End of day one with only one hour of sleep! Thank God I survived today! Haha! Starting of the flight by Cebu Pacific Air, the turbulence was kind of bad and shaky after taking off for a few minutes. Right after that we couldn't really get our dearly awaited nap for the 3 hours because it was too cold and they didn't provide any blanket! :( what a way to up-sell their product! >.<
This was my first time to Philippines and I didn't really know that the country looked rather like Indonesia. The transportation traffic, the human traffic and basically everything was similar to Indonesia or Jakarta. Manila is really a nice place and I'm so glad that we are staying at the heart of Manila – Makati – also known as the Central Business District.
From the airport to the hotel it took us about 20 minutes or less without the traffic. The hotel was located very near and convenient! After checking in, we had a quick breakfast and went back up to the room to rest. Our tour started at about 1300hrs after our lunch. The lunch was goood!
I am so glad that we had the chance to go to the back of the kitchen to see how they prepare the food. Alhamdulillah, they don't mix all their cooking utensils together with the non Halal ones. It was really good that they followed the Halal procedures. The hotel staff and the chef were really friendly and amazing! Oh anw! Dusit Thani is Halal certified and has a Halal section that is also rated CrescentRated 5!!!! ﾟﾎﾊ
Afterwards, we started our tour and our first stop was at the historical Intramuros Manila. We visited the Fort Santiago and we actually learnt alooooot from the hour which took us about one hour or so to finish the whole tour area. The place was really nice! We also went to the oldest church that was the only building that's still standing strong since the World War II.
We went to the biggest mosque in the area. We were told that there were a few more smaller mosques around - not only in the south of Philippines, but also around the north. I felt really blessed that even though Singapore don't have the majority of Muslims, we are still living good. There's really a small population of Muslims around Philippines right after the Spanish took over and forced them to convert to Christianity. Wallahu a'lam.
It was already half a day. The traffic was bad when we were on our way back to the hotel slash shopping. We only had about 2 hours to shop at the SM mall which is the biggest mall in the CBD area. IT REALLY IS HUGE! Super super big! Bigger than MBS. And a good thing was that there were about 3 malls that were connected! And 2 hours was surely not enough at all!
We rushed back to the hotel room to rest for a while and to pack before we we headed off to Shangri La Hotel for our dinner. The dinner WAS SUPERB! The chefs there are super friendly and the food was that good too ! Although there wasn't much of a choice for the Halal food section, it was really fulfilling. The chef made us their steak specially for us. Oh God, words couldn't describe how tasty, tender, juicy the beef steaks were!
Alhamdulillah for the day today!! Looking forward for day two to Bohol! Gotta tuck in now and rest! Need to wake up pretty early tomorrow!
