Coming To Manila, Day 4: The Last Full Day In Manila

So Day 4 in the Philippines was the first time in the entire trip that TJC and I had nothing to do in the morning except be up by 10 A.M. to make it in time for breakfast, which was fine with us.

After our usual breakfast buffet at the Jeepney Cafe, we chilled at the room till it was time to meet Nonoy for lunch. Around noonish, Nonoy called and said to meet us downstairs at the driveway so we trudged down there and we headed off to lunch with his co-workers and fellow laywers, Cheryl, Janice and Gladys.



Lunch was very enjoyable, both because of the delicious food and the great company. At one point, Nonoy had all three ladies convinced that TJC, who works in a field with connections to Barney, actually WAS the person inside the Barney costume. Hilarious.

The food, like I said, was delicious, and we had Halo-Halo for dessert. TJC and I go to a Filipino restaurant in Queens every few weeks, and we always get Halo-Halo for dessert, so it was great to finally have one in Manila! Interestingly enough, this was our first and only time having Halo-Halo in the Philippines.

After lunch, our hard-working lawyer friends had to head back to the office, and since we were not that far away, TJC and I cut through the Greenhills mall in order to get to the Ayala Museum, which was closed the last time we tried to go there. Having been to the Louvre, the Met, the Frick, the Prado, L'Orangerie and tons of other musuems but never having seen works of Filipino masters exhibited in those places, I was quite excited to check it out. I was not disappointed at all, as I got to see several works by Amorsolo, Luna and Domingo.

After the museum, we walked around some more in Greenhills and Glorietta, and I finally found a Manny Pacquiao dri-fit shirt, which I purchased along with a new Arsenal jersey, complete with the new Fly Emirates sponsor logo (my old one, while still in great condition, had the old Dreamcast sponsor logo on it - that's how old it is).

We get back to the hotel, and since we've eaten like pigs since our trip began with little to no exercise, we both decided we had to do some of that. TJC headed to the hotel's fitness center while I went to the pool for a swim.

Nonoy and Vanessa picked us up again around 6 PM, and we headed off to Kainan at Market! Market! for dinner with the daughters of Tita Suzette Bautista, a good friend of my mom's since their nursing school days. I had met said daughters - Nizette, Nylah, Ninette and Nadia - when their family came to visit New York in April 2007 and it was great to see them again, sans Nizette who could not make it. With them was Melo, Nylah's fiance.

I had mentioned in my previous post that events related to that night ended up shocking me a few weeks later; without getting into too much detail, that event was the sudden and unexpected passing of Melo, which happened the day TJC and I flew back to New York, and which I found out about after I got to New York City. It really was shocking, and my prayers are with him and his family and loved ones.

After dinner, Nonoy and Vanessa drove TJC back to the hotel since he was not feeling well at all. Ninette and I ended up getting drinks at Embassy Cuisine (Embassy is THE hot spot in Manila currently).

After about an hour or two, Ninette drove me back to the hotel and when I got to the room, TJC was asleep already. On the coffee table though was a bucket full of beer and some peanuts, courtesy of the hotel (or maybe Grace?) since it was our last night there. I gladly opened a bottle of San Miguel Light, ate some peanuts and updated the journal of the trip I was keeping.

After finishing up with that, it was time to go to bed, as tomorrow, we were about to start our journey to Bacolod, home province of the Tonogbanua clan.