A big export. They were delicious – soft and sweet and full of sugar.
I figured out what to wear to get into the water, rather than wear a swim suit running through the hotel. Nothing underneath and you can pull it up or pull it down as needed. This was 6 am!
SOMETHING recently dug this hole. The vestiges of a fun day at the beach, a broken discarded shovel. I walked all the way out to the end of the seaweed.
Goodbye to a beautiful beach resort and on to a local flight back to Manila.
Jollibee!! We were SOOO excited to try this. Every guide told us this was beloved by the country’s residents. Lish, who had to move to the Maldives during the Covid pandemic in order to survive mentioned that she missed Jollibee so much that she cried about it. The Maldives are Muslim and Jollibee is not part of their heritage.
We ordered it and carried it upstairs to the gate at the airport. It turns out there was another Jollibee upstairs!!
A local man started Jollibee as competition to McDonald’s. And wherever a McD’s was, Jollibee was right next door. Jollibee sells, a hamburger, a chicken burger, Spaghetti and sauce, white rice and French fries. It did so much better than McDonald’s, that the McDonald’s franchise owners of had to beg corporate to allow them to also sell spaghetti and rice in order to compete. Tom enjoyed his meal. I only tried the famous mango peach pie. It’s that same unhealthy heavy crusted tube of dough as the apple pie in the states — but it was delicious!!
The rich part of Manila.
Once our plane landed Brian took us to the Museum of Anthropology. The 3 story huts were very interesting — and they were portable. The grains and harvest were stored on the top third floor.
Typical pottery from the past.
This is an almost lost language they used 100’s or 1000’s of years ago. And the key to the language was found on this stone — sorta like he rosetta stone found in Egypt.
There are still group of arborigines who live high up in the mountains that have not joined civilization and are without cell phones.
There was a whole room of portraits of famous women artists, sculptors and weavers.
Was so impressed with the marble stairs. The front part of the museum was destroyed by an earthquake and was restored. However, this is the original marble staircase.
Interesting to see the trade route from Philippines to Seattle then Mexico and back. I never think of that side of the world so close to the U.S.
We arrived November 5 to discover this building next to our hotel in Manila.
This is the radar I woke up to the day before we were to fly home. Yikes!
Drove to the city of Tagaytay. More churches.
UNESCO has alot of rules before a building or city is accepted as a historic place. One of the rules is that new buildings cannot replace the old buildings. So this building and a few others eliminate the option of this old town getting the UNESCO seal of approval. They don’t have gas stations and only one bank since they were vying for the UNESCO. I suggested with the new buildings, they might as well give up trying and get some conveniences into town.
Another old house. If it has a room to store the parade float they use once a year, they are a very rich family.
This is the piece of furniture at the bottom of the stairs where visitors would wait. They would put the live chicken they brought as a house warming gift in the cage under the seat. Those chickens were then used for cock fighting.
The first photo is a room in this big house. But notice visitors’ stuff — they rent it out as a B&B.
The walls were hand painted!! Just fabulous.
This reminds me of our toilet stops in this town. At 1-1/2 hours out of Manila in the car, we told Stella we needed a toilet break. She was very panicked because she didn’t know where she could find a ‘clean’ one. We tried to explain that we didn’t care. We had gone so far, on some trips, as squatting next to the bus. So the public toilet we found wasn’t great ….. but like I said, we didn’t care.
So when we used the toilet downstairs in this big old house, she didn’t seem to care any more. It had no light in the bathroom, the floor was wet, but because I told her we didn’t care, I didn’t want to complain. I left the door ajar for a little light and used the toilet — unaware my new blue scarf was dragging in the wet. It turns out it was sewerage because when we got to the sidewalk, there is no denying the smell of sewerage. UGH! I rolled the wet part of the scarf into a ball and crammed it into my purse, where it stayed until I could zip it into a zip lock bag and put it my suitcase. I was never so happy to get something into my washer at home!! I just chock it up to ‘my travel adventures’).
A (rich) man had a camera collection. He owned every one of these cameras and they are still all in working order — they just need the proper film. I found the Brownie camera my mom gave me from when she was a teenager.
Now THIS photo elicited MUCH secret info from or tour guide, Stella, and the docent of the camera museum. I found it FASCINATING!
This is Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines, with his wife Imelda and son on the left, BongBong.
The first conspiracy, inside informaton, is that Imelda DID have 3000 pairs of shoes, but she didn’t buy most of them. She made alligator (?? or was it snake?) shoes popular with Christian Dior and Yves St. Laurent, etc. in NYC. It was the fashion people and other dignitaries who sent her free shoes as gifts because they knew she loved them. As a very poor child Imelda grew up in a garage, and without shoes, and became very fond of new beautiful shoes. Her mother died in that garage she was raised in. So when Imelda grew, up she vowed to bull doze the garage, which she did.
That was years ago and all those shoes have aged and become worn, so many have since been discarded. The rest of the collection has been distributed to her daughters. Another piece of gossip is that she lives in the penthouse of a tall condo building that we saw in Manila. She hates water and drinks only Diet Coke, as her assistant provides.
Benigno Aquino, Jr. was planning to run for president in 1973, Aquino was thwarted in 1972 when President Marcos declared martial law; he spent the next eight years in prison, being sentenced to death in November 1977. In 1980 Ferdinand Marcos commuted the death sentence and allowed Aquino to go to the United States for heart-bypass surgery. Aquino remained there with his family for three years. Two years after martial law was lifted in the Philippines, he flew home, intending to campaign in promised elections. He was shot in the head while leaving the airplane at Manila Airport under security guard.
Conspiracy number two is that Marco did NOT have Aquino shot. As Stella explained, Aquino was sickly and he knew he would not be able to win an election and therefore would have no power. When he had been in prison, he got to be friends with the journalists and media. So when Aquino left the U.S. to arrive in Manila, he stopped at several other countries and picked up the media in his plane to go to Manila. He WAS shot in Manila, but Stella claims he killed himself (or hired someone to kill himself) and wanted to be sure he had the best and most media coverage available. Interesting.
Third conspiracy (and the docent agreed and said it was well known) was that Ferdinand and Imelda Marco’s son, Bong Bong was the heir apparent to be President of the Philippians. But he was a wild child and had some troubles when he was away at college and got into a fight and was murdered. It was kept quiet. Ferdinand had a son with his first wife before he married Imelda, so they changed his name to Bong Bong and began to groom him for the presidency. Today the current president is Bong Bong Marcos. Locals swear he’s not the original Bong Bong. So interesting!
What’s good for the goose…….Imelda also had a daughter with a man before she married Ferdinand. Oh the goings-on!!!! By the way, Imelda invented those puff sleeves as a fashion statement too.
Another market. I KNOW how they make sausage, but it’s creepy to see it, anyway. I go for the candy and nuts.
Look at the tilapia jumping around. Apparently, it’s a Tagalog language word that has become universal.
Ate this all in one night. It came from the market. It was PURE sugar and coconut. m-m-m-m-
They are famous for making beautiful dresses. You can order them hand-made for yourself.
Thought the ingenious way they ‘make’ a ladder was so interesting. Two pieces of scaffolding and taped at the top.
Our last lunch. I had the butterfly tilapia — and hoped it wasn’t one of those flopping fish we had just seen at the market. (However, it very well could have been.)
This means spoon and fork. Cute napkin holder. The Philippines are VERY stingy with their napkins. They are tiny and thin little things and you need about ten of them and they still don’t work too well.
The fish was very good without running across many bones. I quit eating the perfectly good fish when it got too close to its head.
Started raining so we got to get on another tricycle and I road behind the motorcycle driver.
This was in the works on our drive from Tangaytay to Manila. It was typhoon Pepito, just grazing the blue dot, Manila.
These knives are hand-made by the locals. They are double-handled because they fold up to hide the blade. The handles are made of horn, bone, and petrified wood. One tour guide was guilting us into buying one since this was their livelihood. And then Stella told us we’d never get it through customs either carry-on or luggage. Dodged that bullet.
These people are into world records. This real knife was built to be in a parade for a festival. It was huge!!
The islands are Guinness World Record Holders for many and various things.
This was on the back of the seat during my 11 hour plane ride from Manila to San Francisco. I don’t know why it freaked me out, but we flew entirely over water — as if it’s any less safe than flying over land.
The typhoon left the area late the evening before, so our flight was not delayed.
Here’s my haul of stuff. I, brilliantly, bought my coffee mug the second day of the trip so I was able to drink from a real coffee mug every morning throughout the trip.
I didn’t buy a real guitar, but a little keychain that will be stored next to my coffee mug in my mug display. And a few seashells.
And of course the sewer scarf that is now very clean.
Hope this season finds you healthy and happy!!
Looking forward to telling you about my 2025 travels: New Zealand, Morocco, Houston, Japan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Albania/Kosovo/N. Macedonia, Brazil/Argentina!!!
If you’d like to leave me a message, I am the only one who will read it.
Happy travels!
Love, Linda Jeanne