Philippines Trip Day 1, Manilla (Makati Area)

Yes I have finally reached this topic to talk about our Philippines trip. There’s plenty to talk about, and I shall try to cover every part of it. This is about Day 1 Part 1.

We left Penang on the 21^st. Flew with Air Asia and Cebu Pacific. Both were budget airlines. Talk about delays, we were delayed twice with these two airlines. First flight with Cebu Pacific, we had a culture shock as the seats were so freaking small and straight up. The trip from KL to Manila was a real torture. But we survived.

Arrived at Manila early in the morning (22nd) and headed straight to the hotel, rooms were not ready so we had our breakfast at the restaurant. Food was ok. Nothing interesting to brag about. Then slept for a while.

First stop was to this huge shopping mall called Mall of Asia. It’s really huge, bigger than Midvalley. We started there at around 11 am and left the place around 10pm….but we didn’t manage to cover the whole area.

Mall of Asia

Inside Mall of Asia

Huge Christmas tree in the mall

Lunch was interesting. We ate at the food court. Now this is what we should call a food court…..it had so much food, you've got to trust me, REALLY ALOT….and the crowd was crazy. It took us about 10minutes to finally find a table. Madness!!

See the crowd in the food court

What we ordered, well Ed for one thing went straight to the Lechon stall to order his pork. Lechon is one of Philippines famous pork dish. It's the whole pig marinated with spices and herbs and roasted over the fire. Texture something like the chinese piglets with the crispy skin. But taste totally different. You eat it with Vinegar. Here in Philippines, Pork here is a main meat, which you can find it at every food stall. It was abit of a 'culture shock' for me as it was weird to find all shops or rather 90% of Philippine dishes sure to have pork. Compared to Malaysia, you only find pork in Chinese Restaurants which are non halal. Here you get all sorts of Pork meat. Unbelievable.

The Pork shop selling lechon

The variety of food each stall sells. These are dishes which you eat with rice.

Beside having pork, pork and more pork we also had some squid and chicken. Those were cooked BBQ style way. Different from how we cook it here.

After lunch, we went hunting for more food around the mall. This is what we found. It's a bit scary how much we pigged out.

The fried Pork fat shop (Checharon)

Different areas of the pork fat. Some even looked like deep fried worms

One bite of this sure to get you feeling like heaven, not forgetting the vinegar which you dip into

Checharon- This is pork fat deep fried as a keropok/cracker like which you dip it in vinegar. It was so good that I whacked two packets of it. Hahaha talk about controlling Ed with his pork fat, there I was uncontrollably eating away. Ed even had to repeat it twice to me to get it sunk into my head what I was actually eating “Cher it’s pork fat you know”

Brownies for sale!

Then I found a stall selling so many different brownies. I went crazy again and ordered a whole box to eat. It was cheap. RM 10 for 12 slices, but don't get worried for me...I shared the 12 pieces with Ed and his cousin.

Then we tried a stall selling this food called “empanada”. It was something different. First the aunty rolls the batter (texture like curry puff pastry). Then she puts in the pickled vege and minced pork. Then she breaks an egg and wraps it up. Then off it goes to the frying pan. Once cooked you eat it together with vinegar. MMMMmmmmmm lovely. See below for pics.

See the pig eating!

After that nothing could still stop us from eating, we decided to enter a donut shop called Mister Donut. When we saw this shop it reminded us of our Jap friend telling us that Mister Donut is a famous shop back in Japan. So okla…we went in to try. To our disappointment, it wasn’t that wonderful after all. Too me it had that weird donut smell which I don’t like. Smell of staleness.

After the donut, next door we saw a hot dog stall. Hotdogs were pork sausages wrapped with bacon…Ooh something you don’t find in Malaysia, so we ordered one…PIGS!!! Hotdog was huge, I guess their sign “Don’t ever call me a weenie” does have a meaning....hahhaha

See how huge the hot dog was. It's wrapped with bacon.

Then we did some walking. Went in to a few clothes shops but it didn’t attract me as the clothes there we can find in Penang. Branded goods also can be found in Penang. Was looking out more on local Philippines goods, but could only find one shop. Bummer…the shop had some interesting slippers (which didn’t have my size), crafted hadbags which were unique but pricey and the Marong Tagalog (National Costume) which was $$$$$. So decided to stick with food hunting.

So we continued our journey exploring the mall. Then as we walked, we suddenly came across a shop called Bayview Bingo. We both got excited and went in. I guess we were so excited that we didn’t realize how much the game was. The guy came up to us and gave us our bingo cards and next thing we knew it cost us RM 50!!!!!!Madness…..we were scammed!!!! Hahha well we found out how they make money here. Your given 3 sheets which has 9 bingo cards. These cost you RM 50. In between every two games they stop to play the special card which you have to pay extra if you want to play. These special cards are cheaper so most people would opt to participant. So from there that’s how they collect money. The game was pretty confusing in the beginning. I could only remember one winning style which I used to play with my Aunty last time. Didn’t know that there were so many other winning styles….ahh confusing…Ed on the other hand was faster to colour the numbers compared to slow poor me. We were given a special “pen” to dot the numbers. I shouldn’t exactly say pen as it was in a shape of a glue but had colour ink coming out. We spent our time at the Bingo place for a near 30 mintues….we couldn’t leave after what we spent….so we continued hoping that we could win back our money. Winning polls were as high as RM 2000. Unlucky us, we walked out RM 50 poorer.

The Bingo cards

Then we went to this restaurant called Chow King and ordered the Halo Halo…recommended by Ed’s uncle. It was good…so much better than our Ice Kacang here. What was inside, ice shaves, jelly, Yam Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice cream, Thick concentrated caramel cut, thick concentrated yam paste, beans, corn, coconut slices, santan and some other ingredients which I can’t tell what it was. Your suppose to mix all the ingredients before eating. Fantastic!!!!

Halo halo when served

Halo halo after mixing everything up

The came dinner, we went to the food court again and ordered a few dishes to eat with rice. What I liked the most was the stuffed BBQ squid which you eat with vinegar. Squid was stuffed with cabbage, onions and tomato…but I guess there’s a secret ingredient as I made this dish last two weeks ago and it was so very far away from the taste, disappointing.

The stuffed squid

Desert dishes

This was my favourite desert dishes. Left, is called ginataan or binignit. This is something similiar to Penang's Pengat or Bo Bo Cha Cha. Right, fruit salad. The best I tell you cos it's mixed with pure nestle cream. I fell in love with this immediately. I so miss this now.

The amount of dishes we had for dinner for just 5 people

Apart from the food, I mustn’t forget about my encounter with the body check, armed security and a K9 dog……When you stepped into this mall, at the entrance, everybody will have to go through the security for a body check to see if anyone’s carrying weapons. There will be a guy on the right and a lady on the left to carry out the body checks.

Then while walking in the mall I saw this German Shepard dog wandering around with a security guard. Silly me, I went “Hey Ed, look can bring dogs to the shopping mall. So cool” Then Ed went “it’s a K9”, huh?????? Yea very tight security here in Philippines after the recent bombing of a shopping mall. Security guards here are armed with pistols and M16. And they are found at every shop in the mall. Pretty scary though, but it does give you a sense of security. The dog’s duty was to sniff for any bombs.

The dogs duty is to sniff for bombs. See behind, that's the body check areas.

Apart from all the eating, I did pamper myself for awhile. I went for a medicure and pedicure in one of the saloon/beauty shops. You wouldn't guess how much it was......... freaking RM 10 ONLY!!!!!!! While I was doing this, Ed on the other hand was enjoying his head shave and a body massage provided by the chair he was sitting on. Somekind of massaging chairs. he enjoyed it and he actually fell into lala land (sleep).

Pampering myself


My toes after the pedicure. Loved the colour

After a long day at the mall,with limited sleep, by the time it was 10pm, we were all exhausted and decided to head back to the hotel for sleep. Day 2 is the trip to Zamboanga