Danny the G(r)eek: Manila Vice

Hello everyone, We have returned from our easter trip to Manilla. What an interesting trip this was!

Between getting our tickets and arriving in Manilla, we were warned it was a dangerous place. Shortly after arriving we kept hearing 'be careful'. So it put us a little on edge. However, there wasn't too much to worry about. We were also warned that nothing would be open since it was Holy Week.

We checked into our ghetto ass hotel and laughed a bit at all the half asked service and amenities....

DAY 1

We left our hotel for a walk around the city.. Alot of street kids (naked and begging) led the way to a very big and beautiful Rizal Park

... which had some kite flying and what looked to be very tasty food. Note- the bumbag I sported until it broke. Some of the food stalls around the park were selling awesome looking fried chicken (that quickly struck a yearning within us).

Later that evening we ate a 'Hong Kong' restaurant. It was super western and overpriced.

After dinner we hit up the nightlife area of Malate and quickly found our favorite bar of the trip

After a day our wandering around and drinking red horse beer, it was good to sit down and drink more red horse beer.

Crashed pretty early that night.

DAY 2

Early rise and ready to head to Ocean Park Manila.

First off, The Oceanarium

Some really cool looking fish. The tanks were pretty good for the most part, the whole place looked pretty well maintained.

After a few small fish tank sections there was a tunnel that held sharks and sting rays and various other gnarly fish.

The oceanariam took a decent amount of time to get to...

THEN, a highlight for me was the fish spa that followed.

Very funny sensation, ended up being very relaxing. These 'Doctor Fish' swarmed to my manky feet and started eating all of the dead skin, was ticklish but felt really nice. I recommend anyone to try this if you get a chance!

Next was the Sea Lion Show

It was a well done show, and the Sea Lions didn't seem to be too depressed.

We did one more thing called 'Jellies' or something, just a bunch of jelly fish, pretty lame actually...

For Dinner we hit up our fav bar Erra's Grill for some chicken and fish, it was pretty superb.

Meet some cool street kids, Big Steven and Little Steven, they were really friendly and just all around cool dudes.

We had a couple more brews, then headed across the street to watch a live band called "The Boss" I think. They were really fun, and the all the bar staff was really friendly! When the band finished their first set we did a little bar hopping. Ended up at some really crap english bar, where we were the ONLY patrons.

DAY 3

Starving for breakfast, I headed across the street to The Yellow Cab Pizza Co. for some breakfast bagels (which rocked my world). On the way there some guy was trying to sell me a taser, kept showing me and following me, a bit of a freaky thing to wake up to.

Then we went to check out the Manila Zoo.

This Zoo is Asia's oldest Zoo... and it totally shows. The cages were so small and depressing, none of them had water and the animals looked suicidal... It was pretty sad to be here actually.

They had a lot of tigers (although, I don't have any pictures, cause they were all sleeping).

The zoo was also home to quite a few monkeys, but the cages were far too small to get any pictures.

There was a Zebra enclosure where one 'zebra' had it's strips almost all gone, looked as though they had just painted them on a horse... the real Zebra was in a very small house...

Pretty sad to see all those animals like that, We were there for a couple of hours at least and didn't see any Zoo staff at all.

So, after the Zoo we walked back to our hotel and discovered a big mall was open, so we popped in to do a bit of shopping and a bit of lunch.

On the taxi ride into town from the airport, we had seen a Kenny Roger's restaurant and decided we needed to eat there! We found one in the mall and got very excited. Geez, Kenny, your food sucks, it was gross. Very disappointing!

On our way home we spotted a bar called 'The Hobbit House'

We went in to check it out, all of the servers were little people and they had a huge amount of different beers and ciders, super cool place and the decor was all lord of the rings paintings

there was going to be a band playing later that evening, so we went back to the hotel to get a bit of rest before going back to check it out. I sure hope the band wasn't little people, because we ended up crashing and missing it...):

DAY 4

Last Day in Manilla, we checked out of the hotel and went to the mall for some brekkie.

Headed over to Intramuros (a walled city built by the spanish). It is the oldest part of the city of Manilla. We popped into a cathedral there for the opening of Easter Sunday Mass.