Philippines or bust!

We made it to the Philippines after 13 hour flight to Seoul, Korea and then a 3 hour flight to Manila. How bizarre to go over the International Dateline and lose a day...making it 16 hours in the future from Seattle.

(I'll attempt to retro-blog about our last week of wedding festivities later, from the Wedding Pub crawl 2/12 to my Bachelor Party on 2/16, to the Wedding Mixer on 2/18, the Wedding itself on 2/19 and the Outta-towner brunch on 2/19)

Anywho...So Noel's sister Magic and brother Jun picked us up at the Ninoy Acquino International Airport at 11pm and by the time we got across town and checked in to our Mandrin Oriental Hotel it was passed midnight (which is 8am in Seattle). We were starved so got room service at 1am and watched Oprah of all things. They rolled in a fancy cart with china, silver and crystal...and we had pancit, beefsteak and Processeco. Noel has a huge arrangement of flowers waiting in our room when we arrived; beautiful lilies, roses, orchids, gerber daisies, and my favorite mini-kermit pom poms (which we also had in our wedding and on our cake).

We got up 10am and got down to the lobby restaurant in time to catch the last of the buffet from heaven: American breakfast, Omelette bar, French boulangerie/patisserie, Chinese dim sum, and crazy good Filipino food.

Off to shopping we went. I immersed myself into the 88F degree warm lightly humid weather which felt so nice. We walked down Makati Avenue to Paseo de Roxas all the way to Greenbelt, which is like Bellevue Square and Cosa Mesa malls combined. It was massive and had every store and designer imaginable from Louis Vuitton and Tory Burch, to Bally and Dolce&Gabbana, from Puma to Juicy Couture...and even random northwest places like The Northface, Columbia, and Seattle's Best Coffee. What??? Okay, so I know this is the only time I will see such a thing on my trip and it is not how 95% of the 88 million Filipinos live, but it was a lovely transition.

We then went home and had to cancel our Spa appointment that Noel made because he felt sick. I think the jet lag, and stress from the last week had got to him. He took a 3 hour nap while I read about the Philippines further. We then had a quick dinner at a lovely Chinese restaurant in our hotel. We took a taxi at 9pm to Quezon City where Noel's parents and 3 siblings live. What probably would have taken 20 minutes to do, took almost an hour. There was crazy traffic on the side streets and the freeways. Our beaten up taxi was driving down the shoulder, and in between trucks and cars and bikes, but this is what they do here. Many roads had no lines on them, it was a free for all, which was extra fun with no seatbelts. We then got to a place on the highway where the whole road U-turned the other way...Seriously THE ENTIRE HIGHWAY U-TURNED! What the?

The country is so funny. All the roads and neighborhoods have Spanish names, All the signs and directions and advertisements are in English, but everyone speaks Tagalog to each other. The TV commercials are all American English but all geared to Asians. Just picture everyone of our commercials in the states and switch out everyone for Filipino or Chinese actors. Trippy.

MEET THE FOCKERS - So we got to the Caraig's house, and met Noel's Mom and Dad for the first time. I hope they like me. I think they do. Noel was so cute, like Santa Claus he divied out all the loot he brought from the US for them: running shoes and watches for his two brothers and sister, Raisins and Splenda and lotions for his Mom, Iron Man toys for his nephews, Bratz for his neices, and even a Dept.56 House for his Dad.

Back to our hotel at midnight again, and I'm pooped. It's now 1am (which means you Seattlites are just getting to work at 9am)...have a great Wednesday work day...I'm already in Thursday!!! Good night (or is that good morning?)