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.

Days 112-114 Tuesday-Thursday March 2-4 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The busy day at work version

- Being on the "fringe" of town in Malaysia is like being on the outskirts of town in the US
- Lightning and rain storms in Malaysia might as well be mini-hurricanes, with lightning that blew us out of our seats one day
- Petronas is an oil company, not some historic native Malaysian name
- The cool kids call Kuala Lumpur "KL"
- The KL airport is in another city, so plan accordingly
- If you only want to see malls on your next vacation, KL is for you 


The slow day at work version

On this trip, we've come to heavily rely on travel sites like TripAdvisor and Agoda to book our rooms.  An important of these sites is their inclusion of the Google Maps API to show where hotels are located in relation to the important sites in each city.  This is crucial information since getting stuck in the wrong neighborhoods could lead to an unsafe environment and large taxi/train bills.  Knowing this, I'm still dumbfounded about why and how I chose Hotel Maluri.  Maybe because the description said it was on the "fringe" of the Golden Triangle, which was the neighborhood in which we wanted to stay, and I relied on that instead of looking on the map?  Maybe because it was the tail end of the trip and I got lazy?  Who knows, but let's just say that this hotel wasn't close to the Golden Triangle, let alone our understanding of the word "fringe."  It was too far to walk to any of the attractions, no matter who's comfort level of walking you refer to, so we had to either take a $10 cab each way or walk all the way to the train station and ride that into town.  Either way, we were in BFE compared to the mass of hotels located in the heart of town.

Oh well.  As with most things we've experienced on this trip, things happen for a reason, usually better in the long run.  It's just tough to see the positive result while nestled inside the metaphorical forest.  What we did learn is that being stuck in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town allows one to experience a completely different side of a city.  Meaning that if we had booked a hotel in the heart of KL, we never would have seen what life is like for the locals outside of the city center.  We got to ride the trains, walk amongst the outdoor eateries that permeate Malaysia, and see first-hand how Malaysians live amongst this metropolis.

Speaking of the metropolis that is KL, we got into the airport and took a 1.5 hour taxi ride from the remote airport into town.  After our driver finally found the hotel, it was too late to do much exploring, so we took the train into the Golden Triangle and explored one thing that KL is famous for...it's mega malls.  We walked around the Berjaya's Times Square's 10 floors of shops, watched the indoor roller coaster zoom by, ate at Subway (which was exactly like the American shops, not in a good way because American tastes to exactly translate internationally, leading to the stall being empty besides us), and watched The Lightning Thief (because the IMAX was showing some John Travolta movie instead of Alice in Wonderland).  What else could one want from a trip to the mall???

The next morning, we took a guided tour of the city, which we've learned is the best way to get a mental grasp of the city's layout, even though it's so touristy.  Sometimes being touristy allows one to get to know a city the best, so we booked the trip through our trusty hotel.  When our local driver finally arrived to the hotel, we drove us to pick up our fellow tourist, a well-worn woman who told our driver of Indian decent that the country of India was dirty.  That should tell you enough of this woman and why we didn't get her email address when the tour was over.

In front of the Petronas Towers with our surly tour group member.

 

At the batik factory, watching an artist create a new patern.

On the tour, we visited the presidential palace (actually, the exterior since no one was allowed past the two horses and guards at the gate), a pewter factory (where we learned how amazing pewter cubs can be to keep drinks cold), the national history museum (where we learned about how used and abused this country has been throughout time by every conquesting country, especially for tin and aluminum), a batik factory (a fabric design method famous in this region), and a chocolate factory (where we sampled everything possible until our stomachs were raw).  And of course the driver pointed to the other main attractions which we would visit on our own time the following days.

A woman in a burka outside of the Presidential Palace

The most important thing we wanted to explore while in KL was the Petronas Towers, made famous in the Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones movie "Entrapment", and which is now the tallest set of twin towers due to the loss of our towers in NYC.  Before going to the towers, though, we stopped at the KL Tower (think the Seattle Needle) and had tea in the revolving restaurant.  We talked to a nice Indian fellow who was in town on his honeymoon, but was eating alone because his wife was shopping, which is KL's most popular activity due to all of the malls.  We also watched as a tremendous storm approach the tower and eventually engulf the tower with rain and lightning.  We got a little nervous being so much higher than all other high rises in the city, but all worries were for naught because we left unscathed and walked over to the Petronas Towers just as they were allowing the last group of the day to enter the gates.

 Tania got the nerve up to lean back on the KL Tower glass over 1000 ft. in the air.

Actually, when we got to the Petronas Towers desk, the staff informed us that no more tickets were available for that day, and that the last group was already in.  (Tip:  get to the towers by 8am and get a ticket or else you're likely to not get in that day, no matter what travel sites say about getting abandoned tickets).  Yet for some reason, as we regrouped at the base of the escalator devising what to do next, one of the desk staff walked up to us and slyly handed us two lanyards and told us to quietly join the last group in line.  Without hesitation, we hurried over to the group, received a pair of 3D glasses from another staffer, and walked into a mini movie theater with the rest of the group, having no idea what was going on.  Well, for the next 7 minutes, we sat through the world's longest advertisement for Petronas, one of Asia's largest oil companies.  The video happily explained to us how environmentally thoughtful the company was, and how it did all of its drilling and mining in the best interest of the planet.  How thoughtful of them.

Inside the Petronas Tower observation deck.  Last group of the day!

Sitting through that was well worth it because after the video completed, we were shown to the elevators so we could ride up to the observation deck, approximately half way up the towers.  The views were less impressive than from the KL Tower, but it was still fascinating to be standing in the same spot where the climax of Entrapment occured.  And, you know, to be in such a fine architectual  achievement, if that's what floats your boat.

During our last day, we visited Chinatown to see for ourselves the famous (or infamous) shopping area of town.  The shopping here isn't full of luxury brands found in the Golden Triangle and Bukit Bintang.  Instead, it was full of the same chochkies and trinkets that we had seen all across this continent.  Therefore, it lost the luster that most tourists experience, and instead annoyed the hell out of us because of the overly persistent salepeople constantly in our faces.  So, we decided to walk back to BP for a nice dinner.  The timing couldn't have been any better because when we finally got to Jalan Ceylon, the strongest storm we've ever seen (which is saying a lot coming from this girl from Miami and guy from Monsoon town - aka Phoenix) rolled in.  We ran into the first pub we saw and proceeded to eat and drink in the upper balcony while watching the rain come down outside.  At one point, a lighting bolt struck just outside of the balcony unleashing the loudest thunder shock we have ever imagined.  We both jumed into the air and barely kept the food in our mouths and stomachs.  Crazy.  But the rain subsided and we headed back to the hotel to pack and get ready for our flight the next morning to Sandakan. 

Since our flight was at 8am and the airport was 1.5 hours away, we had the same taxi driver from our arrival pick us up at 3:30am and take us to the airport.  Easy, right?  Wrong.  When he dropped us off at the main terminal, we started looking for where to check-in for our Air Asia flight, which after searching for 10 minutes, an information attendant informed us that Air Asia operated our of another terminal, 30 minutes away.  As you can guess, we were far from happy about possibly being late for our flight, for having to pay another $30 on top of our original taxi fare, and that our original driver didn't have the sense to take us to the correct terminal even though he knew we were flying Air Asia.  The Italian in me was raging, but the Cuban in Tania tamed my anger and we luckily made our flight, so no harm no foul, but man did that morning suck.  So for those of you who fly Air Asia in the future, know that the reason they can charge so little for their fares is because they operate out of remote locations that are a huge pain in the ass to access, so that value fare isn't always worth it in the end.

Along with a delicious lunch at Eest in the Westin, a few beers at the Belgian Beer Bar, and some quality shopping time for Tania in which she got me some rad flip flops and a cool button down shirt, that was our time in KL.  It is striving to be the city of the future that Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore are setting the trend for, and is a must if you're trekking through the region.

Now off to Sandakan which has a travel advisory from the US State Department due to the Islamic radicals living and fighting in the region.  After a ton of consideration and research in the Internet, we decided to proceed with our travels to eastern Malaysia/Borneo so that we could see this remote corner of the region, and the attractions it  features including being able to see orangutans in the wild.