Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Manila and Seoul - August 2012




In Manila for a conference and honestly, Manila is really pretty weak. It's not very walkable, and if you do walk somewhere other than one of the very westernized malls in Makati, people look at you as if you are crazy. Really not much to write home about this trip. It's a little hard to trust people as a lot of them seem to be interested in what kind of tip they can get from you or how they might milk more money out of you. At any rate, the Shangri-La Makati hotel was very nice and had the best, most diverse buffet-style breakfast I've ever seen. Sushi, sashimi, dim sum, indian, philipino, western, cheese, and basically anything you might want to eat for breakfast or lunch. Oh, and some fruit and a variety of 6-8 juices. Great spa with a nice hot tub, steam, and sauna. 42 pesos for $1 at this time. Taxi from the airport to the Shagri-La Makati took a long route, but still 450p so only around $10. Return trip was quicker and 140p. So yeah, that's a 25 min cab ride for about $4 including a tip.

Very good drinks at the Blind Pig in Makati. Very cool wood interior and a drink menu consulted on by Milk and Honey in London. Base drinks (Wild Turkey bourbon, etc.) were 330p which wasn't too bad. A drink from the next shelf up, e.g. Sazerac rye, Bullit or Buffalo Trace bourbon was 1000p, or about $25. I know they had to get that to Manila, but BT is $20 a bottle retail in San Francisco.



Spent one day in Seoul as a stopover on Asiana Airlines (SFO-ICN-MNL RT). Interesting place for the short amount of time I was there and that doesn't include scenery as it rained basically the whole time. Would definitely go back and have some more street food and ramen. People seemed very nice and I noticed that there was a good amount of MLB wear.  Took a nice bus (KLM airport limousine) from ICN to the Grand Hyatt Seoul which worked pretty well for $14 each way. 1123 won per 1$ at this time.

A few pics