Philippines!

I've been waiting to post this in hopes that my friend Clayton who I took this trip with would finally send me some of the pictures he took from the trip but he still hasn't yet. I will post some pictures once I get them but for now here is a summary of my trip... 

My trip to the Philippines was short and eventful. I went with my friend Clayton. Both of our breaks overlapped so we were able to travel somewhere together for part of it. We left Seoul on Wednesday night and arrived in Manila very late/early Thursday morning. We had a hostel booked ahead of time for that night. Our hostel wasn’t the nicest but it was cheap. It didn’t really matter to us where we stayed; we were only going to be there for the night. 

Our packs

            Clayton and I got up around 9am the next morning ready to explore the city. We woke up kind of in the ghetto. The taxi driver the night before said “why are you guys staying here? Go to a nicer area.” Haha. Oh well, you live and you learn. We made due with what we had. We headed towards an area called Market Market after checking out of our hostel. It was quite an adventure getting there riding on their “buses” called jeepney’s. They are crazy old military jeeps transformed into buses where you get on through the back where one would think there should be a door. None of them have a dashboard and any sense of pay system. Some people handed the driver money and some didn’t. I couldn’t figure it out. Quite a different world that they live in that’s for sure. I enjoyed my ride through town on it. We had to transfer once to a different jeepney heading towards where we were going. The jeepney we were on barely stopped for us to hop off and jump in the next one while we were in the middle of an intersection. It was crazy! We ended up making it to Market Market safely. We walked around a bit and explored the area while drinking a nice fresh fruit smoothie. It was fun to have a look around. All the people in the Philippines were very nice. We would hear good morning ma’am and hello sir everywhere we went. I was really impressed with their manners overall. I was telling Clay how refreshing it was to hear English spoken! I didn’t realize how much I missed that comfort. After walking around we decided to head towards the area where we wanted to spend the night since we were tired of carrying our packs with us everywhere. We ended up checking into Hotel Camelot, the thing looked like a castle. It was actually really nice, the bellboy insisted on carrying my backpack to my room for me.

A jeepney... they are usually painted ridiculous colors and all super random. 

Me inside a jeepney

The dashboard or lack there of....

Fruit! 

Hotel Camelot Lobby.

            After getting rid of our packs we were ready to wonder the city. The weather however did not agree with us. It started to get wicked windy as Clayton would say and rain shortly followed. We decided it was time to get lunch at that point. The weather calmed down enough for us to go find a taxi and head towards the venue where Incubus was playing that night. We got tickets right at the booth; it only cost us 18 US dollars too! So awesome. We wondered the markets nearby to kill some time. They had meat and fish market as well as fruit market. In the meat market they had pigs for sale and had dead pig heads displayed… I took a picture for my sister Beth but unfortunately I lost my camera so I no longer have the pictures. Before the concert we got some dinner at a kind of fancy restaurant. We split some nachos and a bucket of local San Miguel beer. It was refreshing to drink some actual beer since we’ve gotten so used to drinking the crap beer here in Korea. While we were in line for entering the concert a girl came up to Clayton and asked, “are you Clayton?” Her name was Alice. Clayton had posted on Couchsurfers that we were going to the concert and Alice had read on the concert blog his post and said “you’re the only white male with a white girl that I’ve seen so I figured it was a safe bet to assume you were Clayton”.  We met up with her and some other of her friends she’s met in Manila after the concert for some ice cream. The concert was amazing. It was honestly one of the best concerts I’ve been to. Brandon Boyd is really a phenomenal performer; Kalie, really missed out on a good concert especially considering Incubus is her favorite band.

Look at the sign and you can tell how windy it got outside... 

Just super normal for the man to be riding on the back of the truck with glass holding an umbrella. 

Having a san miguel at dinner.

Clayton and I at dinner, really dark picture.

            Friday, Clayton and I told Alice (the couchsurfing girl we met randomly the night before) in Intramuros, which is the “old town” of Manila. Intramuros is still protected by a brick wall; it’s really cool. We had a great day exploring the town and talking to random people. We ended up eating at some café that doubled as a recording studio… pretty sketchy if you ask me. The food was good though, haha. At the end of our venture in Intramuros we found ourselves relaxing on part of the old wall watching out for flying golf balls… literally. There was a golf course just on the other side of the wall. It was a great view from the top of the wall though; I really enjoyed hanging out there. Before dinner time Clay and I found a hostel to stay at “Friendlies” and dropped our stuff off. We went to eat a really good Italian place. We treated ourselves to a really nice dinner. We had pita bread and hummus for an appetizer, pasta dishes for our main course, and for desert we had ice cream and cake. It was the best meal we ate there by far. After dinner we had a few drinks in a local bar tent type of place across from our hostel where there were a bunch of travelers.

The glorious river! Haha

A really cool catholic church that we went and checked out. (the girl in the stripped shirt is Alice)

Clayton found a job! 

A random car... it's decorated more like most the jeepney's are decorated. 

Inside of some run down abandoned bank.

On top of the wall surrounding Intramuros 

Alice and I hanging out on the wall... it was a great view of the city! 

Clayton and I took a taxi around a lot because it was easy and cheap too. It was actually really fun to see all the different parts of town. It’s so crazy how rich some areas are and then the next block over how much poverty people are in. I haven’t seen so much poverty in my life as I did in certain parts of Manila. It was crazy. There were constantly little skin and bone kids wearing raggedy dirty clothes walking barefoot asking you for money or food. It was really sad. There was one point where we were in the taxi and drove by a slum area that I couldn’t even imagine living in. I turned to Clayton and told him that I am so grateful to have grown up in Minnetonka.

The next day wasn’t too exciting. We didn’t do a whole lot. We went to Starbucks and hung out at the coffee shop for a while and lounged around. By the time we got to the airport and boarded our flight they announced that the flight was going to be delayed 4 hours so we had to hang out in the airport for most of the night. It was very frustrating especially considering Manila airport is really lame. It has nothing in it. All the food places were closed too, which was convenient. Oh well, that’s just the joys of traveling I guess. My trip to the Philippines was great though. I had a really good time and met some really cool people. I can’t get enough of traveling...