Days 122-123 Friday-Saturday March 12-13 Manila, Philippines

The primary purpose of us traveling to the Philippines was to visit Batangas and the child, John Ric, who Tania's mother Carmen sponsors through the group (Christian) Child Fund.  She has been active with this organization for a long time now, so we were excited to see first-hand how her contributions were affecting someone so little and so far away.

Yet, as we have done the entire trip, we wanted to milk every last ounce out of our time here, so we organized to spend a few days with (follow me here) Tania's friend Diana's parents, Tony and Annie, in Manila and the surrounding cities.  This was the last leg of our trip, so we also wanted to make sure we enjoyed a little more beach time before heading home, which we thought we'd do on our own, but turns out Tony and Annie would provide us with that opportunity, amongst others.  More on that later, though.

When we got to Manila, we took the two hour bus ride (because Air Asia was located that far out of town, not in the conveniently located Manila airport, of course) into the city, where we experienced that chaos that is Manila traffic.  I mean this place puts LA to shame.  Once our bus got to the station and we grabbed a cab, it took us 1.5 hours to go 1.5 miles.  We'd hit this traffic again during our time in Manila, but boy oh boy was it mind blowing to see for the first time.

When we finally got to Tony and Annie's place in Fort Bonifacio, we were pleasantly surprised that they lived in an incredibly beautiful condo in an upper floor of a tower overlooking Manila Country Club and the rest of the city.  Tony and Annie greeted us and made us feel so at home, which was so incredibly kind of them, and made us feel very comfortable during our time there.

We took it easy that first day because we had been traveling very odd hours, but we did have a delicious dinner with our hosts.  The following day Tony and their driver Leo took us on a guided tour of the city, hitting all the important spots including Intramuros, the Mall of Asia, St. Augustine Church, and many more malls since the company SM seems to be popping monstrous buildings all over the city (with their logo emblazoned prominently wherever possible).  It was a quick day tour, but as always, we had a good idea of the city's layout because of it.

 Tania and Tony outside of the house in which Diana grew up.

Saturday night Diana's cousin Niko and his girlfriend picked us up so we could party the night away at their friend's birthday party at Establishment.  Luckily for us, "party the night away" for Niko meant the same as it now does for us, meaning we had a few drinks with the party, had many laughs, stopped by another club and shook our tails for a few songs, then retired home by midnight so we could get a good night's sleep.  It was very nice of them to include us in their plans, and it was good to see what the night life in Manila is like for the large amount of expats living in the city.

Sunday morning we packed our bags because Child Fund was sending a van to pick us up and drive us to Batangas for our week of volunteering with their group.  We didn't need to say good bye to Tony and Annie since they invited us to their sister's beach house at Punto Fuego on Friday, meaning we'd get our beach time in before going home AND would get to spend more time with them before leaving.  So perfect.