Geeky Yet Waterproof

Thursday was our last day in the Philippines. We spent the first half of the day walking around a local market, called Market! Market!. We saw a lot of interesting local things, like ube buns, ube candy, ube piaya, Fish For The Gods, and suman that’s supposed to be so good you need a reservation to buy it.

We also walked around the meat market. I’ve never “experienced’” so many different smells in such a condensed space. The air would change every six feet! On the right would be seen see a bowl of pig intestines, on the left a mountain of fish, and in front a wall of coconuts.

Amazingly, we hadn’t yet ridden a Jeepney this whole trip. So instead of riding home with everybody else, Christopher, Jeremy, and I got home by means of one of those infamous jeeps and — that’s right — a trike.

A Jeepney is a thing that would by no way be legal in the States. We were sitting inside waiting for it to fill up so we could start moving, but I couldn’t understand why we were still waiting. The Jeepney was full! Yet people just kept piling in, until there were about 20 people inside one little Jeep. I think Jeepneys have a secret method to compress humans.
Another thing I didn’t expect to see was an elderly lady carrying a shopping bag containing round objects, which we soon discovered to be live chickens. Unfortunately, this didn’t make its way into my camera.

The Jeepney took us about halfway home, so we rode a trike the rest of the way. The diver even let us take control! I wish…

That night, we all went to dinner at a restaurant on the 31st floor of a skyscraper in Manila. It was awesome: there were balconies looking out over the city, 600ft above the ground (which was hilarious since Christopher is afraid of heights). You could easily see where the main highway was, because it was outlined by giant billboards as far as the eye could see.
There was even a swimming pool which, being out in the open air, was placed precariously close to the edge of the building.

Eamon at the Top of Manila

Don’t Look Down

When we were done viewing the world, and had recovered our stomachs, I ordered a (sarap) seafood soup, which after consumption yielded these remains:

But when we got home, Christopher and I were forced to confess that we hadn’t even started packing, even though we’d have to leave for the airport at 7am the next day. This was a problem, because my packing style looks something like this…

1. pack for five minutes
2. surf the internet for 10 minutes
3. repeat steps 1 & 2 until finished

This is by no means an efficient method, so as you can imagine, we were up until about 3am. But this is the Philippines: who needs sleep??