Hola Manila!

This day started at an ungodly hour of 5am.. my flight for Manila was due to depart at 6.30am. Met a very grumpy Matt at Changi airport and we proceeded on to catch our flight. Once we reached Manila, we hopped on one of those yellow cabs to take us to Greenbelt 3 where Jear would come pick us up and bring us to the cheap guesthouse in Makati. I had received a text msg from Jear earlier.. he told me exactly what to tell the taxi driver and that if he still didn't get it, I was to show the text message (in tagalog) to him. i decided to be a bit more adventurous by reading out the Tagalog to him instead... and guess what? he understood!! woot! uhh.. well, in the end he brought us to the wrong place. i'm sure it's not my Tagalog though... probably just his bad sense of direction. :P

Well it doesn't matter cos we met up with Jear in the end, got checked ourselves checked in at the guest house.. and well, SLEPT. hahahaha. Matt slept the whole afternoon while i slept only for an hr. went to walk around the area and ended up in Greenbelt where i windowshopped and was conned by my own subconscious to purchase a pair of gladiator sandals. it was love at first sight. i also had lunch on my own at Greenbelt in some cafe.. my first meal in Manila. texted Abu cos i wasn't sure if it's in the culture to tip in the Philippines.

So after my short shopping trip, i went back to the the guesthouse. Matt was still asleep.. and since we've got a few hrs more till the dinner meetup, i decided to take another short nap.

Finally it was time to get ready for the meetup! we washed up and got ready to leave the guesthouse. We initially waited for Jear to arive in a cab to pick us up to go to Greenbelt together... we waited for a while.. Grandpa Matt was too hungry so we dropped by Jollibee just across the street and had pre-dinner :P In the end, we decided to just leave w/o Jear as we figured he might still be at home styling his hair. :P

The meetup itself was great.. quite a big turnout.. i was glad to see some familiar faces, like Winnie, who arrived in Manila on the same day. Matt and I wasted no time and got ourselves some beer. The happy hour was 4-8pm and it was around 7pm. i believe a glass of San Miguel draft cost us only 40 pesos?? So it was basically a night with cheap drinks, great company and.. hmm.. average food :P

After dinner, some of us headed to some clubs. The initial plan was to go to Embassy. Unfortunately, the club had some event that night and it was almost impossible to enter. we went to another club instead and stayed there for a while. Later on, we moved to another area but the clubs there were about to close... and since it was almost 2am and we had to meet the next morning at 4am, we decided to call it a night. Jear, Matt and I shared a cab to our guesthouse. Matt, being the old man he is, went straight to bed while Jear and i decided to grab a bite at the 24hr Jollibee across the street. That was my first Jollibee meal and i loved it! hahaha been hearing about it forever i'm glad i finally tried it :P

I finally went to bed at 3.15am. It wasn't a good feeling knowing that in about 45 minutes, i have to be out again!