Day 11

17 December 2008

My cousin, Maria Louisa (Marilou or Lou) took me and her daughter, Nicole, to Tiendesitas, an outdoor market about a 5-10 minute ride from BRB. It's a pretty neat place with a lot of Filipina Kultura items. Among the items that I bought there was an original oil painting by a local artist of a church in Laguna. It was a steal, at $30USD. Mostly, I ogled at the furniture they were selling there and wished that I could afford the shipping costs to bring them home with me. Lou says that Brad Pitt orders a lot of his furniture from Cebu. I don't know if that's true, but the Cebuano furniture I've seen have been really cool. Lou bought me some fruit to try - star apple and lonzanes. They were so good and brought back memories from my childhood. But apparently, I'd forgotten how to eat lonzanes because my fingers were covered in latex half-way through my first berry! We also made the unfortunate mistake of sitting near a fruit stand that was selling durian. Yuck!

Leah's been researching hotels in Manila for the past day. She thought it would be nice to spend a couple of days in Manila proper in order to make sight seeing a little easier. After what seemed like hours of exhaustive searching, she made reservations at the G Hotel on Roxas Blvd for the next two days, including tonight. Sonny was really kind to drive us all the way to the hotel, considering it was almost a 2 hour drive, with all the traffic.

Looking forward to seeing Manila tomorrow!