Day Six

March 11 day 6
Today was shopping day. We decided to get a break from driving and stay in the city for a day and get our shopping out of the way. We started around 10 am and first went to a kind of market where they sell a combination of local crafts, antiques and overruns from factories and other individual or mismatched items. We managed to buy a few items there and then on to Greenhills mall which is known for knock-offs. This was the only place where we found groups of foreigners shopping. We had a huge and delicious lunch there of local specialties: molo soup, kilawing tanigue (a form of ceviche), beef kare kare (beef in peanut sauce), gambas (shrimp in spice red sauce) and pinapotoc (golden dory fish baked in a banana leaf with spices and vegetables + local San Miguel beer. After that we hit the final mall ---Mega Mall -- where we went to beautiful store called Kultura which sells Filipino arts and crafts. The selection is huge and there are so many beautiful things there that we (mostly Bo) spent hours trying to decide what to get. We have a lot of room in our suitcases, but it may not be enough for all the stuff we already accumulated, and there will be more!

For a few days now we’ve been trying to arrange a trip to a beach resort for a couple of days -- either on the island of Boracay or Bohol, but without much success. It’s high season here so everything is sold out. Luckily, Wojtek has connections and his friend Ronald was able to get us a 3 day two night package in Boracay so we are going to fly there tomorrow.