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.