Made in the P.I.

After a short two hour flight from Hong Kong, we arrived in Manila. We flew Cebu Pacific and it was an interesting experience. I am pretty sure it is a budget airline because some of the practices were very interesting. Contrary to our China Eastern Air flight that served full meals with ice cream as dessert for even a 2 hour flight, you had to pay for anything on Cebu Pacific, even if you wanted some water. They also were hawking random goods with their paraphernalia on it like you would want a Cebu Pacific t-shirt. The random fun things though were they played Black Eyed Peas while waiting to depart and they had a game where the first person to lift up certain items (such as three things with the Cebu logo on it) won a prize. We didn't win. We were too slow. When we arrived it was pouring rain. My mom's childhood friend, my tita Beth, and her husband picked us up. They took us to their condo to drop off some of our luggage since the flight to Boracay is a small plane and you can't take much weight on board. We then went to a Thai restaurant for lunch. It's interesting here though because although everyone speaks Tagalog, EVERYONE can speak English and everything is written in English. I have hardly seen any Tagalog writing.

My mom then took us to see my grandma's old house and the house I grew up in. The Philippines is interesting in much of it is straight up slums and then parts of it will be totally nice. And when I say slums, it is really bad... Poverty unlike I've ever seen before and I've seen poverty. Obviously that's true about every country but the extremes in the Philippines are well, really extreme and the nice sections and the slums are very mixed together. I also noticed that the nice areas of the Philippines seem to really want to separate themselves as being higher class which is why there are like no Filipino restaurants in the nice areas.

The area where my mom grew up and my family lives is called Alabang Hills. It was much nicer than I expected, maybe because my mom guilt tripped me as a kid telling me she only got one dress a year and played with rocks... I imagined she lived in a slum when really her house looked like it could be in the U.S. A lot of the houses around are also renovated so many of them don't just look okay, they look really modern and nice.

This is my grandmother's house. My aunt and her four children live here. They were very nice and friendly. My aunt, Tita Fey and one of her children, Angie, is coming with us to the Boracay tomorrow.





This is the house my parents lived in and where I lived before immigrating to the U.S. It is literally down the street from my grandma's house.
It has since been renovated and looks fancy now. My parents always referred to it as the "triangle house," hence my pose.




After going to see these two houses, we went to check in at our hotel in Makati. We then went to an area called The Fort and Market Market to get dinner, do some light shopping, and look around. Will tried polvoron and I knew he would like it. We also ate dinner at an American/Italian restaurant. It was fine, probably what you'd expect from that cuisine in the Philippines.





Now we are back at the hotel to get some sleep before leaving for Boracay in the morning. Boracay is an island south of Manila where we'll be spending a few days at the beach. Let's just hope that the weather cooperates.

***As a side note, Will and I are even more sure that pugs are the coolest dogs. We have seen one in Moscow, Hong Kong, and in Manila!!! Check out this cutie walking near my parents old house...so cute!!! They were the dogs of Chinese emperors back in the day so I guess it makes sense.




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