mabini
and so starts my exploration of manila.
today sammy and i finished her project up at DOST. of course i had to be there because she was basing much of her work on mine, but i didn't really mind. good company. ahh, the memories of that place. Sci Res 2 with lou and bilf. mixing the casein, rolling and compressing it, the sickly aroma of formaline.
afterwards, i had to go to la salle to take care of some enrollment issues, so we decided to have lunch in the manila area. i really wanted to eat at the hobbit house - that restaurant where all the staff are dwarves. fine, vertically challenged. 'ika nga, it's the only place where the waiters don't look down on you. HAH. anyway, i wanted to eat at the hobbit house, but sam was too squeamish about it.
"Chris, it's like you're exploiting them!"
"Saaaaaam, they OWN the frickin place. if they felt exploited, they'd shut it down right?"
so we ended up having lunch at this quaint little japanese place called dosanka (or was it dosanca?). the food was a bit more pricey than i expected (hey, i want dirt cheap shit in manila), but wow, it had one of the best gyudons on this side of the south china sea. the other dishes were alright, comparable to the commercial japanese establishments, but then again i'm not very adventurous when it comes to japanese cuisine. i tend to stick to gyudon or teriyaki chicken.
the money we had was just about enough to fit the bill (P1000 something for both of us, but we're both takaw-tingin), so we went around looking for a not-so-seedy-looking money changer to change sam's foreign coins. apparently, the exchange rate plummets when you start changing coins instead of bills. damn. we got PHP15 = 1CHF (swiss franc) for coins as compared to the normal-ish PHP43 = 1CHF for bills. So after that, we walked a good length of mabini all the way to robinsons place, where i had parked my car. and off we went to la salle.
so ends my first foray into the wild world of manila. up next: hobbit house, malate night scene, cheap-ass-yet truly authentic restaurants, intramuros.
any takers?
oh yeah, i heard the mabini area at night's a pretty cool place to hang out in. can anyone confirm that?
today sammy and i finished her project up at DOST. of course i had to be there because she was basing much of her work on mine, but i didn't really mind. good company. ahh, the memories of that place. Sci Res 2 with lou and bilf. mixing the casein, rolling and compressing it, the sickly aroma of formaline.
afterwards, i had to go to la salle to take care of some enrollment issues, so we decided to have lunch in the manila area. i really wanted to eat at the hobbit house - that restaurant where all the staff are dwarves. fine, vertically challenged. 'ika nga, it's the only place where the waiters don't look down on you. HAH. anyway, i wanted to eat at the hobbit house, but sam was too squeamish about it.
"Chris, it's like you're exploiting them!"
"Saaaaaam, they OWN the frickin place. if they felt exploited, they'd shut it down right?"
so we ended up having lunch at this quaint little japanese place called dosanka (or was it dosanca?). the food was a bit more pricey than i expected (hey, i want dirt cheap shit in manila), but wow, it had one of the best gyudons on this side of the south china sea. the other dishes were alright, comparable to the commercial japanese establishments, but then again i'm not very adventurous when it comes to japanese cuisine. i tend to stick to gyudon or teriyaki chicken.
the money we had was just about enough to fit the bill (P1000 something for both of us, but we're both takaw-tingin), so we went around looking for a not-so-seedy-looking money changer to change sam's foreign coins. apparently, the exchange rate plummets when you start changing coins instead of bills. damn. we got PHP15 = 1CHF (swiss franc) for coins as compared to the normal-ish PHP43 = 1CHF for bills. So after that, we walked a good length of mabini all the way to robinsons place, where i had parked my car. and off we went to la salle.
so ends my first foray into the wild world of manila. up next: hobbit house, malate night scene, cheap-ass-yet truly authentic restaurants, intramuros.
any takers?
oh yeah, i heard the mabini area at night's a pretty cool place to hang out in. can anyone confirm that?