my asking them to take care of it earlier. If I left the "do not disturb" card up all day they'd call around 4pm to see if I was okay and wanted the room cleaned. This waking up at 4 to answer the phone was hard on my sleep schedule.

One thing I really want to comment on was my experience leaving Manila. Remembering that I travel a lot I was very impressed with the whole experience. Upon arrival at the airport I went through a metal detector and my stuff through an x-ray. I was immediately met by a JAL representative who took me to the ticketing counter and handed me off to a nice lady who offered to switch me to an aisle seat instead of my window seat on the Japan to Boston flight. She then handed me off to another nice lady who took me over to the security line.

This is where I realized I should have been taking more pictures...

The whole process of leaving the Philippines was pretty easy, no big deal. I got a massage while I waited for my flight. A very small Filipino woman broke me on a very low table, it took days for the soreness to pass. I did feel quite flexible on the flight though...

In Tokyo I found this:

Its nice when the airport has something to look at while I'm waiting.
Actually Japan is really good for that,

The pink stuff on the left is picked ginger, the stuff on the right is somewhat like cucumbers, so basically normal pickles.

Yeah, its juvenile but I couldn't avoid a taking picture of Pocari Sweat. Its a sports drink like Gatoraide, it shows up pre-mixed in bottles too...

I bought a bunch of snacks to bring home but also:

This little beauty is a single use ice cream cone, the machine takes a little cup and makes one ice cream out of it rather than the ice cream machines here which process ice cream in bulk. It was a very good ice cream, very smooth and creamy. Cheap too, it was around 300 Yen so with the Yen at 127 to the dollar it was under $3, for airport ice cream thats basically free.

Heres the haul of foods I brought back from asia, Ding Dong is snack mix, peanuts, peas and little crackers. Theres 6 kinds of Kit Kat, Giant Pocky the size of pretzel sticks, almond crusted pocky, 4 kinds of dried mango, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered marshmallow, graham pinnapigs which are weird chocolate covered graham things and other stuff I don't even remember. So far my favorite is the giant Pocky, all the good from Pocky in a larger size...

Ramen!

I mentioned in my previous post that I lived on ramen and oatmeal and that the Ramen in the Philippines was really good, here's a couple examples:

Here I wanted you to see that this ramen came with both a spice packet and an oil/soy sauce packet. The oil is what really adds to the taste of the noodles, here's another:

This one dispenses with the oil and gives a packet of FAT. I don't know what the fat is but its very tasty and makes for a ramen more like what you'd get in a restaurant.

Theres also this:

I was super surprised when my ramen came with a little fork but it makes good sense, if you're eating on the go you probably haven't brought utensils. The 7-11 I bought my ramen from had spoons available but I found that my willingness to slurp the broth plus the little fork got me where I needed to be, which is to say it got that tasty noodle goodness in my mouth and headed on down...

Back again

Welcome back, sorry for the delay but for the rest of the Filipino adventure I was mostly working or sleeping. My schedule was 10pm to 7am which is sort of normal working hours here in the US but the inverted nature of it versus local time raised holy hell with my body. Also I managed to get sick, but more on that later.

Lets start with this:

Its not surprise I like snacks and I like foreign snacks even more, double plus if I can't guess what its going to be be like when I buy it.

Voice Overload was one of those snacks. Think of a chocolate saltine with a thin chocolate coating. Weird but good. I didn't get a picture of the other one I bought at the same time, it was literally like two saltines with a thin layer of fudge between them. I've made similar things with crackers and Nutella.

Also as promised heres a banana. Starbucks sells these, individually wrapped for P20 which is about $0.50 US.

As I mentioned I got sick, I had kind of an ongoing fight with housekeeping about getting my room made up real early so I could go to sleep but never really got them onboard. Finally I just asked them to cancel housekeeping, otherwise I'd leave the "do not disturb" card up all day and they'd call at 4pm to see if I needed anything. This would wake me up and make me irritable...
Anyway one day I decided I'd let them clean the room so I stayed up. The guy finally came around about noon (midnight for me) and got to work so I went out for a walk. I stopped at "The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" and had a cup of disgustingly sweet tea. Apparently disgustingly sweet tea is a Filipino thing. I was told "Its what makes Filipinos so sweet" HA!
So between the the sweet tea at "The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" and another disgustingly sweet tea from "Subway" I managed to ingest some of the local bacteria which had a real fun time in my gut and resulted in my having to clamp myself to the toilet. Fortunately the office could provide Imodium enough to get through the day at work but it was several days after my return before my digestion was back to normal. Angie gave me some probiotic pills and I ate a bunch of yogurt both of which helped or at least made me feel better.

Sadly this being sick meant I was in no mood to eat much and for the last couple days I existed on Ramen and oatmeal. The oatmeal I got at Starbucks and is much like the oatmeal you'd get at Starbucks in the US other than the fact that they'll put steamed milk in it for you. I like the steamed milk although they usually put too much unless I specifically asked for less, then they just think I'm crazy.

Anyway, I like to keep these posts short so I'll pick up some more later...

Still in the Philippines

Yup, still here. You didn't think I was going to travel 26 hours to just turn around and go back? I'm here for 10 days. Every day is a mini-adventure as I gain courage to try different things.

Yesterday I intended to head down to the mall again and maybe find some presents for folks back home. I had breakfast at 7am to try and get my eating schedule more on schedule. That turned out to be a mistake on Sunday the malls don't open until 10am. I also found that my feet still aren't up to snuff. I wore my boots with socks but it wasn't long before my feet were sore again. I also didn't take long for me to be overheated. First thing in the morning temps might be as low as 80 but they quickly get over 90 when the sun comes up. The humidity sits somewhere around 75-80% which makes me just miserable double quick.

So after a little wandering I needed to take a break. The first place I found was Starbucks and inside it was just like every other Starbucks I'd ever been to. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the bananas though. Every Starbucks has bananas for sale but this one had each one individually packaged in a paper bag with a plastic window. The other fun thing I found was my ice coffee:

Yup, paper cup. I'd actually noticed this Saturday at the public market and I'd chalked it up to being from the public market but since then I've noticed that all iced coffees come in paper cups. Not sure what thats all about...

This is the day my appetite caught up with me, I'd had scrambled eggs, toast and bacon for breakfast but by 10 or 11am I was getting pretty hungry. Not wanting to eat somewhere I could eat at back home I headed over to Jollibee. Jollibee is kind of weird, a bit like KFC mixed with a low end hamburger place. I don't know if its just this Jollibee or all of them but the restaurant was kind of worn out, there was a video monitor not playing anything, the signs were all dirty, it was slow and they were out of a whole bunch of stuff. I snagged a 6 piece chicken bucket intending that it could cover me for 2 meals. I end up pretty hungry around midnight when I'm first getting up but I hate going out at night.

The chicken was nice, especially during the first meal since it was real hot and juicy. The really fun part was what it came with:

Thats gravy! Pour some of that into your chicken and its the tastiest thing ever.

I also tried some of my passion fruit/tamarind juice from the market. That I think turned out to be a bad idea. I don't want to be gross but lets call it the Filipino revenge. Fortunately I've got my essential oils with me and I've got an oil specifically to save me from this sort of thing.

Okay now as I sit here and write this I'm starting to get "the revenge" again but I haven't had the juice or any problems in around 12 hours. I'm wondering now if its the chicken thats messing with my digestion. The juice might actually be okay, good thing I didn't throw it out yet.

A good day in the Philippines

You'll remember that one of my biggest problems here in Makati City was money, it suddenly occurs to me that this trip is kid of an allegory for life but lets leave that there. Saturday (I'm writing this a day later, I really needed some sleep) I got up determined to fix my money problem, public holiday over, banks supposedly open at 9am, I had breakfast at 8:30 and immediately headed to Citibank. I figured an American bank would be a good choice. There I found that contrary to the information I'd found online BANKS ARE CLOSED ON SATURDAY. The guard at the bank (there are private guards all over) gave me directions to a private money changer that started with him pointing down the street and continued with "go down that way to the stop light then turn left." Okay easy right? Except the street t'd into another street with no stoplight. ARRRGHH!

I should also mention I managed to get blisters on my feet on Friday. I was wearing Teva sandals for the first time this year and my feet aren't used to them. Combine that with it being hot and humid and my feet must have sweat so although I've switched to boots and socks (ahh, socks!) my feet hurt and walking is kind of painful.

Anyway I wandered around a little and managed, totally by accident to find a currency exchange in a place where nobody suggested I look. If you're in Makati City and need it look on Tordesillas just west of Jaime C. Velasquez, just off Jaime Velasquez park.

Filipino money is pretty. Thats about 4200 php or just under $100.

The park I mentioned above has a big market day on Saturday so since I was there anyway I wandered around some.

From left to right, front row: dried mangos, chocolate croissant and dark roast coffee beans supposedly roasted on Friday. Back row: Passion fruit/tamerind juice and water I got a 7-11.

The passion fruit juice will probably kill me, its not sealed, probably not pasteurized and sketchy as hell but they gave me a sample and I liked it. The chocolate croissant was fantastic and I'm glad I bought 2. The mangoes are the first thing I bought and it was kind of an interesting experience. People kind of ignored me up until I bought something at which point I became EVERYBODY's friend. Its very different from the Caribbean where you're everybody's friend all the time and there they touch you, Filipinos don't seem to be very touchy with strangers. I appreciate that, I'm not very touchy either.

Sadly I'd just had breakfast before I got to the market, there were many things I'd have tried if I could have fit them in my stomach:

This is gelato, I don't know if I'd have gotten the candied bacon but I'd have for sure tried the dark coffee.

I find it interesting how many US companies are here. Again all I can compare it to is south of the US, in the Caribbean you see some US companies but more south American and European. Here most of the stores and chain restaurants are US companies. You might have noticed I bought water at 7-11 and it was just like every other 7-11 I've ever been to. Also right across the street from my hotel:

I'm referring to the Krispy Kreame, Mercury Drug seems to be a local chain and theres lots of them.

Also right by my hotel is a Starbucks and I saw many more of them walking around Friday. I also saw The Coffee Bean, KFC, actually I've seen lots of KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, and pretty much every other US chain you can name.

Today my plan is to breakfast earlier so I can try somewhere new for lunch. Thus far in country I've been only eating 2 meals a day. Interestingly my stomach seems okay with that. The meals are relatively small but filling and I don't seem to get hungry like I think I should. I'm not complaining, maybe I'll lose some weight on this trip.

More on Manila

Actually I'm in Makati City but being that its one of the cities that make up metro Manila its the same thing.

Anyway I got here Thursday night around 11pm, I had a car service deliver me to the hotel which was real nice considering I didn't spot the currency exchange in the airport and thus didn't have any local currency. The hotel Citadines Salcedo is a nice hotel in the european style. The room has a card reader by the door which turns on the electricity for the room, you leave your room key there when you come in and take it when you leave although I've already forgotten it once and locked myself out.

It took me awhile to get to sleep and then had a hard time sleeping. Even though I was exhausted my body knew it was daytime back home and just wouldn't let me sleep. I finally got a couple hours snoozing before I got up to have breakfast. I wussed out and didn't try the Chinese breakfast which has some kind of chicken and a century egg. I'm told century eggs are kind of like aged cheese. I don't like cheese and I'm not super excited about eggs either so it just doesn't seem like a good idea. On the other hand when am I going to get another chance? Instead I had the cinnamon bun french toast which came with some of the best bacon I've ever had.

After breakfast I slept some more and then headed out to try and get some money changed. It turns out that Friday was Independence day here in the Philippines so the banks weren't open. There are private money changers but I couldn't find any. Out of desperation I tried an ATM which then ate my card. I called my bank and got the card canceled so fortunately nothing was stolen but its even more uncomfortable not having that fall back. I also didn't want to use my Visa card since I've had bad luck with them shutting the card off when I'm out of the country. Turns out this was a good idea. I'd forgotten to tell them I was traveling until I was in Tokyo, fortunately my cell phone uses wifi so it was easy to tell my bank I'm traveling. Sadly when you do that they then call home and you have to talk to them again before its really okay. Angie texted me to tell me they had called so I could call again and finally get it straightened out so that PROBABLY won't be a problem...

I spent a couple hours walking around malls looking for money changers and not finding them. I went through three different malls the most interesting being the Greenbelt which is actually a series of normal indoor malls linked by outdoor sections which were mostly restaurants. There is some security in these areas like I told you about yesterday but they didn't really mind me much. In one of the outdoor sections I found some really cool koi ponds:

There appear to be feeding systems where the fish are clustered and they're just going crazy for it.

In the Glorietta mall I found this:

Its kind of a sad little place with a couple coolers, LED lights and strangely some stand mixers... I didn't even go in but maybe I'll go back and get some more pictures, the Coleman guys on Facebook thought the picture was pretty cool.

In the end I never found any place to change money and was too nervous to use my Visa card so I couldn't buy anything. Finally late last evening I got a room service pizza which was pretty terrible but held me over, the nice thing is that since I was up during a time I'd normally be sleeping I never really got hungry.

Today I did much better but I'll save that for my next post.

A couple random thoughts on the Philippines

I grew up in the US and as such I'm used to seeing lots of white folks around. I'm also not used to standing out in a crowd. Even in Argentina I didn't stand out, theres so much european influence there that big blond guys are common. Here in Makati City I'm an aberration, I stand out not only because of my whiteness but also my size. Actually the size thing isn't the big deal I expected it to be. Filipino men range in size up to guys bigger than me. As I've mentioned before the US owned the Philippines for a little while and I get the feeling there are many people here carrying American genes around. Still on average I'm extra large and I did notice that I got more attention and maybe even scrutiny than other people.

Walking around as a tourist I'm always on my guard, you never know whos going to target you. The thing I noticed today was that people seeing me also went on their guard and it quickly became apparent that they're maybe a little scared of me. I went into a couple malls and noticed that while the guards only gave most people a quick once over I got looked at thoroughly, nobody ever gave me any trouble but I was definitely inspected. The malls all have guards at the door which is mostly a perfunctory check. It got me wondering though, big white guy probably screams "American" although in the west I usually get picked out as a Canadian. Maybe when they label me as American they automatically think gun toting nut?

The other thing I noticed was that I'm not alone, I did see a fair number of white folks, mostly men. Interestingly I saw zero black people. The white guys I saw were almost always accompanied by a filipino woman with a baby stroller. I'd expected some kind of white guy fraternity where you'd see another guy and maybe nod. Riding a motorcycle back home just about everybody gives a little wave to the other bikers, theres even a brotherhood of sorts of old Mercedes owners, but here the white guys immediately look away.

Then it struck me, they're embarrassed, they're embarrassed because they've got a mail order bride. I know the idea of the mail order bride has reached legendary status but I know a guy who has one, she's even filipino. The deal is to take one of the women out of the country the guy has to make a couple trips over here and invest a fairly substantial amount of time. So these guys I'm seeing are over here putting in their time before they can take home their bride. The guy I know even got stuck with a kid that wasn't his. In talking to other folks it seems like everybody has a story of a friend who got a filipino  bride and got stuck with a kid that wasn't his.

If I were over here putting in time before I could take my filipino mail order bride and her bastard kid home I'd look away too...

I'm in Asia!

Thats right, Asia. Specifically the Philippines. Sometimes I sit back and think "Well how did this happen?" and this is one of those times. I'm here to teach a class in our office to new staff. It makes more sense to send me here than 8 folks to the US.

Thats the Boeing 787 Dreamliner I flew in from Boston to Tokyo. The picture is actually in Tokyo, I couldn't get a shot of the plane in Boston. The 787 is an amazing plane, its super quiet considering you're going through the air at .8 mach which is eight tenths of the speed of sound.

The windows are huge and dim electrically, notice that there is no shade, theres a 2 part button below each window. Push down and the window gets darker, push up and it gets clearer. The window never darkens completely but with it dimmed all the way it looks like night outside even when its bright and sunny. The flight from Boston to Tokyo chases the sun but with the shade dimmed I thought the sun was actually the moon...

I normally get a sandwich to carry on the plane with me. I screwed that up on this flight so I ate in the airport just before the flight. This turned out to be a mistake as a couple hours into the flight they served dinner. Pork tonkatsu with rice which was really good although I couldn't finish mine. It had a little salad, a little bowl of noodles, a dose of what I think was sweet potato, some coleslaw and a squishy green thing. Later on they brought Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Americone Dream which is one of my favorites.

The flight left at 1:30pm, dinner was around 3, at about 8pm they brought around pastries.

Normally this wouldn't be enough to warrant a picture (although it was a lot of food) but the pastry is a bit like a nissu back home with added lemon. Nissu is a Finnish coffee bread (the Swedes make it too but they use more sugar) with cardamon seeds that has a distinctive braided shape. In my family its not very sweet and is the perfect compliment to a cup of coffee. This pastry was similar in shape and texture although without cardamon and with lemon.

As much as I liked dinner I didn't care for breakfast. Canadian bacon and egg on an English muffin with onions. It was greasy and overly onion and I shouldn't have eaten it, I was re-tasting that for hours. Again with the coleslaw which apparently is a Japan Airlines thing, it came with every meal.

Tokyo is a nice airport that strangely reminds me of the '80s. Its kind of '80s brown with '80s blue carpet and kind of smells like I remember the '80s to smell like. I was pretty tired since I don't sleep well on planes and it was now around 1am for me. Interestingly I slept for an hour or two in the airport which I almost never do. When I awoke the plane was boarding which was a bit of a scare but it had only just started so no harm done.

From Tokyo to Manila I was in a daze. The 767 is a horrible plane with seats that are too small for me and my body was nearly at the edge of endurance. I'd gone running 2 days before after 9 months off and my body was sore. So poor life choices plus no legroom plus long travel makes Curt an unhappy traveler.  Dinner was "hamburger steak" which wasn't bad but lets face it its a hamburger. I did manage to get some sleep but not much and the seat was rock hard.

I got a second wind in time to get through customs which was almost shockingly easy. I wonder if thats because of the few years when the US owned the Philippines in the '40s.

I'll talk more about Manila and specifically Makati City where I'm staying in my next post.