My Trip to the Philippines (200+ pictures!!!)
06-21-2007, 09:50 PM
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My Trip to the Philippines (200+ pictures!!!)
These pictures are LONG overdue (I hope they work). This trip took place in July of 2006. I came back to the USA, and went back to the Philippines again in December of 2006 for training. Please note, there will be NO "clicky-pow" because this will be viewed by my girlfriend. And of course I didn't even think of taking any of those type of pictures...ahem.
A little background. I work for Vonage, and like many companies, we outsource to other countries. The Philippines is one of them. I went there as a vendor manager, provided technical training, floor support, and a few other boring things. The rest of the story will go along with the pictures. They are posted/taken in chonological order, even though they don't seem like it at times. Let's begin....(note, I am not a professional photographer, so some may be a tiny bit blurry, I apologize in advance).
This is the 747-400 airplane Northwest airplane that took me to Nagoya Japan. It was the largest plane I had ever been on. Unfortunately for this trip, I flew standard coach class.
Once I had landed in Nagoya, Japan, we had to go through customs because we came from the USA. We deplaned, waited in a long line, just to eventually go back on the same plane. The plane is pictured here. The Nagoya International Airport is actually on an island. The entire island just has the airport on it. Pretty cool.
Took a picture of the terminal as well.
There were some strange JDM type TV shows on their flat panels all over the terminal.
Take a look at how clean the airport is. It's pretty small, but the entire thing looked pretty much like that. On my second trip, I found another section of the airport that had a small car show. Didn't get pictures however.
Duty free shop.
Hello kitty merchandise.
Do you know what these are? Well, I'm going to tell you. They're MP3 players, I think it's even stated in the picture. The exchange rate is pretty much "move the decimal over 2 spots." So that would be $255.40 about.
JDM Peeps, y0!
Arrived at the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Was pretty dirty and smelled "damp." Little did I know the entire country would smell like this.
This is the room I would spent the next 3 months at. In those 3 months, I slept on the bed maybe 3 times. I always ended up sleeping on the couch so I could watch TV. The TV in the room didn't work well.
Pool and gym.
View from my 26th floor room.
Intersection near my hotel. Took a walk the first morning I woke up. Do you see a red vehicle coming?
That red vehicle is called a Jeepney. It's one of their primary forms of public transportation here. More pictures of those later. It's only 7 pesos (less than 15 cents) to take one of those, so they're a lot cheaper than cabs (which are also
pretty cheap ~$3USD for a short trip).
The intersection I was standing at for the above pictures.
Continued walking a bit. I went to this area a lot, as there was a McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Jollibee (the Philippine version of McDonalds). The only place in the world where McDonalds is NOT the primary fast food joint is the Philippines. To the upper right is the Red Light District of Burgos Street. I never went there.....yep.
My meals alone mostly consisted of the below. Spicy ramen noodles, and maki from the restaurant downstairs at the hotel. Take a look at my Star Trek Voyager box set. All 7 seasons for about $10 USD!
The Somerset Salcedo, Makati City, Metro Manila. That was my home for 3 months.
This is my teddy bear. Yeah, laugh it up, but I've had him since I was about 6 or 7. I take him pretty much everywhere if I'm going to be away from home. My "security blanket", if you will. He's holding some Philippine money.
More background. When companies outsource, they use outsourcing call center corporations, such as NCO Group (formerly known as RMH, if anyone cares). They were inside the ABS CBN building in Quezon City, Metro Manila. The ABS CBN building is the home of their largest TV station (channel 7). Routinely you'd see celebrities, but unfortunately I don't know who they were, so I ignored them. You'd know because the locals would go running up to them and try to take pictures. Plus, they rolled up in limos or BMWs, etc. Nice cars were rare.
Below you can see the part of the Vonage installation team. They call outbound, NOT inbound. These aren't the people who you call and you can't understand. Haha. Further back is Sprint/Nextel. Beyond that is some collection agency.
Vonage's old logo with NCO's banner. NCO handles many clients such as Dell, Vonage, MSN (XBox), Ebay, Amazon, etc...
They love taking pictures. If you aren't aware, the homosexual population in the Philippines is VERY high. Many of those pictured who look like girls are not, and those who look like guys, may not be. For example, I was sitting down and I heard someone singing Mariah Carey. It was absolutely dead on, and it sounded good. I looked up and saw it was some guy. Haha. Many of them who are really into that will actually take hormones to get them more feminine. Anyway, you stay there a month, and you don't even bat an eye anymore.
Another view.
Downstairs at the ABS CBN building in a restaurant called Dish. They open at 4-5am to accomodate the call center agents. I forgot to mention that since the Philippines is exactly 12 hours ahead of the USA (Eastern), they must still work based on US schedule. That means, they work overnight. NCO agents worked from approximately 1am to 10am. The guy pictured is Marc. He was one of the quality coaches.
My drive back after the first day at work. Got out at about 10am and was introduced to the Philippines rushhour. It goes from about 7am to...well basically the entire day. Took me 3 hours to get back to the hotel that day.
And yes, I had a car service that was paid for by my company. The guys were very nice, and I always rode with one guy named Alan (more on him later). They were eager to talk to you to improve their English and show you around.
Back at the hotel with nothing to do except fall asleep to my Star Trek.
View from the 26 floor, but this time it was raining pretty hard. I was there during the rainy season, so it would rain ALL THE TIME!
Makati Cinema Sqaure. If you wanted DVDs, this was the place to go. You could find anything here. It's DVD quality, and it's perfect. Just the actual disc has Chinese writing on it, but that didn't bother me. I brought a heck of a lot back home. See that chick? My coworker was messing around with me and gave that chick my number. She called me a bunch of times and wanted to hang out. I was a good boy though.
Indoor shooting range. I tried this out with a few of my coworkers. I don't know anything about guns, and never shot one, so this was fun. They were mostly Asian branded weapons.
They are BIG on shopping and malls here. Within a few minutes walk of my hotel, are an entire network of malls all linked together. The one pictured below was called Glorietta. In the center there's usually some sort of exhibit. This time it
was actually a Honda concept exhibit. Nothing interesting at all though.
Here I am leaving work early in the morning, this time around 5am. They keep the call centers FREEZING inside, which is why my camera is fogging up around the edges. People don't own jackets in this country unless they work in a call center. It sucks when you come out because it's hot and humid as hell. Besides Jeepneys, there are tricycles. They can be motor powered or leg powered (a bicycle with an attachment). They will take you for about 20 pesos pretty much anywhere around locally. That's about 50 cents or so.
Another view of the same area at about 5:00am.
My driver took a different way home this time because of the traffic. Yes, even at 5am there's traffic. Many homes have businesses on the outside to make some extra money. Most sell candy, gum, phone cards, and other trinkets. I took the next few pictures from inside the car.
Street sweeper. The city pays these guys.
Much of the housing looks like this. Not too good, but it's the way it is over there. Forgive my possibly history inaccuracies, but my driver told me that back in the day the government forced many people to relocate to small shacks like these.
If you take a look, you can see all the gas/water meters. There are lots of small shacks/houses down the alleyway. It's unfortunate people have to live like this. Much of this area doesn't have running water. You can see the alleyway in the
3rd pic.
Back to the NCO call center. This is one of the classes I was teaching. I made them do the "Butt Dance." It's something they do over there. If you're late or something, you have to go up to the front of the room and spell out something with your butt in the air.
This is the Temple Bar in Greenbelt. Greenbelt is the tourist section of Makati City. It's pretty expensive and trendy here. The restaurants cost just as much as the USA. Normal meals cost about $5 for a gourmet dinner. Here in Greenbelt,
it's like $40 for two people. There are also stores like Louis Vuitton, Diesel, Gucci, etc. If you go in them, you'll find out that the prices there are MORE than the United States. Strange. I don't think I've ever seen $250 Diesel jeans in the USA. But here I did.
My company also has two call centers in Cebu, an island about 30 minutes south (by plane) from the main island of Luzon. I stayed at the Marco Polo hotel with a few coworkers. This was the lobby.
Here's my dorky self. I don't usually wear glasses, but I was just on a plane for a while. See the girl behind me? All of the employees wear stuff like that. Pretty cute girls too. There's also one girl that's ALWAYS in the elevator. No matter
what time, 10am, 5pm, or 3am, there's always one in there who will push the buttons for you.
My room in the Marco Polo. I didn't have an "apartment" style place like the first one because I was only staying for 3 days.
The fridge. Unfortunately, everything here except water cost money.
The view from the hotel. You can actually see the call center from here.
Take a gander at the bar/lounge area in the back of the hotel. Nice, eh? The building in the background is the Hilton.
Imagine having a few drinks, lounging in the chair by the pool, working on wireless.....yup.
These were a couple of my coworkers. The guy on the left is a contractor who actually lives in Manila. The guy on the right works with me in New Jersey. Yes he's gay, and he's one of the coolest guys I know.
If you look into the valley near the hotel, you'll see the squatter area. People take bits and pieces of wood, metal, etc and build houses to live in. Some of these people are VERY resourceful. I knew a girl who had something like that, BUT had cable TV (with all the premium channels), Internet, telephone, etc. She routed power and cables from other areas. Haha.
They will serve you food and drinks while you're lounging in these pool chairs.
More pics of the squatter area down below.
The hotel.
Pool in the evening.
Eating dinner by the pool and listening to people singing. It was evening, which meant we would have to go to work afterwards.
The call center in Cebu. This center was Etelecare. They are a VERY large corporation that has facilities in hundreds of sites all over the world.
The view from Etelecare to the Marco Polo. You can see it and the Hilton here.
Free cigars and alcohol in the lobby!
The Ayala Mall in Cebu City. They are famous for their dried mangos. We bought about 75 packages to bring back to the USA.
Guess what these are?
They're coinpurses made out of frogs! They were at a little gift shop in the airport going back to Manila. Also some fake Burberry wallets (quality wasn't good however) and some hanging shell things.
Outside the SM (Shoe Mart) Mega Mall. The place has nothing to do with Shoes anymore. Back in the day, it used to sell shoes, but the name stayed. Saw a Mercedes SUV B170.
Inside the Megamall. It was 7 stories. See? They're big on shopping. Not too far from here was the Mall of Asia, which I think is the largest mall in the world?
Bus stop outside the Megamall. Buses here are CRAZY! Don't be in front of one because they WILL run you over.
Parking lot for bikes outside the Megmall.
If you guys love seafood, you will enjoy the next set of pictures. We went to this fish market (I forgot the name) about 20 minutes away. You can buy your fish, walk to the back area, and a restaurant will cook it for you!
We bought approximately 15 kilos of seafood from this dude. Yes, that's 30+lbs of fish! We must have made this guy's day.
A ginormous lobster. By ginormous, I mean....it's about 2 feet long and like 8 inches wide. The tiny ones you see on the right container are the normal sized ones you see here in the USA.
Lobster claws and crabs.
Marlin. Never had this before, and I didn't like it too much. It was a lot tougher than I imagined it would be. It was like eating a steak.
Lobster claws on the bottom, salmon on the upper left, and tuna belly on the upper right. You guys HAVE TO try tuna belly, it's apparently the softest and best part of the tuna. I could never find it here in the USA. It's so good.
Tilapia. Didn't like it too much because of the bones. I'm lazy. Haha.
This is only HALF of a crab and it covered my entire plate!
Yes, McDonalds will deliver to you. I had it delivered to me many times in the hotel. So cheap! $2 for like an entire Big Mac meal.
Another Jeepney in Quezon City.
Inside a Jeepney. I was always afraid to ride in one because you must know the routes before you get on. I didn't speak Tagalog, so I didn't want to try. Here was a Jeepney station, so it was much easier to ask.
The tires of all their Jeepneys and taxis look like this. No wonder tire "vulcanizing" shops are thriving here.
Fruit market. The middle picture is the inside of a rambutan (spelling?) The 3rd picture is an Atis, and the last are a bunch of plantains and bananas.
Row of Jeepneys.
Standing on top of a roadway bridge, you can see the tower of my work building. It's the smaller one to the right.
Tricycles. I took the one on the right. One of these guys was my driver, forgot which one. I have a video of me on it, which I will upload to Youtube later.
Banawe is one of the famous places to get car parts. Unfortunately, if your car gets stolen, you'll also find your stolen car parts here.
I was walking on Banawe for a while, and it got so incredibly hot, I had to stop in McDonalds to get a soda. There were a bunch of student nurses here. I think that one dude is eyeing me!
I went with my driver, Alan, on a 4 hour trip to Subic Bay. Back in the day, it used to be a US government naval base.
Went to the Subic Zoo (aptly named the Zoobic Zoo). Turtle and my driver, Alan. This was Alan's last day of work before he was going to leave for Dubai for 3 years. Leaving his family and kids here too. It was also his birthday, so I decided to pay for him and bring him along to everywhere I went that day. He really enjoyed it.
There were tigers just walking around freely. Anything older than 6 months would be behind a fence, as they are harder to control.
Pigs doing it. Haha.
Me feeding a Moon bear.
This was the best part of the trip. It was a tiger safari. You get to ride in these Jeepneys that were caged up.
Wait, what's that?
Original island native.
On the way back, we stopped at White Rock Resort. I could actually see this place from Google Earth, and I could actually see those two rocks in the pool too. The sand was like dust, if you threw it up in the air, you wouldn't see it go back down. The water was actually HOT like bath water. The Philippines has over 7000 islands, and you could see about 15 of them from here.
Took a 1 hour boat ride around a bunch of islands. Cost me 700 pesos, about $14 USD.
Star City, which is like an amusement park. Believe me, you do NOT want to go here. It was so ghetto, I was afraid I would die riding some of these things.
My girlfriend's family actually still lives in the Philippines, so I met up with them and they took me around some places. The first was Manila Bay. You probably see this on postcards. There was a little car show. I was also in a Starbucks.
Nice view for drinking coffee, eh? The last picture is of the Manila yacht club.
Fort Santiago. My history is a bit rough, but I believe this is where the Philippine hero Jose Rizal fought the Spanish and died. The security guards are still required to wear the traditional Spanish uniforms. In one of those pictures, you can see gold footsteps on the ground. This is where Rizal took his last steps before he was gunned down. The steps go all the way outside the gates to his monument.
This shows a small bridge. During the war, the bridge wasn't there and it allowed ships to come in from the Pasig river to resupply. Across the river is the city of Mandaluyoung. There is an insane asylum in there.
University of St. Tomas. Oldest university in Asia and second oldest in the world. The first oldest is in England I think.
My gf's uncle treating me out to dinner. Look at all the food. Along with 3 buckets of beer, it cost LESS THAN $20 USD!!
There was a serious typhoon that hit when I was there. Many people died. Took some pics of the damage.
The building started to sway, so many people including me were scared. So we hung out in the lobby. My 26th floor apartment was actually flooding with water (came in through windows and seals).
Outside. Mr. Poon! The place where I get my haircut was right next to Mr. Poon. $3 for a haircut + massage!!
This Civic actually was pushed into the curb. The winds are so strong, they will blow cars over or to the side. Power is out at the 7-11.
Honda dealer destroyed.
Lady begging for money. There are so many of them, and kids too. Naked kids will run into the middle of the street at all hours of the day or night asking for money. You have to learn to ignore them.
Back to looking at car stuff. Look...real Panasports, or Panaracers, whatever they're called. No wait, they're Rotas.
A large Jeepney that was also air conditioned. These cost 10 pesos instead of 7.
I have a thing for exploring, so I just started walking around and taking pictures.
Street that my hotel is on.
I think this is called lechon? Filipinos, correct me if I'm wrong please. Sooo good!
Tried to be cool and play with my shutter speed. Childsplay to you guys, but I thought it was cool.
Newpaper article about the typhoon.
Hard Rock Cafe Makati City
This ended my July through October trip. But I did go back in December for training. This time I stayed for one day at the Shangri La hotel. Awesome hotel. Too bad it costs too much, so I got moved to the Renaissance the next day. Haha. I brought my girlfriend with me this time.
View from the Renaissance. You can see some of the network of malls. The second picture is the back of Greenbelt, the tourist/expensive area I mentioned earlier.
Yes, I'm cool.
If you want fake stuff for your girlfriends, go here. Greenhills. Make sure you can bargain though, otherwise they will own you. I bargained down a pearl necklace from 500,000 pesos to 2000 pesos. In the end, I didn't even get it. That's $10,000 to $40. Yeah...imagine if that lady made $10K off of me. The second pic is of a Cloe bag. Some of you may know that it's like a $3K bag. Got it for $60. Price is still kinda high for a fake, but these are AAA class fakes. Basically real material, just put together by other people.
This is where the security dude (guy in blue) saw me taking pictures and didn't like it. He came up to me and told me not to take pictures. He tried to take my camera away too. Yeah right.
Went with my gf and her family to Tagaytay. It's way up in the mountains and it's actually much cooler. My gf's family had to wear jackets because they weren't used to the temperature. I was still in shorts and short sleeves.
Sorry I don't have more pics, but this is what I happened to have now. My gf has some on her camera. Hope you all enjoyed the pics. If anyone wants high-res ones (1600x1200), let me know as I have all of them in that format. Feel free to ask me any questions regarding these.
A little background. I work for Vonage, and like many companies, we outsource to other countries. The Philippines is one of them. I went there as a vendor manager, provided technical training, floor support, and a few other boring things. The rest of the story will go along with the pictures. They are posted/taken in chonological order, even though they don't seem like it at times. Let's begin....(note, I am not a professional photographer, so some may be a tiny bit blurry, I apologize in advance).
This is the 747-400 airplane Northwest airplane that took me to Nagoya Japan. It was the largest plane I had ever been on. Unfortunately for this trip, I flew standard coach class.
Once I had landed in Nagoya, Japan, we had to go through customs because we came from the USA. We deplaned, waited in a long line, just to eventually go back on the same plane. The plane is pictured here. The Nagoya International Airport is actually on an island. The entire island just has the airport on it. Pretty cool.
Took a picture of the terminal as well.
There were some strange JDM type TV shows on their flat panels all over the terminal.
Take a look at how clean the airport is. It's pretty small, but the entire thing looked pretty much like that. On my second trip, I found another section of the airport that had a small car show. Didn't get pictures however.
Duty free shop.
Hello kitty merchandise.
Do you know what these are? Well, I'm going to tell you. They're MP3 players, I think it's even stated in the picture. The exchange rate is pretty much "move the decimal over 2 spots." So that would be $255.40 about.
JDM Peeps, y0!
Arrived at the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Was pretty dirty and smelled "damp." Little did I know the entire country would smell like this.
This is the room I would spent the next 3 months at. In those 3 months, I slept on the bed maybe 3 times. I always ended up sleeping on the couch so I could watch TV. The TV in the room didn't work well.
Pool and gym.
View from my 26th floor room.
Intersection near my hotel. Took a walk the first morning I woke up. Do you see a red vehicle coming?
That red vehicle is called a Jeepney. It's one of their primary forms of public transportation here. More pictures of those later. It's only 7 pesos (less than 15 cents) to take one of those, so they're a lot cheaper than cabs (which are also
pretty cheap ~$3USD for a short trip).
The intersection I was standing at for the above pictures.
Continued walking a bit. I went to this area a lot, as there was a McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Jollibee (the Philippine version of McDonalds). The only place in the world where McDonalds is NOT the primary fast food joint is the Philippines. To the upper right is the Red Light District of Burgos Street. I never went there.....yep.
My meals alone mostly consisted of the below. Spicy ramen noodles, and maki from the restaurant downstairs at the hotel. Take a look at my Star Trek Voyager box set. All 7 seasons for about $10 USD!
The Somerset Salcedo, Makati City, Metro Manila. That was my home for 3 months.
This is my teddy bear. Yeah, laugh it up, but I've had him since I was about 6 or 7. I take him pretty much everywhere if I'm going to be away from home. My "security blanket", if you will. He's holding some Philippine money.
More background. When companies outsource, they use outsourcing call center corporations, such as NCO Group (formerly known as RMH, if anyone cares). They were inside the ABS CBN building in Quezon City, Metro Manila. The ABS CBN building is the home of their largest TV station (channel 7). Routinely you'd see celebrities, but unfortunately I don't know who they were, so I ignored them. You'd know because the locals would go running up to them and try to take pictures. Plus, they rolled up in limos or BMWs, etc. Nice cars were rare.
Below you can see the part of the Vonage installation team. They call outbound, NOT inbound. These aren't the people who you call and you can't understand. Haha. Further back is Sprint/Nextel. Beyond that is some collection agency.
Vonage's old logo with NCO's banner. NCO handles many clients such as Dell, Vonage, MSN (XBox), Ebay, Amazon, etc...
They love taking pictures. If you aren't aware, the homosexual population in the Philippines is VERY high. Many of those pictured who look like girls are not, and those who look like guys, may not be. For example, I was sitting down and I heard someone singing Mariah Carey. It was absolutely dead on, and it sounded good. I looked up and saw it was some guy. Haha. Many of them who are really into that will actually take hormones to get them more feminine. Anyway, you stay there a month, and you don't even bat an eye anymore.
Another view.
Downstairs at the ABS CBN building in a restaurant called Dish. They open at 4-5am to accomodate the call center agents. I forgot to mention that since the Philippines is exactly 12 hours ahead of the USA (Eastern), they must still work based on US schedule. That means, they work overnight. NCO agents worked from approximately 1am to 10am. The guy pictured is Marc. He was one of the quality coaches.
My drive back after the first day at work. Got out at about 10am and was introduced to the Philippines rushhour. It goes from about 7am to...well basically the entire day. Took me 3 hours to get back to the hotel that day.
And yes, I had a car service that was paid for by my company. The guys were very nice, and I always rode with one guy named Alan (more on him later). They were eager to talk to you to improve their English and show you around.
Back at the hotel with nothing to do except fall asleep to my Star Trek.
View from the 26 floor, but this time it was raining pretty hard. I was there during the rainy season, so it would rain ALL THE TIME!
Makati Cinema Sqaure. If you wanted DVDs, this was the place to go. You could find anything here. It's DVD quality, and it's perfect. Just the actual disc has Chinese writing on it, but that didn't bother me. I brought a heck of a lot back home. See that chick? My coworker was messing around with me and gave that chick my number. She called me a bunch of times and wanted to hang out. I was a good boy though.
Indoor shooting range. I tried this out with a few of my coworkers. I don't know anything about guns, and never shot one, so this was fun. They were mostly Asian branded weapons.
They are BIG on shopping and malls here. Within a few minutes walk of my hotel, are an entire network of malls all linked together. The one pictured below was called Glorietta. In the center there's usually some sort of exhibit. This time it
was actually a Honda concept exhibit. Nothing interesting at all though.
Here I am leaving work early in the morning, this time around 5am. They keep the call centers FREEZING inside, which is why my camera is fogging up around the edges. People don't own jackets in this country unless they work in a call center. It sucks when you come out because it's hot and humid as hell. Besides Jeepneys, there are tricycles. They can be motor powered or leg powered (a bicycle with an attachment). They will take you for about 20 pesos pretty much anywhere around locally. That's about 50 cents or so.
Another view of the same area at about 5:00am.
My driver took a different way home this time because of the traffic. Yes, even at 5am there's traffic. Many homes have businesses on the outside to make some extra money. Most sell candy, gum, phone cards, and other trinkets. I took the next few pictures from inside the car.
Street sweeper. The city pays these guys.
Much of the housing looks like this. Not too good, but it's the way it is over there. Forgive my possibly history inaccuracies, but my driver told me that back in the day the government forced many people to relocate to small shacks like these.
If you take a look, you can see all the gas/water meters. There are lots of small shacks/houses down the alleyway. It's unfortunate people have to live like this. Much of this area doesn't have running water. You can see the alleyway in the
3rd pic.
Back to the NCO call center. This is one of the classes I was teaching. I made them do the "Butt Dance." It's something they do over there. If you're late or something, you have to go up to the front of the room and spell out something with your butt in the air.
This is the Temple Bar in Greenbelt. Greenbelt is the tourist section of Makati City. It's pretty expensive and trendy here. The restaurants cost just as much as the USA. Normal meals cost about $5 for a gourmet dinner. Here in Greenbelt,
it's like $40 for two people. There are also stores like Louis Vuitton, Diesel, Gucci, etc. If you go in them, you'll find out that the prices there are MORE than the United States. Strange. I don't think I've ever seen $250 Diesel jeans in the USA. But here I did.
My company also has two call centers in Cebu, an island about 30 minutes south (by plane) from the main island of Luzon. I stayed at the Marco Polo hotel with a few coworkers. This was the lobby.
Here's my dorky self. I don't usually wear glasses, but I was just on a plane for a while. See the girl behind me? All of the employees wear stuff like that. Pretty cute girls too. There's also one girl that's ALWAYS in the elevator. No matter
what time, 10am, 5pm, or 3am, there's always one in there who will push the buttons for you.
My room in the Marco Polo. I didn't have an "apartment" style place like the first one because I was only staying for 3 days.
The fridge. Unfortunately, everything here except water cost money.
The view from the hotel. You can actually see the call center from here.
Take a gander at the bar/lounge area in the back of the hotel. Nice, eh? The building in the background is the Hilton.
Imagine having a few drinks, lounging in the chair by the pool, working on wireless.....yup.
These were a couple of my coworkers. The guy on the left is a contractor who actually lives in Manila. The guy on the right works with me in New Jersey. Yes he's gay, and he's one of the coolest guys I know.
If you look into the valley near the hotel, you'll see the squatter area. People take bits and pieces of wood, metal, etc and build houses to live in. Some of these people are VERY resourceful. I knew a girl who had something like that, BUT had cable TV (with all the premium channels), Internet, telephone, etc. She routed power and cables from other areas. Haha.
They will serve you food and drinks while you're lounging in these pool chairs.
More pics of the squatter area down below.
The hotel.
Pool in the evening.
Eating dinner by the pool and listening to people singing. It was evening, which meant we would have to go to work afterwards.
The call center in Cebu. This center was Etelecare. They are a VERY large corporation that has facilities in hundreds of sites all over the world.
The view from Etelecare to the Marco Polo. You can see it and the Hilton here.
Free cigars and alcohol in the lobby!
The Ayala Mall in Cebu City. They are famous for their dried mangos. We bought about 75 packages to bring back to the USA.
Guess what these are?
They're coinpurses made out of frogs! They were at a little gift shop in the airport going back to Manila. Also some fake Burberry wallets (quality wasn't good however) and some hanging shell things.
Outside the SM (Shoe Mart) Mega Mall. The place has nothing to do with Shoes anymore. Back in the day, it used to sell shoes, but the name stayed. Saw a Mercedes SUV B170.
Inside the Megamall. It was 7 stories. See? They're big on shopping. Not too far from here was the Mall of Asia, which I think is the largest mall in the world?
Bus stop outside the Megamall. Buses here are CRAZY! Don't be in front of one because they WILL run you over.
Parking lot for bikes outside the Megmall.
If you guys love seafood, you will enjoy the next set of pictures. We went to this fish market (I forgot the name) about 20 minutes away. You can buy your fish, walk to the back area, and a restaurant will cook it for you!
We bought approximately 15 kilos of seafood from this dude. Yes, that's 30+lbs of fish! We must have made this guy's day.
A ginormous lobster. By ginormous, I mean....it's about 2 feet long and like 8 inches wide. The tiny ones you see on the right container are the normal sized ones you see here in the USA.
Lobster claws and crabs.
Marlin. Never had this before, and I didn't like it too much. It was a lot tougher than I imagined it would be. It was like eating a steak.
Lobster claws on the bottom, salmon on the upper left, and tuna belly on the upper right. You guys HAVE TO try tuna belly, it's apparently the softest and best part of the tuna. I could never find it here in the USA. It's so good.
Tilapia. Didn't like it too much because of the bones. I'm lazy. Haha.
This is only HALF of a crab and it covered my entire plate!
Yes, McDonalds will deliver to you. I had it delivered to me many times in the hotel. So cheap! $2 for like an entire Big Mac meal.
Another Jeepney in Quezon City.
Inside a Jeepney. I was always afraid to ride in one because you must know the routes before you get on. I didn't speak Tagalog, so I didn't want to try. Here was a Jeepney station, so it was much easier to ask.
The tires of all their Jeepneys and taxis look like this. No wonder tire "vulcanizing" shops are thriving here.
Fruit market. The middle picture is the inside of a rambutan (spelling?) The 3rd picture is an Atis, and the last are a bunch of plantains and bananas.
Row of Jeepneys.
Standing on top of a roadway bridge, you can see the tower of my work building. It's the smaller one to the right.
Tricycles. I took the one on the right. One of these guys was my driver, forgot which one. I have a video of me on it, which I will upload to Youtube later.
Banawe is one of the famous places to get car parts. Unfortunately, if your car gets stolen, you'll also find your stolen car parts here.
I was walking on Banawe for a while, and it got so incredibly hot, I had to stop in McDonalds to get a soda. There were a bunch of student nurses here. I think that one dude is eyeing me!
I went with my driver, Alan, on a 4 hour trip to Subic Bay. Back in the day, it used to be a US government naval base.
Went to the Subic Zoo (aptly named the Zoobic Zoo). Turtle and my driver, Alan. This was Alan's last day of work before he was going to leave for Dubai for 3 years. Leaving his family and kids here too. It was also his birthday, so I decided to pay for him and bring him along to everywhere I went that day. He really enjoyed it.
There were tigers just walking around freely. Anything older than 6 months would be behind a fence, as they are harder to control.
Pigs doing it. Haha.
Me feeding a Moon bear.
This was the best part of the trip. It was a tiger safari. You get to ride in these Jeepneys that were caged up.
Wait, what's that?
Original island native.
On the way back, we stopped at White Rock Resort. I could actually see this place from Google Earth, and I could actually see those two rocks in the pool too. The sand was like dust, if you threw it up in the air, you wouldn't see it go back down. The water was actually HOT like bath water. The Philippines has over 7000 islands, and you could see about 15 of them from here.
Took a 1 hour boat ride around a bunch of islands. Cost me 700 pesos, about $14 USD.
Star City, which is like an amusement park. Believe me, you do NOT want to go here. It was so ghetto, I was afraid I would die riding some of these things.
My girlfriend's family actually still lives in the Philippines, so I met up with them and they took me around some places. The first was Manila Bay. You probably see this on postcards. There was a little car show. I was also in a Starbucks.
Nice view for drinking coffee, eh? The last picture is of the Manila yacht club.
Fort Santiago. My history is a bit rough, but I believe this is where the Philippine hero Jose Rizal fought the Spanish and died. The security guards are still required to wear the traditional Spanish uniforms. In one of those pictures, you can see gold footsteps on the ground. This is where Rizal took his last steps before he was gunned down. The steps go all the way outside the gates to his monument.
This shows a small bridge. During the war, the bridge wasn't there and it allowed ships to come in from the Pasig river to resupply. Across the river is the city of Mandaluyoung. There is an insane asylum in there.
University of St. Tomas. Oldest university in Asia and second oldest in the world. The first oldest is in England I think.
My gf's uncle treating me out to dinner. Look at all the food. Along with 3 buckets of beer, it cost LESS THAN $20 USD!!
There was a serious typhoon that hit when I was there. Many people died. Took some pics of the damage.
The building started to sway, so many people including me were scared. So we hung out in the lobby. My 26th floor apartment was actually flooding with water (came in through windows and seals).
Outside. Mr. Poon! The place where I get my haircut was right next to Mr. Poon. $3 for a haircut + massage!!
This Civic actually was pushed into the curb. The winds are so strong, they will blow cars over or to the side. Power is out at the 7-11.
Honda dealer destroyed.
Lady begging for money. There are so many of them, and kids too. Naked kids will run into the middle of the street at all hours of the day or night asking for money. You have to learn to ignore them.
Back to looking at car stuff. Look...real Panasports, or Panaracers, whatever they're called. No wait, they're Rotas.
A large Jeepney that was also air conditioned. These cost 10 pesos instead of 7.
I have a thing for exploring, so I just started walking around and taking pictures.
Street that my hotel is on.
I think this is called lechon? Filipinos, correct me if I'm wrong please. Sooo good!
Tried to be cool and play with my shutter speed. Childsplay to you guys, but I thought it was cool.
Newpaper article about the typhoon.
Hard Rock Cafe Makati City
This ended my July through October trip. But I did go back in December for training. This time I stayed for one day at the Shangri La hotel. Awesome hotel. Too bad it costs too much, so I got moved to the Renaissance the next day. Haha. I brought my girlfriend with me this time.
View from the Renaissance. You can see some of the network of malls. The second picture is the back of Greenbelt, the tourist/expensive area I mentioned earlier.
Yes, I'm cool.
If you want fake stuff for your girlfriends, go here. Greenhills. Make sure you can bargain though, otherwise they will own you. I bargained down a pearl necklace from 500,000 pesos to 2000 pesos. In the end, I didn't even get it. That's $10,000 to $40. Yeah...imagine if that lady made $10K off of me. The second pic is of a Cloe bag. Some of you may know that it's like a $3K bag. Got it for $60. Price is still kinda high for a fake, but these are AAA class fakes. Basically real material, just put together by other people.
This is where the security dude (guy in blue) saw me taking pictures and didn't like it. He came up to me and told me not to take pictures. He tried to take my camera away too. Yeah right.
Went with my gf and her family to Tagaytay. It's way up in the mountains and it's actually much cooler. My gf's family had to wear jackets because they weren't used to the temperature. I was still in shorts and short sleeves.
Sorry I don't have more pics, but this is what I happened to have now. My gf has some on her camera. Hope you all enjoyed the pics. If anyone wants high-res ones (1600x1200), let me know as I have all of them in that format. Feel free to ask me any questions regarding these.
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06-21-2007, 10:22 PM
#13
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Re: My Trip to the Philippines (shamoo)
dang, makes me miss the philippines. great pictures, shows all the sides of the pi ... good and bad.
banawe
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06-21-2007, 10:32 PM
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Re: (kyles1988)
Amazing, my favorites were all the nice hotels, the Tiger Safari, that island that you went to, the white resort, and lastly the place in the mountains. Absolutly beautiful. Im from India, almost reminds me of that place, but of course there are hardly ne islands! awesome pics, and thanks for posting it up, i spetn the last hour looking thru em thanks !
06-21-2007, 10:41 PM
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Re: My Trip to the Philippines (Fourcsan_)
Thanks for sharing the pics and quotes!!!
Im going back fo sho!
Post more pics, PLS + Vids
I miss the Philippines
Im going back fo sho!
Post more pics, PLS + Vids
I miss the Philippines
06-21-2007, 10:45 PM
#20
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Re: (Hiii Im TYLER)
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Hiii Im TYLER »</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
I SPY EK SiR BUMPER!</TD></TR></TABLE>
man hella beat me too it, probly cause i was staring hard into the pix..and im diggin that poolside with the chairs inside of the water...love the pix
I SPY EK SiR BUMPER!</TD></TR></TABLE>
man hella beat me too it, probly cause i was staring hard into the pix..and im diggin that poolside with the chairs inside of the water...love the pix
06-21-2007, 10:45 PM
#21
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Re: My Trip to the Philippines (ilovemycoupe)
i just looked at all the pics and all I gotta say is wow.. you were livin' the life over there and very good coverage. Makes me want to stop by
06-21-2007, 10:49 PM
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Re: (SlowEf8's)
great pics, i had fun looking through them and reading the captions above. thanks for sharing 
atleast in the philippines, for the tiger safari you fed them dead chicken (?); i saw this vid of a safari in china where they fed then live cows and live chickens
atleast in the philippines, for the tiger safari you fed them dead chicken (?); i saw this vid of a safari in china where they fed then live cows and live chickens
