Melissa and Tagaytay

On Thursday night Neil and I made a trip down to the airport to pick up Melissa, my sister who arrived in Manila from visiting my dad in China. Unfortunately her trip turned out to be only a short one, but it was still great to see her! On Friday I took the day off work and we headed down to Greenhills for breakfast at Pancake House and some shopping. We bought a few things but the highlight of the morning was Liss’s, “that’s a tall Filipino woman” and my response, “that’s not a woman!” After we got tired of shopping and all the “Yes maam you like?” comments, we dropped our stuff off at the house and caught a taxi to Intramuros. We had a quick look around but it was raining a bit so we stopped off for some lunch while it passed. As one of the main tourist attractions of Manila, Melissa seemed pretty unimpressed with Intramuros. Perhaps coming from China where she showed pictures us of the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven Park, and Tianammen Square I should have known! We walked through Rizal Park and then over to the bay, but by this time the weather had turned really hot and the sky was pretty overcast and muggy, so we instead decided to go home for a rest before going out for dinner.

After a rest we headed into Makati where we had a quick look around the mall before eating some yummy sushi and Asian food in Greenbelt. We then headed down to Max Somethingerather's which specialises in chocolate. We both ordered chocolate drinks but it wasn't as yummy as we thought - especially for non-chocolate lovers, but the idea was pretty novel. By that stage we were full and tired so we caught a taxi home.

The next day we headed down to Tagaytay, a pretty touristy area where we were immediately accosted with comments like, "boat ride", "where are you going", "do you need a tricycle". From that moment we should have known what it would be like in this highly touristy town. We spent a long time looking around for a decent place to spend the night – a first here in the Philippines for Neil and I. Usually we are able to find decent, affordable places pretty soon after arriving in a new town. So it was a bit of a pain, and most annoyingly, we were taken advantage of by a couple of local drivers. This only equated to a couple of Australian dollars, but it’s still annoying. After getting a better layout of the town, we took Jeepneys – they are a standard price and a decent ride. We finally found a decent place to stay, but the room wasn’t available until after 8, so we headed back up the hill to eat a Josephine’s. Josephine’s ended up being a yummy and picturesque restaurant which overlooked Taal Volcano and its lake. It served Filipino food and was pretty decent. At least finding a decent restaurant and decent place to stay meant that the day ended fairly well.

The next day we left the hotel and had breakfast at a little place up the road. It turned out to be a good choice with decent breakfast and Seinfeld on tv. Hee hee. We then waited about 30 minutes in a jeepney before it took the 20 minute trip down to Talisay where you catch the boat across to Taal Volcano (some jeepneys won’t leave until they are full of passengers).

It was a nice boat ride across the lake to the volcano – we got a little wet, but it was nice to be on water. Once we arrived we were then accosted with offers of guides and horses to take us up the mountain. The Lonely Planet noted that you don’t need a guide, that the path is just one way up the hill and we were kind of happy to walk rather than take a horse up. For the first 10 minutes or so we were followed by people trying to offer services as guides. One even tried to make us pay him $200 pesos entrance fee for the municipal police. I told him to take us to the Municipal Police Office and we’ll pay it there and kept walking. This weekend was really the first time in the Philippines we’ve been hassled like this!! The walk wasn’t the nicest as we had to hike up a dusty track with lots of horse poo everywhere, but it kind of got nicer as we got further up the hill. We stopped and let Melissa try some buko (young coconut) while we rested a little. Then it wasn’t too much further before we reached the summit. After a disturbing incident with a kitten – we were kind of over the whole thing (which was a bit of a shame because the inner crater was quite impressive) and hiked back down. We got caught in the rain but Melissa and I had umbrellas so we only got a little wet.

The next day we were back in Manila and went to do some final shopping at Megamall in Ortigas. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and bought some clothes and some new shoes. We met Neil for lunch and then it was time to go home so Liss could head off to the airport to head home – boooo hooo – the trip was way way too short!

posted by batik billy @ 11:49 am