Brief Stint in the Philippines

The other title of this post could be 'we only saw the inside of our hotel and the place that I work while in the Philippines' :).  I am just going to start out saying, the Philippines is crazy; I don't think I am going to be able to convey how crazy it was in these pictures because I tried as much as possible to stay in my bubble. While I am up for exploring most of the time, I am not up for risking my life and that is what it seemed I would be doing had I gone exploring.  We started our journey from Japan to the Philippines taking Japan Air and oh.my.goodness it was nice. We ended up in business class and we had more than enough room to ourselves.  What they made up for in air cabin quality, they lacked in landing. The landing was R.O.U.G.H!

Before long, we found our driver and he embarked on a 4.5 hour drive to our hotel. 4.5 hours!!!! And it was every bit crazy along the way. No one paid any attention to traffic lanes.  We looked up one hour in and we saw that we had just made it to the other side of the airport.

Not to sound too much like a brat, we had a driver and air conditioning (thank goodness for air conditioning!), because most local Filipinos were driving around in these open air buses packed to maximum capacity.

We even saw a horse going down the road carted in the back of a pick up truck- as we got closer, we realized the horse was fake, but it was funny nonetheless.

Upon arrival, we had the nicest note and shortbread cookies; because the food was terrible on the plane, I gobbled these cookies up lickety split!

After we settled in, I met the girl that I am traveling with at the pool!

To have a beer! After looking around, I texted my husband and told him this felt a lot like Mexico minus my number one man!!

The cotton candy sunsets were marvelous!

Just stunning, right?  That night we just headed up to my room, ordered room service and had a pajama party eating in bed!

Sunrise the next morning on my way to breakfast!

And I know this has nothing to do with the Philippines other than I had a wonderful Face Time conversation with my family while I was there; if you look closely you will notice that Eberleah is wearing my heals and toting around a purse with the biggest smile on her face! Leading up to the trip, she was trying to master walking in heels (like big sister Emma, duh!) and she finally nailed it!!

We worked all day, rather uneventful and no pictures ;), but that night we had a steak dinner cooked for us at the restaurant; we were the only guests! It was fancy schmancy (especially for my attire) and the crab cakes and macaroni and cheese were to die for :).

The next day, we worked some more (I gave my presentation) and we packed up to head back to Manila so as to hopefully not run into the crazy traffic! Angela and I outside our site!

The car ride to Manila was thankfully less than 4.5 hours, but we still clocked in a good 2 plus hours with mountain views and blue cloudy skies as far as the eyes could see (for much of the way!).

We arrived at our third hotel of our trip and they greeted us with cotton candy! Blurry, but I think the picture adequately captures my excitement!!

That night we had drinks and dinner with stunning views of the golf course and tried out a selfie stick ;).

The next morning we had the most amazing breakfast spread (and that is saying something because we have stayed at several nice hotels). Crepes made to order (mine had strawberries and bananas inside), fresh squeezed juice table side, all of the ingredients to make lochs, crispy bacon, I am just drooling thinking about it!

The view of Manila from my hotel room :).

Based on these pictures, I know it only looks like we ate in the Philippines, but we worked too, I promise :). Our Philippines hosts were as gracious and nice as they come and I would say I can't wait to go back there (but that might not be true ;)).  Next pit stop on our around the world trip, one of my favorites, Shanghai!