Day 7 Philippines

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We were up at 530am for out boat to take us to the mainland and airport transfer. The resort had packed us a sandwich for breakfast.

The airport was a 45 minute drive and it was tiny. Busuanga airport is a regional airport with smaller planes.

A 45 minute ride and we were in Manila once again. Coming into the Manila the smog covered the city like a blanket and there wasn't much of a view.

Our Air BnB was 15 minutes from the airport, a 5 minute walk to the Philippines largest mall, the Mall of Asia and 10 minute walk to the Bay.

The residences we stayed at were comprised of four 16 story buildings with 2 large pools in the centre of them. These type of residences were everywhere. Our room overlooked the pool.

After settling in we wanted to try one of the local fast food restaurants Jollibee. Kym was keen for Filipino Spaghetti, which is a sweet tomato based sauce with cut up hotdogs in it. It was okay, the hot dogs were a bit sparse (I had 2 tiny pieces) and was something we will probably make at home though.

The Philippines is a places of extreme contradictions and opposites. At Jollibee's they had signs about not using single use plastic straws (we had brought our own metal ones anyway) and the plastic bags that were given to you were generally biodegradable but the streets had rubbish and smokers casually flicked their cigarette butts on the ground. The residences we stayed at were pristine and management ran free seminars for the residents on earthquakes and offered free flu shots, pneumonia shots and other medical options but outside, down the street, children as young as three with no shoes and grubby clothing followed you around asking for money for food while adults, perhaps their parents or siblings watched abd encouraged them. Grand buildings of gigantic proportions with all the bells and whistles had tin shanties right next to them. And homeless people slept on the side of freeways and some of those with homes were an eyesore, dwellings slapped together or half unfinished, bags of rubbish strewn everywhere. These seemed tip almost be side to side with the richer areas.

Waking over to the mall which was comprised of lots of smaller malls with pretty much every store imaginable we had a quick browse. The prices were on par with what we would pay in Australia and neither of us are shoppers but we did see a supermarket and spent more time browsing the aisles than the shopping centre. Picking up different flavored chips, snacks and drinks we also bought two 750ml bottles of the local Rhum.. for $5 AUD for the both..

The craziness of the last two days caught up with us and we were exhausted so we bought 2 minute noodles and a piece of chicken for dinner and chilled watching Netflix before an early night.

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Photos

Filipino Spaghetti
Made with hotdogs

Mall of Asia
Kym's on top of the world, well actually he is at the bottom...

Mall of Asia
Streets look bizarrely empty, it's not normally that quiet