Day 1: Arrival in Manila

Monday, June 9th, 2014

We arrived in Manila at about 3:30 am Monday morning.  There was more English in this airport than I imagined. You could definitely see that the Philippines is influenced by the Spanish and Asians. 

We went through immigration, I got another stamp in my passport!! Yippee!! We claimed our luggage, and walked through customs. I think all of the customs people sleep at night...There's no one there. We came out into this one room area that was old, decrepit, and just had a few people sitting with their carts of luggage.  We had no money.  We had forgotten to get our paper printed maps from Vernon so we just had our maps on Connie's laptop.  We realized that we didn't even know the exchange rate or what the currency was called here.  Sort of forgot to look up that detail.

We found a foreigner at the ATM and casually asked the exchange rate and were able to get some money. Check. 

Next item was to figure out how to get to the hotel. We had a security guy who kept trying to help us and tried to offer us a ride in a taxi for $1500 pesos (Philippine Pesos) but we didn't take it.  We went outside because we had a map that we thought would help us find the subway so we could get ourselves to the hotel, but we just were in a hole. We walked a little ways but, the layout of the terminal and it being so late at night we didn't walk far. There just was not much around and we couldn't figure out how to get out.  

We finally went to the metered taxi station and took a taxi to the hotel.  We decided that if we could get there for $20 or less, then we at least didn’t spend as much as the security guy tried to sell us. The taxi driver seemed like he knew exactly where to go so, we decided to take the taxi. 

Along the route we passed by two or three other terminals. Now looking back, it probably was the same one multiple times. I saw other things that were very eye opening. One was at a corner, there was a couple of pallets stood up end to end to make a little square house. Over the whole in the middle was an umbrella. Two small children and a mom crawled out and the dad was laying near the side. Behind the pallet house was a shop which appeared to be their source of income. The people in Manila do not have much. 

We arrived at the hotel safely and for about $600 Pesos.  Connie and I felt like we did okay. We didn't want to being taken advantage of and getting ripped off but, we were at the mercy of others given the time of day we were trying to get to our hotel. What an adventure!

We checked into our hotel and took showers and went to sleep. 

About 1pm we got up and got ready for the day. We quickly were figuring out that there is not much to do in Manila or at least close to where we were staying. We signed up to take a free hotel shuttle to the Mega Mall and then walked up the street a bit as we waited.

The mega mall is huge! There are 5 stories but many wings to this mall! The mall is full of American brands but, the prices were not any cheaper than in the states. Too bad it would have been fun to go on a shopping spree. We walked around a lot and found a nail salon that has big fluffy bright pink chairs in it that we think would be fun to visit on a “Pamper Self” day.  We walked past a dentist office and I had to take a picture for Annie. The door handles are dental tools. So fun! 

We found an atrium area with lots of people gathered and figured out some sort of celebrity was coming.  We ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Teriyaki Boy.  I had this super yummy sushi roll called "Dragon roll" and Connie had teriyaki chicken.  We also had a really delicious Mango drink that was not very expensive. It was refreshing to eat something other than Chinese food. I have not had good seafood since I left the states so the sushi was wonderful. I could have passed on having the head of the shrimp on the one roll but, that was the head of the dragon. You can't really have a headless dragon, can you?

During dinner we heard the girls scream and a couple of the waitresses from the restaurant ran out. We figured that the the singing star, Shane Falin, had made his appearance. As we left we looked down on the atrium and saw that he was signing autographs for the fans. We hurried to the grocery store before we had to catch our shuttle back to the hotel. We grabbed a few snacks and microwave popcorn for the evening.

We relaxed in the hotel room, ate popcorn and watched “The Magic of Ordinary Days.” That is a REALLY good Hallmark movie for those that haven't seen it.