October 10, 2006 Manila, Day 2

At about 1am in the morning, Anth, Bex, and Dar walked in the door. They also came to stay at my cousin, Cheryl’s place. It was so great that Cheryl had room for us at their place. They had just recently moved into a new home, and had the 4th floor suite with two rooms unoccupied so that’s where we stayed. My aunt had the suite stocked like a hotel room! Lots of drinks in the fridge, lots of fruits and a mini bar. What great hosts!

Wes and I had to get up at 7am to go to the temple. It was my grandfather’s 3 year death anniversary, and we had to go to a Buddhist ceremony. Wow LOTS of chanting, non-stop! Wes and I were supposed to stay about 3 hours, but thank god we had to go back home to make sure the other guys got ready to eat breakfast so we made a quick get-away.

After breakfast, we took Anth, Bex, and Dar on a quick tour of Cheryl’s place. Cheryl was telling me that they just finished furnishing their home 3 days before we got there. The place is spectacular. It was very nice. Cheryl’s room is a loft – her bed is downstairs and she has a spiral staircase up to her office. Her room alone is like an apartment!

But the best part was my uncle’s bathroom. Wes was taking pictures of the bathroom and accidentally cracked the glass door to the toilet (and it looked like a really expensive, curved glass door). We just kinda stood there looking at it not knowing what to do. And then everyone started laughing! Poor Wes! Even I didn’t really know what to say. I just started cleaning up the shattered glass. Tour quickly ended after that.

So the rest of my family was finished at the temple and it was time to go for lunch at ‘Gloria Maris’. I thought only Vancouver had good Chinese food! This place was not bad! And the best part was dessert – chilled Mango puree with tapioca. Yum! Here's a photo of us with the family.

Gloria Maris is in Green Hills, and there are ‘tiangges’ which are like flea markets almost. They sell lots of cheap stuff (fakes, overruns, etc.) We were there for 4 hours, and of course didn’t really start buying and bargaining until just 30 min before we had to leave! Suddenly it was a frenzy trying to buy everything we wanted. True Chinese, trying to haggle over 30 pesos! Which is like what, 50cents cdn??? I have no patience for it! I was like, forget it! Just buy it!

My cousin Eileen was taking us around Green Hills, and she knew where everything was. It's quite impressive considering that inside the mall, it's a freaking maze. Anyhow, she ended up buying some balut, basically... balut is an egg with a partially born chick inside. The ones we had were 17 days old. We went upstairs to the food fair, bought some beers... and preprared ourselves for our upcoming meal experience. It sure was... lets just say...different. Eileen, Wes, Darren, and Anthony ate the eggs with surprising ease. However, Becky was a different story. Anthony and Wes were egging (pun intended) Becky on for what seemed like forever. Finally, Becky decided to give it a go... she at the whole thing too!! Go Bex! Here's photos of the 17 day old balut that we had. (Check out her face, it's priceless hahahahaha... -wes)

Time to go to Makati for dinner. Makati is the financial district and it is so much nicer than the rest of the city. We went to Green Belt (a mall area) and it is beautiful at night. Lots of restaurants with patios, kinda reminds me of XinTianDi in Shanghai. Of course Green Belt had to be a high end mall, so I didn’t really want to look around too much. I’m only here to buy cheap stuff! We met up with Kerwin Law and his wife (Sharon) for dinner at a Filipino place called ‘Sentro’. Darren used to race with Kerwin in Vancouver so it was cool they got to meet up again. Jeff also came (I used to hang out with him during junior high! So cool to see him again.). Newly weds, Christian and Cheryl, also came for dinner. We went for dessert after too. STUFFED! Here's a pic of Christian, Cheryl, and Anth.

And another photo with Jeff, Anth, Wes and myself.

Headed home and crashed! Today was a LONG day. Goodnight!