Mabuhay 2015: Manila Day 2

We woke up Tuesday morning and had one of Blake's favorite missionary meals for breakfast-pancit canton on white bread and CheezWhiz sauce for the bread. It wasn't new to me. Blake made this for breakfast for us a couple times while we were dating. The noodles are basically Filipino ramen, but you drain the broth and then sandwich the noodles in between bread. Ha. It's grown on me. 

Our first stop was Malacanan Palace, basically the Filipino White House. As mentioned before since I was a little short on time, we weren't able to book a tour since I didn't get my passport until right before our trip. I was a little sad because it looked pretty cool, but we got to walk around the outside at least. 

They don't let you take pictures of the palace, so these are the best we could get. From there we took a jeepney to Quiapo. There wasn't too much to see there, but we did eat some quail eggs off the side of the road...They were fine. They put them on skewers like kebabs and have a bunch of sauces to dip them in. Like I said, they were fine. =)

Also popped in this massive Catholic church. Brought back memories of my Catholic school days. Everyone had their pamaypays going. (That is the Tagalog word for fan... I'm trying to retain what little Tagalog I know.) I also remember that I bought myself a pamaypay because I was DRIPPING in sweat. Have I mentioned already how hot and humid it was there? I kept my hair down though, because you gotta get cute pix, right?

We had planned to go to a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain had visited in his travels, called Lumpia House. Lumpia is basically the Filipino egg roll and who doesn't love egg rolls? So we flagged down a tricycle and went on our way. 

Tricycles and jeepneys are the main ways to get where you want to go, if you don't have a car, which is pretty common. Tricycles are motorcycles with sidecars attached. Blake had told me so many times about when he rode on tricycles as a missionary, he had to hunch over because he was so tall. I fit just fine. =) 

This man brought his wife and baby along for the ride. They don't really do the carseat thing. 

Here we are. Blake fit pretty well in this one, but sometimes if he's too big, he'll ride on the back of the motorcycle with his feet hanging off on the side and then holds onto the sidecar. 

We made it to Chinatown where it was located and walked down this little alley where people were selling fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables. I wasn't sure what we were going to walk into, but we were so surprised to find a really nice, clean restaurant. I ordered some thick noodles and we split a huge Lumpia. Looking back it was probably the best meal we had there and I'm so glad we made the effort to find it. 

This right here is halo halo. It's a really popular dessert in the Philippines. It has crushed ice, ube/taro ice cream, jelly, red beans, and other goodies. Blake made an instructional video on how to eat this, so if you need to watch it, I'm happy to send it to you. In the video he said that halo halo literally means "mixed together." So the way to eat this is to, duh, mix everything together so with every bite you get a little of everything. I've come to really like it. It's not quite like chocolate cake, but definitely something I enjoy. We had halo halo like 3 times while we were there and this was definitely my favorite one. 

After lunch we walked across a bridge to get to the oldest district in Manila, Intramuros. For one of the bigger tourist attractions, it wasn't very easy to navigate. There was this fortification that I had seen pictures of that I knew I wanted to see, but they didn't have any maps anywhere and everyone just wanted to have us pay a lot to go on these tricycle tours. We weren't super interested in paying for a tour so we decided we'd just walk to try and find it. Well, the heat got to us and then a Manny Pacquiao look alike came along in a pedicab and offered to help us find what we were looking for, for a smaller amount. I mean how could we turn down Manny?

Do you see the resemblence?!

The poor pedicab driver was going sooooo slow. He definitely was not used to peddling around two Americans of our size. I probably could have walked faster, but it was relaxing to just sit, no matter how slow we were going. This is one of those sidecars where Blake has to hunch over a lot. 

This is Baluarte de San Diego. It's pretty cool looking, right?

Steps leading up to Baluarte de San Diego

One of the many churches in Intramuros. 

But this right here is the first church built in Luzon--San Augustin Church. All the pictures I had seen showed an orange facade, so I was a little disappointed when it wasn't orange, but nonetheless, still beautiful and cool to be next to such a historic building. It was built in 1571!

This right here is a snapshot of the Mall of Asia--the biggest mall in Asia. I guess the name kind of says it, but it was HUGE. So many places to eat and shop. They don't air condition as well as American malls, but still fun to look around. I was really hoping I would score some cheap stuff there, but I realized that any things you found in American were pretty much priced the same. 

Being a tourist is tiring. The only way I could think of ending the night was going back to our pool. Isn't it pretty?

View of Manila

Our condo was attached to a shopping center and we grabbed some burgers for dinner. Does this remind you of my favorite burger joint? It's called CaliBurger, red and yellow color scheme, palm trees and those fry baskets?? Definitely NOT In-N-Out, but A for effort. 

We were exhausted and went to bed shortly after dinner. It was a perfect day.

Mabuhay 2015: Manila Day 1

After 14 hours, we landed in Manila! I guess Blake and I were naive to just hope for good seats on the plane. We ended up in the middle section with a passenger on either side of us. Not what I'd call ideal. I was hoping I'd get to walk around a lot to avoid swelling, but since we were sandwiched by sleeping people, I only got up once to use the restroom the entire flight. My feet were swollen for two days...

We arrived at 4:30 AM on Monday. With the time change, we spent all of Sunday, May 24, 2015 on an airplane, but we did get to experience Tuesday, June 2, twice, once in the Philippines and then again when we landed. But, back to Manila! It took us literally 2 hours to get our bags. There was a flight with a lot of young kids that came from China and they thought it was a good idea to put all their baggage on the same carousel as ours. It wasn't a good idea. 

We got a cab to take us to our condo and boy, was it an adventure! Blake had warned me about the driving in the Philippines and he did NOT exaggerate. Lane lines don't really mean anything. No need to wait for an opening to merge lanes, just stick your nose out and start moving and honking simultaneously until no one can get past you! Basically, anywhere your car can fit, you're ok to drive. 

One of the places I really wanted to go was the Shoe Museum in Marikina. The former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, had about 3000 pairs of shoes and about 800 pairs reside in this little museum in Marikina. After a while, we realized that the Filipinos don't really do museums quite like they do in the states, because we asked about 20 people in this small town where the Shoe Museum was and they really had no idea. Filipinos also really love to help you out and give you directions when they have no idea where the place is. I really appreciate the help, but I HATED driving in circles for an hour. We finally found it after I pulled up a thumbnail size map on my phone (international data wasn't so good there). 

When we walked in, there were these cute high school age girls giving tours and they were all so impressed with Blake's language skills. It cost about $2.00 for the two of us to get in, but I think they were so taken aback by the tall white guy speaking Tagalog that they forget to collect from us right away. So, about two minutes into the tour, they said, "Sir, you forgot to pay." Blake replied in Tagalog, "Oh, I thought it was free because I'm so handsome." They just giggled and giggled. I love how much Blake can make people laugh when he speaks Filipino. He always says he's ten times funnier in Filipino. I believe it. 

This is a portrait of Imelda Marcos. I think I wanted to go and see her shoes so much, because I feel like out of all Filipino history, I know most about her (which isn't much). In November we saw an amazing off Broadway musical called Here Lies Love. It tells her whole story through song and everyone stands to watch the production and you dance and sing together and it's seriously one of the most amazing musicals I've ever seen. 

I also want to own a dress like this one. I think it's so elegant and regal. She still wears these dresses as a congresswoman of the Philippines.

Just a few of her shoes. It looks like when she found a shoe she liked, she didn't ever have to decide on one color, she just got all the colors. 

Also adding this piece of furniture to our next home =)

Marikina is the Shoe Capital of the Philippines and in the museum they have the winning shoe designs from the shoe competition that they have every year. What girl wouldn't want to sport these?!

We toured the entire museum in about 20 minutes and then made our way back to Taguig and made a visit to Blake's company headquarters in the Philippines. If there was ever a way for us to do a rotation in the Philippines, I think we'd really enjoy it. Here's some of the Filipino employees that work for AstraZeneca. 

Monday, May 25 was Memorial Day. I don't think we intentionally planned it this way, but we had planned to go to the Manila American Cemetery & Memorial after our AstraZeneca visit. When we arrived and saw all the flags in front of the graves, I remembered that it was Memorial Day. It was really special to see that sight. It reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery right next to where we used to live in Virginia. I must say, this visit didn't disappoint. Everything was so beautiful and peaceful and reverent. 

They had these beautiful mosaic maps with descriptions of different battles and attacks that took place during WWII.  

We found our new state seal and had to snag a picture with our matching Keens (they were a great purchase for the trip).

 We made our way to one last museum for the day, the Yunchengco Museum. Once again, not quite as grandiose as we do in the states, but nice nonetheless. 

I guess I haven't mentioned yet how HOT and HUMID it was there, hence my hair made its way up into a bun by the end of the day. 

We were completely pooped at that point and ended our night with a night swim overlooking Metro Manila. It was a perfect day. 

Mabuhay 2015: Planning

Ever since Blake and I met and then got married, I've had a desire to go to the Philippines where Blake served a mission for our church and meet all the kind people he spoke of. If you asked me 9 weeks ago when I thought we'd make it to the Philippines, I would've said, "Five years..." It all happened so fast. One night Blake and I were hypothetically planning all the things we wanted to do in the Philippines whenever we made it there and he asked me that question. I gave him the five year answer and I think it sort of shocked him. He felt like that was a long time away and after some discussion we decided that now was really the best time to do it. At first I put up a big fight. I didn't want to miss so much school and we hadn't really planned on taking a big trip this year, but there's not always going to be a perfect time for everything, so we bought some plane tickets and started planning.

Just wanted to post this picture from when we were dating. Notice Blake's button-up shirt with the Philippine islands embroidered on it. I knew early on that if we got married, we'd go back. This isn't the only shirt he had with the Philippine islands embroidered on it and ever since we got married, we've flown the Filipino flag in our home. 

I hadn't been outside the country since we got married, so the first order of business was getting myself a new passport with my new name. (Last time I traveled outside the country was to visit the TayTeam in Mexico City.)

I guess I never ended up ordering our marriage license after we got married, so I had to order that from Los Angeles County, expedite the processing, pay for overnight shipping, then turn around and get my passport photos taken and printed and expedite the processing for that and pay for overnight shipping all so I could get it back in time for our trip. I got it back about one week before we left and at that point I felt like I could finally relax. If nothing else went right, at least I had all the paperwork I needed to get myself inside the country.

We knew we would spend some time in Manila and figured it could be our hub while we traveled to Blake's mission area and departed to the island of Palawan after that. One thing that's nice about the Philippines is once you get there, lodging and food is relatively inexpensive. We decided to use Airbnb and found a nice high-rise condo in the Makati area. It was around $40 a night which was actually a bit more than some of the others, but after I saw the picture of the pool overlooking the city, I decided I NEEDED to stay there. Can you blame me?

Next on our list was finding a romantic resort. As much as I wanted to visit all the people Blake taught and got to know on his mission, I wasn't about to travel to a tropical island on the other side of the world and not get enjoy a beach resort. Whenever I would talk to Filipino people about visiting, they would always tell me that Blake should take me to Boracay, but Blake did his own research and spoke with a lot more Filipino people and they recommended the island of Palawan since it was less touristy. It also helped that it was voted the number one island in the world by Conde Nast Traveler.

We found a great package deal at the Sheridan Beach Resort & Spa that had some fun activities included and we were sold.

Those were all the big things and once we had that all taken care of, we made an excel sheet and planned out every day, hour by hour. I'm not usually too much of a planner, but Blake is and you'd better believe for our big trip that everything was going to be planned down to the minute, just so we wouldn't leave anything up to chance. 

We were scheduled to depart Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 11:00 PM and arrive in Manila Monday, May 25, 2015 at 4:30 AM. With the time change, we spent our entire Sunday in the air, but it was super nice because we had a direct flight from San Francisco to Manila. With everything all set, I went to school on Saturday and then came home to get our bags and left for our big adventure! 

It worked out that we ate dinner with my brothers that night and my brothers were willing to take us and pick us up from the airport so we didn't have to park our car there. I love having family close. It's nice that they're willing to help us out, but also so much fun to just hang out with them on a regular basis. We all look similar and dorky with our glasses. Ha. 

This is our last picture before we boarded our plane to the Philippines. 

Next up: a recap on our time in Manila.