I just want to buy an ice-cream

Well, and eat it.

Friday night = treat night.  If I'm lucky.  I was lucky - we headed to a Gelato stand in Greenbelt 3 which a huge selection of flavours.  I went for Amaretto.  In a cone.

The ice-cream lady scooped up a nice big ball of ice cream, placed it on the cone.  And the cone broke.

She tried again.  The same problem.  This time, some of the cone attached itself to the ice cream, and landed up back in the original tub.

She handed over the scoop to another lady.  I could see she was about to try the same thing again.  At this point, Mr H couldn't watch any longer.  I suggested that I just get a cup, instead of a cone.  Ah, problem solved!  By the customer.

I still really wanted the cone though - I ended up with an ice-cream that might be served at a children's party, to look a bit like a clown.  All that aside it was delicious.

5 days in Hong Kong & Shenzhen

At the end of August we had 2 Filipino public holidays quite close to each other - Wednesday 21st August was Ninoy Aquino Day and Monday 26th August was National Heroes Day.  This meant that by taking just 2 days of leave from work, we could have a 5 night trip away somewhere.  We decided to go to Shenzhen and Hong Kong as we have a few friends there, and we had loved Hong Kong on a previous trip.

First stop: Shenzhen.

We were amazed at how easy it was to get to Shenzhen from Hong Kong International Airport.  You simply follow signs for the Sky Pier, buy your ticket, hand over your baggage tags (if you had checked baggage on your flight), and then go to the pier to board.  Someone picks up your bags, and you pick them up when you get to the ferry terminal in Shenzhen (Shekou).

Unfortunately though, we arrived into Shekou at lunch time.  This meant that the visa-on-arrival desk was closed.  You need a visa to get into China.  We had to wait for an hour in the terminal until it opened again.  It was closed from 13:30 - 14:30.  But that aside, it was a seamless process.

We met our friend, Petula and her daughter, Viola, for a late lunch at Gaga (I think).  We had delicious salads and fruity ice tea.  I was so hungry I'd forgotten what I'd ordered and started eating Mr H's salad instead of mine.  Oops.  Both were delicious.

Shenzhen is a new city - developed only in the last 30 years.  The financial district (the very new part) is very well planned and laid out, with some impressive buildings.  Back in 1999/2000 I had spent 6 months in China (Suzhou).  Shenzhen really didn't feel much like the China I remembered from 13 years ago.  This may be because China has changed a lot, and probably because Shenzhen is such a new city.  It still felt different to Hong Kong though.  A bit more 'China' than that.

There isn't a great deal for tourists in the city.  But we enjoyed wandering around - the huge squares (some with line dancing - something which was familiar from my time in China at the turn of the century), the new smells and scenes.  And we did visit one tourist attraction - Window Of The World.  It has replicas of famous landmarks from around the world; some huge, some tiny.  Everything from the Sydney Opera House to the Pyramids to Niagra Falls, the Eiffel Tower etc.  An odd place, but something different!  It was so hot and humid that Mr H had to go and buy a new shirt afterwards!

We ate some great meals whilst in Shenzhen - dimsum in the shape of little piggies and homecooked Chinese food being the highlights.

From Shenzhen we took the train to Hong Kong.  It's an easy ride, which takes about 40 minutes from the Chinese border to Hong Kong harbour (on the Kowloon side).

Hong Kong is a fantastic city - it has a real buzz to it.  On the Kowloon side it feels very Chinese and on the Hong Kong island side it feels very cosmopolitan.  On the first night we ate at a Thai hole-in-the-wall type restaurant in Kowloon Walled City.  For years this area was ruled by gangs, but now it is full of Thai people, restaurants and shops.  The food was so authentic and pretty cheap.  Breakfast the next day was at the Australian Dairy Company.  There was nothing Australian about it.  Another hole-in-the-wall type place, that had a queue of about 40m snaking up the street.  Service is brisk, the food is simple.  But it is truly delicious.  Their specialty is eggs.  Scrambled eggs.  I had scrambled eggs with bread.  The others had macaroni soup + scrambled eggs with bread!

Having been to Hong Kong before we didn't feel a strong urge to go and see lots of touristy things.  Instead we wandered around some of the local department stores and walked along the Avenue of Stars, before heading out for more food.  This time we went to Soho.  It is such a change from what we're used to in Manila - it was thronging with people, spilling out of bars and restaurants.  Such a good atmosphere.  We ate at a Greek restaurant and then went to meet Mr H's friend for some drinks in a few bars.

On our last day we headed down to Aberdeen where one of my cousins, Pablo, lives.  I was expecting it to be a bit more open than Central Hong Kong, but I was wrong - lots of densely packed, high rise apartment blocks.  We jumped on a boat to Lamma island to go and get an early seafood dinner.  A short ride across, and it is totally different to Hong Kong.  Very quiet - just a line of seafood restaurants along the shore.  We chose our fish, had it cooked up and enjoyed our meal with the sun going down over the bay.  A great end to a great trip.

Seemingly simple tasks

Before I continue, I'll point out that I realise these are distinctly First World problems.  But having spent the last 14 years, or so, in a First World country, I have been conditioned to think in a First World kind of way.

We set out to do 3 main tasks on Sunday morning:

1) Buy tickets to watch The Killers live in Manila
2) Find a copy of Swim Philippines
3) Do the weekly shop

The first 2 tasks took us close to 2 hours.  2 hours?!  Both should have been possible within about half an hour based on the location of the venues where we needed to complete the tasks.

To get The Killers tickets, I knew we needed to head to SM Makati.  The walk, from our apartment, to SM Makati takes us through 2 malls: Greenbelt & Glorietta.  Within Glorietta there are a number of sports shops.  Mr H had it on good authority that at least one of these sports shops (Planet Sports) would stock the free Swim Philippines magazine.  So we headed there first.

Mr H's enquiry was met with a blank stare.  We know that the magazine is stocked in this store, as we've picked one up there before.  Next stop was a running store, Athlete's Foot.  This time, it was suggested we head to the Speedo store.

Speedo, for those of you who are not familiar with the brand, makes swim wear and related kit.  It's all about swimming.  Mr H's enquiry again was met with a blank stare.  Sense of humour failure was starting to set in.

We ventured to another store, Toby Sports.  At this point Mr H had decided to use my phone to bring up the Swim Philippines Facebook page to avoid any confusion due to potential misunderstandings in Brummy English vs. Filipino English.  We were directed to another store, Toby's Arena.

I should point out that Glorietta is a big, sprawling shopping mall set over at least 3 floors.

As soon as we walked into Toby's Arena we had 2 shop assistants half a metre behind us, following us to the checkout.  But they also just looked blankly at us when we asked.  The person behind the checkout went to enquire in the back room whether there were any magazines (we *think* they knew what we were talking about), only to find that they don't have any.  And they didn't know when they would get any copies.

We ended our search there.  Unfulfilled.

Our next task would surely be easier.  I'd read that you could buy The Killers tickets from SM ticket outlets, and I knew there was a ticket outlet in SM Makati.  We found the ticket outlet, and it was all going well.  We were shown a venue layout, shown the different prices, shown that tickets were available... we made our decision and I brought out my Smart Money Mastercard to pay.

"Oh, sorry ma'am, but you can't pay with a Megalink Mastercard, you can only pay with a credit card."

*Sigh*

So we went in search of an ATM.  The first one we found kept refusing our transactions (with multiple cards).  It must have run out of money.  The second one spat out some cash.  In fact it spat out a lot of cash.  5000 Pesos in 100 Peso notes!!  We were finally able to purchase our tickets.

2 tasks done.  At least 2 hours down.

And we still had the nightmare of the weekly shop.  Which is rarely weekly, because we both hate doing it so much.  It wasn't such a nightmare, about about an hour later we were home eating salami sandwiches on great French bread.  Epic over.

3 days in Palawan

Photos from our Palawan trip

With a Filipino public holiday falling on a Friday (often they fall midweek), we thought it was too good an opportunity to miss going somewhere like Palawan which needed more than a weekend, mostly because of the long journey.  We took the Thursday off work, so had 3 nights away.

We had heard that El Nido is the highlight on Palawan, and one of the highlights of the Philippines, so that's where we headed.

To get there it is a bit of a trek... an hour's flight from Manila to Puerto Princessa followed by a 6 hour road journey to El Nido.  The last 1.5 hours is on dirt road!  We had heard some horror stories about the minivans; mostly to do with them being completely packed and the roads being really bumpy.  We were very lucky both ways - on the way North to El Nido we had a row of seats to ourselves and on the way back we booked onto a 'daytripper' minibus which has very comfortable seats, and only 9 of them (not 14 or 17 as on the others).  And the journey passed quite quickly - lots of lovely rural scenery to look at (including countless carabao, or water buffalo, lounging around in big muddy puddles) and a few comfort stops along the way.  The minibus dropped us right at our accommodation too, which was an added bonus.

We stayed at Treetops in Corong Corong, just south of El Nido.  It's a very small B&B, with only 2 rooms.  The rooms are more like mini-cottages, built all out of local lumber on a platform so you really felt like you were in the treetops!  It's run by an English gent and his Filipina wife.  Fresh fruit and juice when we arrived, a clean comfortable room and very peaceful.  The breakfasts were superb, and Dave (the owner) cooked us a Thai meal one night.  Delicious.

The weather wasn't amazing whilst we were there, but it is the rainy season after all.  We arranged an island hopping / snorkelling trip (Tour A) for our first full day there.  There were only 4 of us on the boat and we visited 5 or 6 sites including a small lagoon, a big lagoon and a secret lagoon (obviously not so secret anymore).  The sun came out for our first stop; it really made it feel like paradise with swimming-pool blue water.  Stunning.  We are so lucky to live in a place where we can escape to gorgeous beaches so easily.

We had a barbecued lunch on the beach - freshly caught white snapper (not caught by us!) and meat kebabs with rice, salad and mango for dessert.  It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

The rain really came down at our last stop and by the time we got back to El Nido we were soaked.  The only answer was a cup of tea.  Well, for the girls anyway.  Beer for the boys.  A great day.

On our second day we decided just to go for a half day trip, mostly so we could have some chill-out time in the morning.  Again the weather wasn't amazing, but it didn't rain until we got back so we managed to stay fairly dry.  Until we had to get off the boat back at El Nido and the water came up to our waists!  Mr H had changed into a dry pair of shorts so he was less than impressed!  Oh well.  The islands that we visited were gorgeous - Helicopter Island with a long beach and Paradise Island which we had all to ourselves.

El Nido is a small town, but due to the number of tourists there are lots of eateries and shops selling souvenirs.  We ate at Altrove, an Italian restaurant run by a Czech guy.  It has great promise (a wood-fired stone oven cooking the pizza), but perhaps because it was the low season it didn't quite deliver.  The food was ok, but they didn't have a lot of the more interesting options on the menu.  On the second night we ate at a French restaurant - La Salangane.  The service and the food were excellent.

What it does lack though is an ATM.  There are 2 establishments which take credit cards, and for the rest you have to pay in cash.  Luckily our B&B would accept a PayPal payment otherwise we wouldn't have been able to afford to eat for half of our trip.  I had totally underestimated the amount of cash we would need!

We had a bit of a wait for our flight in Puerto Princessa, so we stopped off at Cafe Itoy.  A great place serving many varieties of coffee, cake and food.  An unexpected find in a provincial town.

Definitely a recommended trip if you have a few days to spare.

A daytrip to Villa Escudero

Just less than 2 hours away (by car, on a Sunday) from Manila, just inside Quezon province, is a place called Villa Escudero.  Previously a coconut plantation, it is now a bit of a tourist attraction.

For PHP1400 (about £20) you get to see the museum, the grounds, ride on a carabao cart, have lunch, swim in the pool and watch a cultural show (at weekends).

Was it worth it?

Yes.  It's always worth getting out of the city and being able to breathe some fresh air.  It was also a fun day, spent with friends.  But actually, it's a pretty decent place to visit too.

The museum is housed in an old pink church (see picture).  It contains a broad assortment of artefacts - christian processional carriages, furniture, souvenirs from the Escudero family's travels, ceramics, war memorabilia, stuffed animals, dried insects and even a shrunken head from the Amazon.  A weird and wonderful collection.  My only criticism would be that there wasn't really much information about the artefacts, so you were left guessing about a lot of them.

From there we rode the carabao (local water buffalo) cart to the 'resort'.  At the resort there are hotel rooms, a swimming pool, a river where you can bamboo raft and an open air restaurant.  Just along from the open air restaurant is the hydro electric plant.  And this is where you have lunch.  With your feet in the water, which is pounding down the hydro from the river.  Certainly a unique experience.  Lunch was a buffet of Filipino food and was really delicious.  Plenty of dishes to choose from, including salad and dessert.  No complaints.  Other than our prune-like toes after lunch.

Following lunch was the cultural show.  I didn't have high hopes, but actually it was excellent.  It was a series of dances, with music and song highlighting Filipino history and culture.  Really well performed and choreographed.

And then it was time to head back to Manila.  Other than along the driveway on the way to and from the plantation house, we didn't see many coconuts.  It really is just a tourist attraction now.  But definitely one worth seeing if you find yourself with a spare day whilst in Manila.

We hired a car and a driver from Viajero car rental (about PHP2500).  It was definitely easier getting there via car than it would have been via public transport.

What to blog about next...

It's interesting (to me at least) - this blog is attracting readers from all over the world.  Especially Russia for some reason.  'привет' if you're reading this from Russia.  (Hopefully Google translate has translated that properly, otherwise I may be offending a lot of people).

So, what would you like to be reading about?  If you have any suggestions for topics, please use the 'Comment' feature built into the blog (if you can figure it out - I think it's something that Blogger needs to sort out) or drop me an email (if you have my email address).

Today we're out and about exploring Villa Escudero.  I'll blog about the experience, perhaps next week.

Long weekend in Singapore

Photos from our Singapore trip

When we were considering moving to Asia, one of the places on our hitlist was Singapore.  Neither of us had been there.  Now that we're in Manila, it's only a short flight to Singapore, so we decided to go for a long weekend.

We loved it.  It is so organised, so efficient and so clean.  There is so much to see.  And so many eateries to choose from for every meal.  We had a great time.

We arrived very early on the Friday morning and took a cab from the airport to our hotel.  Inside all the cabs, there is a big screen indicating the driver's name, the taxi's registration plate and the time that your journey started.  We noticed, on subsequent taxi journeys, that this screen is also used to convey messages to the driver e.g. if they go over a certain speed they're told to 'Drive Carefully!'.  The cabs are all metered (no questions asked).  And the drivers don't expect, or even rarely (in our experience) accept tips.  They will give you the exact change even if it means emptying their pockets onto the seat to find the precise coin required.

After a good night's sleep in a very large and comfortable bed we headed out for our first meal.  I'd done a bit of reading before we came and found that there are a lot of cafes serving breakfast and brunch.  There was one a short walk away - The Book Cafe.  It was fabulous.  A great menu, and we ate outside in European fashion, people watching.  A good start to the day.  From there we wandered along the Singapore River to Clark Quays and then down to the harbour area where you get great views of the CBD and a lot of the other landmarks associated with Singapore (Marina Bay Sands hotel, the Art Science Museum, Singapore Flyer etc.).  We stopped for a drink at Harry's Bar, part of the Esplanade.  After almost choking on the cost of the beer.

For our first touristic (oh, it is a word.  I was expecting it to come up with a red squiggly line underneath it) activity, we boarded the Singapore Flyer.  A bit like the London Eye and the first ferris wheel I remember ever being on.  It was a very clear day and we had great views of the Grand Prix track and all over Singapore.

In the evening, Mr H had booked us a table at Raffles Grill, for my birthday meal.  What a treat.  The service was impeccable, the food scrumptious (although Mr H would have liked a slightly bigger portion for his main) and they surprised me with a lovely birthday cake complete with candle.

Day 2 started with a trip to the Botanic Gardens.  Oh, after breakfast - this time at an Australian bar at Robertson Quay.  Also very good and luckily a bit cheaper than yesterday.  The Botanic Gardens are free to wander around, which was a pleasant surprise.  They are vast and a great way to pass a few hours.  We couldn't help lamenting 'if only there was something like this in Manila'.  A great place to go and get some peace and quiet, or even go for a good run.

From the Botanics we headed to Orchard Road, famous for its shopping malls.  There are countless malls selling everything from expensive designer wear to knock-off electronics.  We didn't stay long - neither of us is a good shopper.  It was getting close to lunch time, so we hopped on the MRT to Little India.  Predictably the MRT is quick and efficient.  We found a busy little restaurant, full of Indians so we decided to try that for lunch.  Some Paratha, curry and dhal filled our bellies.  So good.

The evening highlight was a trip on the Night Safari.  Hundreds of people queued up to board a series of electric trams to be driven through the safari park, with a guide pointing out the various animals.  It's obviously not quite the same as a night drive in Kruger National Park, but it was fun all the same and good to see lots of Asian animals including the Asian varieties of lions, elephants and rhinocerous.

It was 10pm before we could get some dinner, so we decided to hit one of the famous 'Hawker Stall Centres', this one at Newton Circle.  Mr H had been told to try chicken rice, but unfortunately the 2 stalls selling it had closed - they  must have sold out earlier on.  We settled for some Sweet & Sour chicken, fried rice and satay.  Very good.

Our last day again started with breakfast.  This time at Epicurious, also at Robertson Quay.  I had, perhaps, one of the best breakfasts ever.  A nutella and banana toasted sandwich served with strawberries.  So good.  We then headed down to China Town.  If only we hadn't eaten - there were so many hawker stalls selling such an array of delicious smelling food, but we just couldn't fit anything else in.  We'll just have to go back.

All too soon it was time to get a cab back to the airport and head back to Manila.