It's been a busy weekend, which is why I didn't post last night, and I have a lot to tell. So last night we left work early at about 3 am so that we could get a couple hours sleep before our trip up to the volcano. Since we also had plans Saturday night, we knew it would be a really long day. Those of us vampires are not used to being out during the day.
So the van picked us up at about 930am with a bunch of people from the office. It's about a two hour drive which was actually pretty awesome because I got to see what the Philippines look like outside of city limits. It's actually striking how much apparent poverty there is in the country. The country seems to be such an oxymoron of sorts. Huge city, tall buildings, and technology contradicting mass poverty, rickety shacks, and the seemingly homeless. Coming out of a restaurant last night at 4am, we were greeted by 6 or 7 people sleeping on a blanket on the sidewalk. Can you imagine living like that? Truly heartbreaking.
So our first stop in Tagaytay was Sonja's Garden, which is an organic vegetarian restaurant near the volcano which was absolutely beautiful. There were two main courses, the first one being organic greens with a ton of amazing toppings. The second was a pasta dish served with dried roasted tomatoes, chicken cream sauce, basil pesto, cheese, olives, bread, etc.
The restaurant was beautiful inside, so beautiful that people have a lot of weddings there. We were actually there just a few hours before a wedding was about to start. The far wall is all screens that has cascading water falling down. It covers the entire wall and just looks like a giant waterfall wall. I couldn't get any pictures that did it justice. Sorry.
After we finished eating we walked around the garden and snuck into a "restricted" area where we ended up getting invited for a tour of one of the buildings they rent out there. A beautiful place. $3000 pesos per person per night. Not all that bad really. That's about $60 per person. The house was two stories with 6 beds.
From there we drove up to Starbucks because it has a balcony area in the back with bars, restaurants, and shops, not to mention a killer view of the volcano.
This is Iya and Steven play fighting over something, but stopping long enough to smile for the picture.
This one is me looking awesome like usual with the volcano in the background.
Here's a group shot. From the left, Mackoy, Vanity, Ian, Mime, Steven, Scott, Me, and Iya. Via, was taking the picture. You'll remember her from my story later on in this post.
Here's another group shot, this time Via is in it and Vanity is taking the picture. Via is the tiny one in front who Iya in the white shirt has her arm around. You'll understand why her tiny size is important to the story later on...
So after our glorious meal we were all stuffed, except for Via of course, who can eat a ton of food. She eats more than anyone I've ever seen and she can't be 5ft tall and around 95 lbs. So on the way back we had to stop at a restaurant called "mushroom burger." That's all they have on the menu are mushroom burgers. It smelled good but I was full and definitely not in the mood for fungus. But I did take this picture which tickled my funny bone:
Yes, the "comfort room" in question on the sign with the arrow is undeniably the bathroom. I didn't actually go inside to verify the validity of the "comfort" claim. I guess I'll just have to take their word for it. They have a lot of interesting posters there with pictures and descriptions of different types of mushrooms telling you which ones are ok to eat and which ones are poisonous. I was fascinated for at least a minute.So then it was back to the road where everyone except a couple of us fell asleep. Since everyone works nights, that was about all the day fun they could handle. A few funny tidbits about the Philippines. Everyone here is chronically late. If you tell them 7, people will show up at 9 and believe they are on time. Not to work, but to social events and gatherings. They say that if you show up to something on time, you will have to wait at least two hours for people to show up. Also, if you ask people the time, they usually won't give you a specific time. They will tell you, "It's still early." or "It's late."
There's a chain restaurant here called Jollibee, which is just a fast food place like McDonald's. The Filipino word for "delicious" is sarap. The guy from my company, Scott, likes Jollibee and every time he see's a sign for it he says "Jollibee Sarap" which constantly gets a giggle from the people here.
We then returned to the hotel for a couple hours sleep before heading out with Via and Ian Saturday night for some local Filipino rock bands. The bands were amazingly good, although most of what they sang was in Filipino so I couldn't understand the words. The final band of the night was truly amazing. They had a lot of percussion in the band with more indigenous instruments combined with electric guitar. Very cool.
The unfortunate thing was that I couldn't really drink much. I've come down with a cold and am not feeling very well. Sucky.
So we had a little to drink at the bar called The 70's Bistro, which I have to say was kind of a scary place. A lot of the buildings are run down and falling apart here. Not to mention that we're in an area where there are only Filipinos. There actually ended up being a few "white" girls at the bar, but they were German and friends of the band. I guess the lead singer's wife is German. All in all, it actually was very fun. Oh and the beer was less than $1 US a piece. Great price. And I need to correct a previous post, Red Horse is 12% alcohol, not 6.9%.
So then we leave there around 2 am to get some food. Via asks me if I'm "OK," because "it's early" for them. I'm not feeling that great, but I go along with whatever because I don't want to be a stick in the mud. So then we head over to this other rock bar instead of getting food, and this is where the night REALLY gets interesting. Via has some friends there who have two bottles of Jack Daniels. She ends up taking some huge swigs, probably at least four but we didn't realize what impact that would have on the rest of the night.
She tells us that we're going to go around the corner for some Dimsum. She's kind of stumbling and holding onto her friend. Meanwhile there are about three children trying to sell us cigarettes (yes at 230am!!!). We're walking down the street and they're following us. One kid recognizes that Via is drunk and tries to walk really close and lean his wood box of cigarettes against her arm so that he can reach into her purse. We don't think that he got anything, but Via couldn't find her phone later. We don't know if the kid stole it or if she left it somewhere.
She leads us to this walk up food place and we realize that this is not a good option for food, so we convince her to get in the car and go to Ziggarut which is a middle-eastern restaurant not far from there. We start driving and she realizes that she lost her phone. She borrowed Ian's phone to call it, but was too drunk to dial the numbers and has me do it for her. At this point we realize that she is totally wasted or what the Filipinos call "Wasaksa" which means "destroyed."
"Via wasaksa Jack Daniels." OK, it would have been funnier if you were there. So she borrows Ian's phone about four times because she's forgetting that she already tried calling her phone. She's more and more out of it as the Jack Daniels kicks in and we realize she's a lot more drunk that we thought.
So we arrive at the restaurant and Via gets us a table. This is the type of restaurant where you sit on pillows on the floor. About a minute after sitting down Via plops over onto a pillow and passes out. It was then we remembered that she'd been drinking all night with no food. She was just too small to handle that much alcohol.
So we finish eating and have to carry her back to the car. We don't know where she lives and she's too drunk to tell us. We finally get her to respond and she tells us "Down the stairs and to the right." I'm not sure if there is somewhere you can drive down stairs in Manila, but we were pretty sure that this was not accurate. We make a couple turns to the left and she tells us "No, too many turns." We haven't actually left the area of the restaurant yet.
After driving around awhile we get enough information from her and ended up calling a coworker to get her back to her apartment. Just before we get there she says, "I'm going to throw up!" So we stop the car and I kick the door open just in time for her to puke on the ground outside her building. After that she started to sober up a bit and started getting embarrassed.
Scott and I help her up to her apartment. I can only imagine what the security guard was thinking with two white guys escorting a drunk Filipino girl up to her apartment. But we came down moments later so I'm sure that put to rest any ideas he had of something kinky going on.
A pretty funny end to a very interesting day and night.
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