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December 15, 2008 @ 10:49:00 PM

8 things I learned about the Philippines in my 8-day trip
  • Water buffalo - carabao is the national animal of the Philippines

  • Balut is deemed as the world's most gruesome food by some food critics. Balut is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. Some say they can see the duck beak and what not. I TRIED IT!! and I thought it was quite delicious, definitely not the world's most gruesome food. bittergourd is worse!!  below is the picture of the egg shells after my host and I ate balut. quite a different experience and I'm glad I tired it. even have a video :p the rest of my family members chickened ( haha no pun intended) out though. 
  

  • They must have their rice every meal. yes, all 3 meals. Yet, they are all so slim,practically half the size of me. You know, even fast food joints like jollibean, kfc all serve rice. yeah, so you can have your crispy chicken with rice. Too bad I didn't get to take a picture of it, the rice came wrapped up in cute little packets. 

  • Window shopping the national lexicon of the Philippines. Yup, ALL filipinos love going to the mall, even if they don't buy things. They've got malls EVERYWHERE. The malls were so packed on weekdays. On the last few days of my trip, I stayed at a hotel near few malls, so my breakfast was usually at the malls and each morning there would be a long queue at the malls, even before the mall opens. crazy isn't it - between, that was on a friday. I wonder how the weekends would be. well, after learning that filipinos love going to the mall, I'm not surprised that the world's 3rd and 4th largest malls are at the philippines
 I thought this was quite hilarious 
 ooh this is the tight security at all the malls.not bad huh. 


  •  They have the most beautiful sceneries there. From little villages on a mountain, to submerged volcanoes to soft white sand beaches, the philippines has everything, really.  You know, the philippines is made up of 7107 islands - the archipelago is huge. 2nd largest in the world actually. 

see the mouth of volcano?
beautiful ain't it? one of my fluke pictures. haha


  • Apart from beautiful sceneries, they had beautiful man-made buildings like this castle-y old church below. supposedly one of the oldest churches in the world.  
 
  • The over-head bridges and bus-stops in Quezon City are blue and pink just because the the governor there loves the colours blue and pink. mind you, the governor is a guy. what a pity I didn't manage to take a picture. I hope the governor doesn't change by the time I go back to the philippines. haha. 

  •  They love boxing - one of the national sports of the Philippines. On the sunday I was there, some "dream match" was held between the best Philippines fighter - manny paciuo and some italian guy. Just cause of the match, the streets were practically dead cause everyone was watching the match. It was shocking to see the streets so empty, the traffic  there is usually horrible, but not as bad as the one in BK. 

there, some of the interesting stuff I learned about the philippines. typing this post has made me wanna go back there!good food - I put on damn alot of weight eating so much meat, snacks and rice there. 

oh another thing, I've been pronouncing maneul quezon wrongly for the past 2 years.haha. 


oh guess what time the above picture was taken? at 6.45pm!! so dark yeah. It gets dark at like 5plus. because of the christmas season. yep, during the christmas season, though it doesn't snow, the sky gets dark real quick. at philippines, I felt so christmasy and all, but when I returned home, it was back to the routine life. oh wells, my philippines trip was good while it lasted (:






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