Manila - Day 7 (Concert at Greenbelt)

Om Sunday I went back to Greenbelt in the evening to try one of their many restaurants. I had passed by one called "Big Buddha" that looked like it might be good.


The place was a little empty, but I was a little early for dinner. A few more of the tables started to fill up as I was eating, but I should have taken it as a sign....


The food was Chinese style. I ordered one of their noodle soups, but it was a little disappointing...I actually enjoyed the sticky chips they had for appetizers more than the actual meal O__o

There was a concert in the middle of Greenbelt Park. The performers seemed to be a Filipino band, and I was trying to figure out who was performing, but the sign in the back just said Chuck Hughes in big letters - not exactly something that sounds like a band name or a Filipino name for that matter.

It turns out Chuck Hughes is one of the Iron Chefs. The band was accompanying him while he cooked, which I thought was weird, but I found out that Chuck Hughes used to be a rocker or something like that so I guess that's why the band in the background. That brings the number of Iron Chefs I've met to two - the first was Masaharu Morimoto back in college. I have to say Masaharu Morimoto was more exciting in my opinion.

Manila - Day 6 (Greenbelt and Shangri-La)

Over the weekend I was on my own - my coworker, Daichi, had left after work on Friday. I mainly stayed in the nearby area. I debated venturing out to Manila, but hadn't really planned much in advance so I decided to just relax and do some walking and window shopping instead. My brother-in-law, Tam, had suggested I check out a hotel called Shangri La that was in my area. He said it was supposed to be really amazing. It was very pretty, but I'm not really sure what all the hype was about...
The front entrance was definitely grand though.
Out of the many malls in the area, the one I hadn't had a chance to venture out to was called Greenbelt. There are actually 5 different malls interconnected - Greenbelts 1 through 5. A lot of the mall is actually open to the outside which was nice. This is a view of one of the main entrances to Greenbelt Mall and the Greenbelt Park (the little park inside the center of all 5 malls). This was taken on outdoor walkway that connects Greenbelt to another mall across the road. Like I said before, lots of malls...
The walkway was very long to cross over the major road below.
Greenbelt Park was very nice. Lots of trees and little walkways.

There's even an open church where they hold services in the middle of Greenbelt Park. Several people from the office that we were working at actually went there during the day last week for mass.
On the ground level, there were a lot of restaurants, eateries and coffee places. Perfect for ordering a coffee or a frozen yogurt, sitting and just enjoying the nice weather ^__^



I finally ended up trying food from Jollibee, the local fast food chain. Their chicken sandwich was decent, but their flavored fries were very good - crispy, cheesy and delicious. I was a little bummed though. They had a hash brown sandwich - a burger with hash browns instead of buns - but they were all out. That would have been interesting to try.

Manila - Day 3 (Giligan's)

On our third day Daichi and I went to a restaurant called Giligan's. The restaurant had traditional Filipino food, but it was completely pirate themed. All the wait staff was wearing bandanas on their heads. We ordered a beef dish, something that was similar to the Kare Kare (I think it was the vegetarian version), and coconut rice.



They had a beer special, so Daichi ordered some of the local beer called San Miguel. Looks like he really likes the beer!

The food was really good, but when I was eating the vegetarian Kare Kare I bit into something that looked like a jagged piece of clear plastic. We called over the manager who went in back to investigate and he came back telling us it was "naturium" (not sure if I'm spelling that right). According to Daichi that's the same word they use in Japanese for NaCl, which is salt...That definitely was not salt. But then someone at the office explained it's a hard part that is sometime found in a fish's gills. Who knew?

Manila - Day 1

A project came up for work, and my boss sent me to the Philippines for 2 weeks. I was staying in Makati, which is like the financial district, just outside of Manila. I was pretty excited because I'd never been to the Philippines before, but 2 weeks away from Calvin was also pretty rough (for the both of us).

When I arrived the first thing I noticed is that eveyone is extremely polite. I don't think I've been called m'am that many times in my entire life. By the time I reached the hotel it was 1 in the morning on Monday, but I still managed to get a few pictures of the room.

I only got a few hours of sleep, but the next day I was off to the office with one of my coworkers to start on our project. The area of the city that we were in was surrounded by malls, that were all connected on the inside. So you could walk from one end of the city to the other almost without ever stepping outside.


This is the office where I spent my 2 weeks. It turns out it was the only office building in that area. We had to go to the other side of the ring of malls to get to any other office buildings. The location definitely made it easy to find places to eat for lunch though.


The first place we went to eat for lunch was a place called Max's. Their specialty is chicken, but somehow we ended up not ordering a single chicken dish...The food was really good though. This dish was a stir-fry veggie type of dish.

This dish was like the Chinese pork belly, but Filipino style. Pork belly pretty much just means pork fat...

The other dish we ordered was called Kare Kare, which is oxtail with various vegetables in some kind of peanut-based sauce and shrimp paste. It was actually really good. I think Phil would have liked the oxtail.

After work I headed out with my coworker to explore one of the many malls near the hotel. While we were in the mall we passed a Jollibee, which is a local fast food chain, similar to a McDonald's. Their mascot is the Jolly Bee. They are actually a customer of my company, so I had to take a picture with the Jolly Bee.


For dinner we ended up eating at an Italian restaurant. I think it was called Italiani, or something like that.

We ordered a chicken mango salad. It was a lot bigger than I was expecting...I could have eaten it as my entire meal!

I ordered their thin crust pizza special, which basically had 3 different pizza types/toppings. The pizza was extremely thin. It was less like pizza and more like some kind of thin crisp cracker, especially since there was no tomato sauce, but I liked it. It was just way too much food.

On top of the fact that my coworker, Daichi, ordered his own pasta too. We definitely ordered too much food...That huge smile on Daichi's face is the "I can't believe we ordered this much food/There's no way we're finishing this" laugh of hysteria. ^__^