This post has it all...

Travel Philippines

For this post I thought I would capture a few of the smaller things that have been keeping us entertained over here. Along with a visit to another park, and the drama’s of the postal service. This post has it all – humour, adventure and suspense.

Pictures from the Roadside

As we travel along on our way from here to there, I see beauty everywhere. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The simplest lines, colours and shapes create beautiful art. Sometimes my camera captures them, sometimes not.

Here are a few highlights I have captured since we have been here. I hope you can see the magic in them.

In the middle of the road, there are flowers and textures which draw your eye.

Are you as intrigued as I am about this bike’s story?

The image of the brooms is overexposed, but I particularly like the patterns the cracks make on the wall behind the brooms.

BB actually took this photo of the cyclist! He was clicking the camera at anything out of the taxi window. I love it.

Sleeping man – this was taken roadside on EDSA, this is my favourite picture.

Sweet Delight…
I have discovered some great joys over here. One of them is Cinnabon! We don’t have this back home so just humour me if you have grown up eating this gooey sticky amazingness. I would have captured the picture of my actual chocolate coated, cinnamon bun joys but I ate them. We have an unofficial rule in our house – if you go to The Podium (a small mall we frequent for good coffee, a play centre and other things), bring home Cinnabon…It needs to be eaten fresh and warm though.

Celeb Chocolates

Look, I don’t think I would consider this a great highlight but it gave me a giggle. It is not actually a Filipino thing, they are made in Europe but there is this range of overpriced dark chocolate bars. The pictures on the front are animals dressed up like celebrities. I got William and Kate to show you, but you can get Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Madonna and more. Actually I find them creepy…

Places to Eat

I found this place a few weeks back. It is called Green Pastures and it is divine! This restaurant is an organic, local produced sourced, homemade restaurant. This is the second restaurant like this I have written about. I just wish you could taste the flavour and freshness of the food! It amazes me because I am yet to source decent fruit and veg over here! Next time I go – which I hope is soon, I am going to ask the Chef where they get their produce from! This is a Farmhouse salad that I ate and it was perfection! The drink is called Kombucha Tea, which is an ancient drink made with enzymes.

It is meant to be detoxifying. It was very refreshing.

La Mesa Eco Park

The other day my friend and I decided to take the children out to the La Mesa Eco Park.

Situated just out of town a bit in Kalikasan, this park is built around the main dam which provides the majority of water to Metro Manila. As a sustainability project, the area was renovated and turned into a public park. The income generated is returned to the park for ongoing preservation and protection.

On arrival you start to descend down a path which seems to take you deeper into a dense green paradise. As we walked down the path I was instantly struck by the wonderful scent of the forest. I looked around and admired the healthy green foliage and high vast tree canopy’s.

This park has a few different elements to it. There is a butterfly park, a swimming pool and zipline. What is lovely though is just the vast stretch of

walk paths which blend into the natural landscape. Scattered around are shady places you can easily sit and rest, enjoy a picnic or just doze off for a few hours. We tired the children out by taking a long stroll around the park while the children rode scooters and bikes.

We sat in the shade for morning tea as the children explored and then enjoyed walking around winding and twisting paths, over small bridges and through secret gardens.

Finally it was lunch time and we sat at one of the few kitchens set up in the park. Sitting at a table under the trees with a few electric fans for ‘air conditioning’, we enjoyed traditional Pinoy food. Noodles, chicken and Halo Halo for a treat.

After our morning, it was time to head home, out of the heat of the day. The children were asleep before we left the carpark!

Going Postal over the Postal Service – but watch this space…

Family and a friend posted over gifts for FB’s birthday which was very thoughtful. They sent them oh I don’t know, about seven weeks ago….the postal service here is notorious for being unreliable.

I have been checking with reception every few days if our packages have arrived. Yesterday in our letterbox I found the familiar notice that there are packages ready for pickup at the local post office. Awesome! They had been cleared by customs, and if I could kindly pick them up as soon as possible and pay 200 peso for the effort that would be great. No problem. I’d be delighted! One small question – what is the address of said post office? You would think wouldn’t you, that it is written on the notice…no. It isn’t. Ok, I am an intelligent woman, very resourceful and I think, the best detective on the planet. First I asked our reception staff here at our Condo block. Nope, no idea. Next I asked my trusty friend Google. Any luck? No. Alrighty then, let me ask my expat community on Facebook…..*enter sound of crickets here* This cannot be possible so I go back to the internet and find a whole blog post about how bad this post office is. That is great but did you think to write the address in? No. Finally I found the post office website. Excellent this will sort it…first the page froze on me, and nearly crashed my laptop. When I finally got it up and got to the page on post office location – I was full of anticipation by now….there are three…no I’m not kidding, there are three offices that could be where I need to go to pick up my packages.

So, let’s just say a terse message was sent to my beloved asking him to have the Filipino’s in his office help us. I sent him the location information to pass onto them to help…because when he first asked them, they had no idea where it was. They did some investigating, found a possible location and a phone number to call to enquire where your packages are and which location to pick them up from. Sounds good….oh the number is out of service at the moment. You have to physically attend a site to work out where you need to go….OK Look friends and family who read my blog….please keep this under advisement. Until further notice as much as you want to send us presents – and I love getting pressies. Please don’t. We really won’t be upset or offended if you skip out on birthdays, anniversaries or any other special occasion.

I should take a leaf out of my own book shouldn’t I. Do you want to know what I did this afternoon – after all of this?…to explain my reasoning – I read a comment by someone here that they order off Amazon and get door to door service…I found a hair product I really really want and can’t seem to find here. So I ordered it off Amazon and put the address for here. I know I know, I should have sent it to a friends back home, who could have passed it on to the next person to fly over for SB’s work. I guess I just wanted to be a rebel and test the system some more.

So watch this space as tomorrow the office support at SB’s work are going to go hunting for our packages. They may or may not be intact, they may or may not have had items stolen…sorry ‘taken’ for customs reasons. I will give an update. Oh and if my hair product arrives to my door in the seven days it is promised, well, party time! Which I will be able to do because I will apparently have fabulous hair and we all know if you have fabulous hair then life is one big party!!

Tags: chocolate, cinnabon, eating out, green pastures, la mesa eco park, parks, postal service, view from the street

I am Sarah, I was an Australian living in the Philippines with my family. Now we are back in Perth, Western Australia. I write about local and budget travel, lifestyle and the bits inbetween. I hope to encourage readers to get out and discover their 'place'.