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...