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.
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