Manila, Philippines- Day 3

On the Fri, our third day, my friend Samuel and I work up to get massages. There were places right by our hotel, but they were all closed. Most of them opened at 12pm, but he had a flight at 2:55pm. So I googled a place on google maps and we went outside where the pedibikers were hanging out and showed them the address. They said they could take us there so we hopped in.

This ride is the scariest ride I have ever been on. We drove towards traffic weaving in and out of lanes. We had cars stepping on their brakes and swerving so that they didn't hit us. It was really scary, but fun at the same time. It was also super cheap, 400PHP, not as cheap as Jeepney though.

In the Pedibike

I can't remember the name of the spa we went to, or even where it was but it was so cheap. Apparently all the spas are this cheap, it cost 400 PHP ($11) for one hour. It was so cheap I felt guilty so I gave an extra 50php to both our masseuses. Later that day we wanted to check of Divisoria, which is one of the largest markets in Manila. Transportation wise we went with the Jeepney again because it's the cheapest.

We jumped in a Jeepney headed for Divisoria. It was empty for about 1 min, then about 6 people got on, then next stop more. We were so squished, it was also about 40 degrees Celsius with no breeze or air conditioning. I was sweating when I was completely still. When we finally got to Divisoria I left a wet patch of my sweat on the wet.... Yuck!

We got dropped off near the beginning of the market, so my first impression was "this isn't very busy". Wrong! As soon as I had that thought minutes later there were people everywhere.

I've never felt so uncomfortably excited. I was uncomfortable because I was warned about people pickpocketing me, so I was on high alert. I was excited because I love experiencing markets in different countries. On most of my trips I have gone to the market. Everything was unbelievably cheap. Sunglasses were $0.50, dresses were about $5. I didn't anything more than $10. Anything you need they had there; like clothes, accessories, cooking tools, home décor, etc. People were so friendly, we kept hearing welcome to Manila, or people would just say hello or ask where were from. It was so amazing!

We didn't spend a lot of time there because we started late and still had other things we wanted to do. I think we were there about two hours. Then we decided to go somewhere else since it was our last day. But half of us wanted to do one thing the other half wanted to do something else, so we split up. The market was chaos, we didn't even know how to get out of there, so we took a motorbike with a sidecar just to get out of the area. Even so there was traffic everywhere. We ended getting out at Intramuros, so we could take a taxi to Mall of Asia. But we couldn't even get one. So we just walked through Intramuros.

There were a lot of building that we didn't see before. I also wanted to go back to San Augustin to get my picture inside the church. It was finally open, but it said no photos during mass, we were bad and did it anyways. I didn't get the full effect of the church, but even from this quick photo you can see there is a lot of beauty in that church.

San Augustin

The whole time we walked through Intramuros we could not get a cab. So we decided to just walk back to the hotel to get a cab. On our way back we walked through Rizal Park. The musical fountain was on and there was a beautiful sunset. There were a lot of people just sitting around in the park.

Rizal park

We finally got a cab at our hotel. It took about 30 mins to get to Mall of Asia, it is located in Pasay. Mall of Asia is the 10th largest mall in the world. It also has lots of attraction like movie theaters that are two tiered, an ice rink, an open air music hall, etc. Behind the mall is a huge ferris wheel, an arena, a concert hall, science center, convention center and some other things. This mall is HUGE. It has four different buildings separated by big walkways. In the walkways are restaurants. The whole trip all I wanted was to eat authentic pancit and bbq chicken. I could not find it anywhere, which I find very strange. Finally at the mall I came across a pancit restaurant, I was so happy. It was also super cheap!

I ordered the solo pancit and it was 99 PHP ($2.70) and each bbq chicken skewer(pinoy chicken) was 25PHP ($0.68). WINNING! The chicken was soooo good, I could eat it forever! The pancit was different than I was used to but I still enjoyed it. I was happy I finally got my meal.

After we were done eating we walked around the mall for a bit. There were lots of good stores; H&M, forever21, Gap, Zara, etc. But I didn't have any intentions on shopping. I really wanted a Sephora (makeup store) but they didn't have it. Judging the picture below you can tell this mall is big, so imagine 4 of these. Obviously we didn't go to all the buildings, only the one. I felt tired even walking around here. We were only in the mall for two hours but it felt longer.

Ice rink in the mall

Everyone know I love bubble tea! I found this place in the mall, it's called Quickly. Apparently there is a location in Korea and in even some places in Canada. It's super cheap and tastes good, I only spent $1.75 on a large bubble tea with pearl. In Korea the same thing costs $5.45ish. Korea's bubble tea is over priced!

After the bubble tea we headed for the exit. It was almost 10pm and we were exhausted from the heat and walking around all day. We also found out that we wouldn't be going back to work on Monday, so I started thinking about what vacation to do next. Manila was a great trip, I loved everything about it, except I would have liked to do more, but there's always next time!