Rain, Rain,Go Away!

Nov 5th

This morning we were awakened by the Chato, the house keeper, at 9:30am because we had requested that we have breakfast at 9:30am and since we weren’t up yet our breakfast was now getting cold. We had a coffee/hot coco mix to drink, yogurt, a banana, and hot oatmeal- it was a great way to start the morning. I’m glad Chato woke us up because we had gotten plenty of sleep and both would have slept for hours if no one had waken us. Ronald had written out a detailed itinerary for us, even saying where we should eat and what we should order. During our breakfast we met John, a thirty year old American, who had previously lived in the Philippines as a missionary and is back currently helping with the floor victims. John was interested in seeing a lot of things that we wanted to see so we decided to spend the day together. It was great to have John with us because we could ask him tons of questions and he is fluent in Pilipino. He quickly became our tour guide for the day and was great to us!

 Our first stop of the day was at the Alaya Museum, we learned all about the history of the Philippines and the people. They had great artifacts including a great gold exhibit. John was able to tell us a lot of interesting things like, the taxi drivers here don’t own the cars, they rent them by the day at a fixed price. In order to get a full days worth of rent they literally drive for 24 hours- I think that may be why there are so many bad drivers here in the Philippines- we’ve almost been in dozens of accidents. The Alaya Museum was wonderful. We really learned a lot. John was able to also fill us in on the facts that, like that the museum was just recently built and how astonishing it was because the Philippines is such a poverty-stricken third world country, he couldn’t believe that it was so nice and contained so much gold.

We were all getting kind of hungry at this point so we went to a dampa (as recommended by Ronald). A dampa is a Pilipino restaurant where you  pick out the seafood you want and choose how you want it cooked, then they prepare it the way you want it. The moment we got out of the cab, a representative from each restaurant came running up to us telling us to choose their restaurant and that they’d give us a good price.

Jess and I sat back and kept saying, “he’s in charge” and pointing to John, we were very overwhelmed. We let John do all the talking and we ended up getting a good deal.

 

  

All the seafood is sariwa,  meaning very fresh! We tried so many different Filipino dishes, we had enough food to feed a family of 10! We were all stuffed and still had tons of food left over, I’m sure the wait staff had a feast of our leftovers when we left. For our meal we tried sinigang, a type of sour soup made from a fruit, or seed. We had ours with milkfish, which is one of the most popular fishes here. It is a white fish and has a little bit of a sour taste, and a lot of tiny bones, I didn’t care for it too much.

We also had milkfish ihaw, which is prepared by cooking it on an open grill with hot coals. It was stuffed with their version of a chili sauce, which was essentially peppers, onions, tomatoes and spices, I didn’t love it.  We also had HUGE prawns, the biggest I’ve ever seen in my entire life! They were cooked in a garlic butter sauce and they were delicious! We had fried calamari, served with their version of marinara sauce which is pink (made with mayo and ketchup).

The Salmon was my favorite dish, it was very simple, prepared with just a little bit of butter and garlic. We also had crab that was tiny but good. It tasted like lobster, but was a lot more work for only a small portion of meat. For dessert we had fresh pineapple and the freshest mango I‘ve ever had- it was delicious!

It was fun to chat with John over lunch. He not only have a missionary and lived in the Philippines for two years but he’ also working with an organization and will be walking from NYC to Los Angeles starting in May- it will be about a 9 month walk. John has also been a flight attendant and worked for several airlines including United. I have always thought of this as a potential job so I of course drilled him with questions. John was lucky because United needed to down size so he took a voluntary  furlough for 30 months and can technically go back if he wants too, but he doesn’t have any huge desire to do so though. The best part is that he can fly standby on any United flight and still has all of his health benefits- sounds like a dream to me! John is also working on setting up his own non-profit with a couple of friends called AACWIP (Americans for the Advancement of Clean Water In the Philippines) to help provide the Philippines access to clean drinking water. The non-profit will start in 2011. John is working on buying a 2 bedroom condo in Manila which he will live in for about 4 months a year while he’s working for the non-profit, he invited us back to stay there anytime we’re in the area, even if he’s not there- he better be careful or before he knows it we’ll take him up on that offer and move right in J (just kidding John).  I’m so glad we got to meet John and spend the day with him. I am really impressed that he is doing so much, and am inspired by his love of the Philippines. It’s incredible. I hope we continue to stay in touch and that our paths will meet again in the near future.

We headed to Intramuros next, which is an European-style medieval fortified city that functioned as the seat of government from 1571 to 1898. The massive walls stretch some 4.5 kilometers, enclosing a 64-hectare area once occupied by palaces, churches, monasteries, schools and wealthy residences ('Intramuros' means 'inside the walls'). Sadly, the whole city was razed to the ground by bombings conducted by American forces when they recaptured Manila from the Japanese in 1945. Today most of the walls, gates and bulwarks have been restored, affording visitors a glimpse into the past. We also stopped at the Manila Cathedral which was having a graduation mass which we watched for a few minutes.

  

We walked around and took everything in and then decided to get going back to the hostel because it was getting late, rainy,  and we needed to get ready for dinner. John decided to join us for dinner which was nice, I really enjoy all that we’re learning from him.

We all showered and got changed then jumped on a Jeepey which are a form of public transportation (they are the old WWII Jeeps left by the Americans). It was a lot of fun to ride, but very hot with no AC. We got off at Greenbelt- a huge mall complex and met Paulo, a friend of Mezas (Jess’s friend who we are staying with in Indonesia). Paulo was a great host and took us to his favorite Sleek Pilipino restaurant which was delicious. We ordered a bunch of things to share including fried prawns, mussels with a cheese sauce, chicken with a lemon sauce, citron eggplant, and garlic rice. I really enjoyed everything! For dessert we split. Halo-Halo (a milky-icy dessert with lots of gelatin things as well as fruits and beans, Buko Pandan (young coconut gelatin), and a fried Jackfruit roll.

 

 

 

After dinner we grabbed a coffee at Seattle’s best and enjoyed a little more together chatting and talking about life. It was a nice way to end the night. We hopped in a taxi and went back to the hotel where we chatted about our plans for the next day. Ronald promised to have a full itinerary ready for us in the morning when we get up, I’m sure he won’t let us down. We’ll off to bed we have a full day in the Philippines (we’re going to try to go volunteer at an orphanage for a few hours in the morning) with lots of sightseeing, and then we’re off to Indonesia tomorrow night.

Bye for now.
Love,
Katie