The Bellevue Hotel Manila

... was handled, how little equipment there was to get to the people who needed help and the horrible conditions of the evacuation centers. This all sounds a little familiar - Katrina?
Our company has been announcing programs to help the employees recover from the damages and get back on their feet. At this point all of them have been contacted and only a couple have not reported back to work yet. Maybe if these next storms miss us things will slowly get back to normal.

... a blast. I’m also looking to take up some ...

... school friends. While there we wanted to shop for souveniers at Kultura a division of SM. Its a great store will all things filipino.

We bought all sorts of gifts, tshirts and stuffs!! We then met up with Fe and Alwin to get dinner. We walked around for a while trying to find a restaurant with seats. Finally we found some outside seats at Pizza hut and had dinner. Food was good, service was terrible, with the first person ...

... with a few exceptions, when we said "no", they backed off.  Perhaps the energy it takes to talk in the heat and pollution is worth more than the potential sale for a tourist who has already said "no". The heat is quite amazing.  Prior to leaving Melbourne I had monitored the weather in Philippines and Thailand (our two destinations).  Each time, it had been hotter in Thailand by a few degrees.  However, in reality, the heat in Manila is much more potent, which I ...

... again! Although it looked simple on the map things are not always as they appear and before you know it we're lost even with the best JPS (Jane Positioning System) effort. We make a wrong decision and end up in the downtown Pasay area. What we realized was that although it was a straight shot to the mall, you had to be careful of the "exit" ramps which could be on either side of the highway, don't look like an exit and are usually 2 or 3 ...

... China has a population of 1.2 billion people. So it must be true what I've heard a long time ago -- that if all people in Mainland China would jump for one minute at the same time, there would be a disastrous earthquake. And considering that Chinese people are scattered all over the planet, the figure also probably explains why more people speak Chinese than English. What else did I pick up? The country's GNP is 7.3 trillion yuan, life expectancy is 71 years, urban population is 30 ...

... Russ was tired and my feet hurt. We were ready to leave. But wait! When I entered Burt's phone number into my phone it appeared the number was short one digit. How could that be? We read the number we wrote down back to him to verify. Since it was a work day I called Ana at the office and asked her to find Princess who handled getting my car rental from Alamo. Thank ...

... still in the taxi. Anyhow, we got malled within an inch of our lives. The malls are huge, and we haven't been in one for about 10 months. Grant thought there was something wrong with me because my eyes were glazed and I seemed very vacant, but I had to explain that it was sensory overload with so many shops and all these different foodstalls, and loads of books (in ...

... peeling layers. Golf balls pattered down on the brickwork, and will I suppose eventually be the death of those cannon-proof, WW2-proof walls. One final mad dash through Manila to arrive at a late-night bus terminal to find my bus had filled and left very early. A plan B was cobbled together and I skulked about the grimy streets of Quezon City looking conspicuous until it was time to leave, grinding through the night, sneaking out of Manila and into the north...

... street were money changers.

I saw my first jeepney. Which many people told me not to travel on. I was always going to ignore this. I ended up seeing a college parade. And a few other locals doing different things.

I bought a local simcard and a cheap Nokia. I left my phone back at home purposely. they're are so many companies to choose from. I ended up choosing Talk n Text for my simcard. I knew I would have a rather large collection of simcards once my 2 years ...