Thursday, February 24, 2011

20th Feb - Taytay

Some free time in the morning, so a team meeting over breakfast and a quick walk up to Greenbelt shopping mall - shopping is a national past time - overwhelming choice, but the prices were only slightly better than home, largely as this mall is in the Makati financial centre of Manila.

A meeting with our host families for the next few weeks, more food, more photos, and we were off to our first host, PP Ed Manda of Rotary Club Makati Central.

Ed's home is in Taytay, while Taytay is not very far from Makati where we had been staying the trip took some time due to the Manila traffic - the Sunday afternoon traffic, which we were to learn was very light compared to weekdays, but still bumper to bumper for most of the trip.

30km in Manila takes well over an hour, yet almost no-one walks, all choosing to drive, take a jeepnee, a tricycle, or a peddle car.

As we drove to Eds home I must admit I wondered where we were going, with small shanties built right up to the road and narrow streets, and then we turned into a narrow lane where a street party was being carried on and we had arrived.

We were greeted by Amore, Ed's wife and other members of the family, and yet again the famous Filipino hospitality was demonstrated. It didnt take us long to start referring to Ed's house as home when we were travelling and discussing our itineraries.

Ed then took us up to his study where we talked for some time. Amore brought up some more food, which Jo & I both assumed was dinner, only to be told that "no, this is a light snack" and dinner would follow later.

All this time the street party continued downstairs.

Dinner followed, and as we relaxed Jo and Frank joined the street party for Karaoke. Eventually we all followed and night proceeded with more signing and dancing.

There is evidence everywhere of our exploits - we have learnt one Filipino phase - "one more", which may be interpretted as "one more photo". But, please note, this is not a holiday.

By the way, I think I may be the first person in Philippines history to have the microphone actually taken away from them during Karaoke.

No comments:

Post a Comment