Visit from my Brother

Well, things are pretty busy around here!! Yet when I got an e-mail from my "little" brother that he would be in the area (Malaysia), and was going to stop by in Manila I thought well maybe I could take one day off:)Plus, so little of Manila and the surrounding area have I seen, it would be a wonderful excuse to see some sights I thought! So, last Sunday Gareth arrived in the afternoon, made it to the hotel where I met him. Deciding that since he only had a couple of days in Manila, there was no better time than immediately get him on a Jeepney. The first Jeepney we got on, no problem, got us where we wanted to go, or at least closer. However, the second Jeepney (oops got us a little lost, i.e. went the wrong direction). I have this theory that even though you don't know exactly where a Jeepney is headed, you can't go that far wrong. Furthermore, for 15 cents, it doesn't cost much for the adventure. And to my case and point, where we ended up in the Jeepney wasn't that far away from where we wanted to go. (Although, after that we cheated and jumped in cab, it was starting to rain!!). We had decided to go to a seafood/fish restaurant on the harbor and even though the restaurant was right on the ocean, we were quickly told that the seafood and fish were not caught in the harbor, just in case we had seen it in the light of the day:) Exhausted, we both headed back to our "comfy" beds and agreed to meet at one of the light rail stations the next day.



I could tell Gareth wasn't too sure about this as it meant navigating his own way through Manila after only one day (not very nice of his big sister:) But I was very proud of him, he did it!! (Though a little late and very sweaty!!:)) We headed to the bus station to take a bus to a town about one hour outside of Manila. One of my friends from work had given me directions to one of the University of Philippines campuses from which there were some beautiful hikes. On the way to Los Banos we say this restaurant, unfortunately we weren't able to stop a take a peek:)



After arriving around lunch time, we thought it would be a good idea to get a little food before we started exploring. Hmmm... where would food be, it wasn't long before we happened upon one of the university cafeteria's (a little smaller than one at let's say U of I or U of M) but it had food, and that is all that mattered. So, we walked in and yes, definitely got a few stares.