Our 1.5 week stay in Manila was booked at The Mabuhay Manor, a pleasant hotel situated nearby the airport and the Mall of Asia. They won’t tell you that the Manor is located right next to a slum area and a jeepney loading zone, but hey that’s welcome to Manila for you! Overall the hotel was excellent, my highlights are the outdoor pool, morning breakfast service, and freshly prepared buko (coconut).

Fast food in Manila is wonderfully convenient and delicious (Americans thought we had it fast and easy!). Most places like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Greenwich pizza, and JollyBees deliver food throughout the city and orders can be placed from their website or from easily remembered phone numbers. You can call 911-11-11 for pizza hut’s delivery hot-line until 1 am even on weekends. It is interesting that the number for emergency service or fire department was really long and unintuitive.

Check out the all the photos from my trip here

This is the friendly welcome sign for this BK	Free cell phone charging!
The menu – check the prices out!

You could say that a 12+ hour flight from Chicago O’Hare to Narita Japan and then another 4 hour flight from Japan to Manila was a just a tad bit tedious. I had never been on a flight longer than 3 hours before, however to the airlines credit (JAL) the flight attendants/service were very accommodating. This still does not make up for flying in Economy class where it is next to impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position.

We finally landed in Manila in a disoriented, overtired, and irritable state.  We also couldn’t help but feeling relieved at making it to our final destination after uncontrollable crying babies made the 12 hour flight from Chicago kind of a nightmare. The Philippines customs went very smoothly, feeding my suspicions that rich American tourists are a welcome sight in such turbulent times. We made our rendezvous with my friend Chris and his family after a hectic battle to retrieve our luggage. The airport in Manila is in itself a kind of metaphor for the the city. It could be described as messy, crowded, chaotic and yet everyone and everything seemed to run with a kind rhythmic flow which made it all work. Filipino people in general are also very polite and accommodating, at least in my opinion. Our first encounters of this began on the plane where numerous Filipino natives would ask about the nature of our trip to the Philippines. They were always enthusiastic and neighborly when hearing about the places we intended on visiting.

The first three days of the trip were supposed to be a quick flight and relaxing stay at Boracay:

“Boracay – white sand paradise, home of many fine beaches where tourists can enjoy sun bathing, snorkeling, scuba diving, and much more.”

Instead the small tropical island known as Boracay was hit for two days by a Typhoon known as Fengshen which ruined our plans of scuba diving, jet-skiing, snorkeling, etc. This did not ruin the trip or experience as one might expect. Getting to the island was more of an ordeal than I thought. A small propeller-driven sea plane took us from Manila to Caticlan via Asian Spirit airlines. From there we had to shove all of our luggage into small motor-tricycles with sidecars which would take us to banca boats which ferries you to and from the island. This was definitely not the most comfortable means of travel and your luggage and clothes are almost guaranteed to get wet.

It is interesting to note that Boracay is a relatively new tourist destination in the Philippines. Native filipinos such as my friend Chris’ dad had never even been to the place. Recently, the island is becoming more and more popular as rave reviews pour in from numerous sources. According to wikipedia, “It was only in the 1970′s when, it is said, a foreign movie crew accidentally “discovered” this island paradise. Others maintain that it was the German traveler, Jens Peters’ book, which included rave reviews of Boracay that changed the island’s pace from that of being a quiet secret to eventually being voted as having the best beach in the world.” (Wikipedia)

The first day on the island we experenced beautiful weather, perphaps a bit windy forshadowing the events to come. We walked most of the beachfront visiting the many shops and resorts scattered along the southern coast of the island. At night we got to see the place come alive with live music, dance parties, and tropical food and drinks. The next day everything changed. The sky grew dark and the winds began to pick up along with torrential downpours. The island is powered compeltely by on-site generators, with each resort providing its own back-up generators in case of emergencies. The one at Casa Camilla, the resort we were staying at, seemed to be plagued with constant power-outages. All of this should be kind of frightening to a tourist but I found it to be very exciting. I didn’t know it was a typhoon until later and then I learned we were lucky that we weren’t hit by the full force of the storm. All we could do was stay in the hotel, order room service and ride out the Typhoon. There came a time when we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to leave Boracay at our scheduled time but the storm blew over towards China by the third day and everything turned out fine.

The rest of my trip was spent in and around metro Manila, visiting Chris’ relatives, seeing the Mall of Asia, San Agustin Church, Taal Volcano and Lake, & Fort Santiago. More details to come…

On the return trip to Chicago we spent one day in Narita, Japan due to a layover with our JAL flight. This was a short lived in and out experience of Japan but I am at least proud to say I have oficially visited the country.  We spent the day walking around the small town of Narita because the trip into Tokyo would have taken too long and we weren’t up for the journey.

:Part 2: