I woke up somewhat early the next day, considering we did not get to bed until 6 or 6:30 AM.

PAUSE PAUSE — I am actually writing this from the Coffee Bean and I am at the window at the front of the place, looking out at the people walking in the mall. I just saw a Chinese guy with what could be called a ‘Chinese afro’. So funny, never seen that style before on a Chinese guy (Since they don’t have naturally curly hair and usually have very thin hair, it must have taken a LOT of work to grow that thing!).

PLAY PLAY — > I walked around the hotel for a while since JJ was still sleeping. Unfortunately, she is kind of lazy when it comes to getting up. She does not have the Fannan ‘get up early on vacations’ mentality. She is by no means in the really really bad category (McAdams?), but she is not in the Fannan category. So I walked around, took my suit, took a book and went in search for the pool.

It turns out this h0tel had a really nice pool. In was kind of this resort style fancy shmancy funny-shaped pool with fake rocks and a mock waterfall, which never seemed to be turned on. The nicest thing about walking outside though was the weather. Oh MY GOD, it was so nice to be in weather that was tropical and warm and humid (just a tad). Shanghai is freakin cold. I have problably told everyone about the cold feeling of Shanghai in the winter but I will belabor everyone once more. It is COLD! Besides the obvious reasons its cold (like its just cold!) the fact that no places have built-in heating systems, makes your house always cold (and if its not cold, its this fake artificial standalone heater, which is in a temperature category of its own). So it just doesn’t have the same feeling as what I am used to. In Tahoe, for example, yes, its cold, really cold in the winter. But honestly, how much time do you spend outside in the cold. And how much of that time is spent without being prepared for the cold (a la jacket, hat, gloves, snow pants, etc). So for the most part, even in the cold Tahoe winter, I am not really cold. When you are inside, its always nice and warm. The house temperature, albeit expensive to run, is nice and toasty.

In China and especially in Shanghai, if its cold outside, its cold inside. My house is freezing, just absolutely freezing. There is a small portable air conditioner / heater in each room, but it seems only the one in the office does anything. And even in my office, if I turn it on all day, never open the door and turn it up to the maximum temperature, it still feels crappy. Its like the heating in your car, it doesn’t feel like real heat, even though you feel somewhat warm.

Anyway the temperature in the Philippines this morning was great. Not too warm, but tropical. The pool was fabulous, took a little dip, layed down on the pool lounge chair, relaxed in the sun. It was still early so there was nobody at the pool, nobody making any noise, no disturbances. Ahh, I miss that.

Eventually I had to get up though, and by the time I returned to the room, it was time to get JJ up and meet the rest of the tour group. We gathered in the lobby and got on the bus for our first adventure of the day. One of the interesting, and looking back on it, funny aspects of the trip was how clueless I was (and actually how clueless most of the people were) on the tour. At times I tend to overanalyze things, but it seemed like very few people (nobody that I knew of) had any idea what were were doing, where we were going and when and where we were eating. On American tours at least, you usually have a pretty well-defined schedule about what is going on. They tell you beforehand what you are eating, what places you are visiting. I think they did this but on a much more generalized scale, so that people knew we were going to ‘places’ but not necessarily what places. They knew we were ‘eating’ but had no idea where or what kind of food.

So I got this sense immediately and I had this notion stuck in my mind throughout the trip. We drove around a while and for me, its always very cool to just look out the window and see what this strange and new kind of place looks like. That is one of the good things about riding in a bus on a tour is that you get to see the city a lot more than if you were traveling on your own and only going to a select number of places (by some other form of transportation). Looking around, the city of Cebu looked just like old Hawaii looks like. It reminded me of Maui, or rather what Maui looked like in the 90’s. The building were all modern but not new. You did not see any big buildings anywhere, you saw a lot of farming, a lot of green, lots of trees and plants and grass and foliage. There were lots of strange things along the road like abandon cards, weed-filled basketball courts. Loads of poor village-style houses.

One thing I noticed from the locals was how friendly they were, especially to people on the bus. I swear, everytime we passed a group of local Phillipinos, whether they were young kids playing in a playground or if they were older seniors playing cards on the street, they were very willing (to the point of awkwardness) to wave to anyone who initiated a wave. Their mouths opened up, they returned this great big smile and they all looked so happy. JJ said the tour guide told everyone people in the Philippines generally have a very positive attidue towards life, despite much of the country living in poverty. Throughout the trip, I found the people to be very nice, especially local people who you found on the street or sellers in stores. They had a very friendly nature to them, very warm.

The bus first stopped at what looked to be a temple. Now you can imagine my first reaction, when the bus pulls up to what looks to me like a Chinese temple. In fact, it really was a Chinese temple. I couldn’t believe we were stopping at a temple, you would think Chinese people would be sick of visiting temples by now (I sure am after living in China for a while). It turned out this place was reasonably nice just because it was situated on the top of a hill and it provided a very nice look at the island, and the water and boats in the distance and a lovely background for pictures. I remember we were sort of leaning on the railing of the temple, looking out into the distance and we saw a house very near to the temple which was unbelievably huge and luxurious. It must have had ten rooms with huge windows, really fancy architecture and nice car parked in front. I gotta believe the Philippines is full of these kinds of places, kind of like how ccertain cities in Mexico and other poor countries and cities are turning into. Rich foreigners are buying these extravagent houses and secondary vacation homes because they are just so much cheaper than more upscale cities and countries. The crazy thing though, is that just beyong this huge house, you could see a small group of ’shacks’, just unbelievably poor, falling-apart homes that provided a considerable contrast to the exatragent home just in front of us. (I remember when I went to San Felipe, Mexico, I saw this a lot on the coast when we went to the beach.)

The next stop on the tour was this Christian church, another location that was kind of unneccessary. We got the story (or the others on the tour got the story) from the tour guide about how Spain used to occupy the country, introduced Christianity to the people. Now the country has a rich history in Christian values, they have churches everywhere and they visit them each week on Sunday. I guess to a Chinese person, this is interesting and amazing that there are churches all over the island, but for me, its nothing out of the ordinary.  Plus, it was not like the churches have some huge significant place in history (at least not that I saw).

The one thing that I remember the most about the Church was how many street sellers there were outside of the gates.  We quickly passed them by on our trip inside, but on our way out the back, we ran into some of them again.  Although China and Shanghai have their fair share of beggars, some of which are on the truly sad side, this place had some of the worst ‘looking’ beggars I’d ever seen.  By ‘looking’ I just mean they were grabbing you, they were young children, they were mothers with babies that had missing limbs.  Even for a Chinese person who is somewhat accustomed to seeing that every once in a while on the subway in Shanghai, it was not a pretty sight.  And of all places, right around a church.  (I wonder if they are religious, probably right?).  One of the small children kept following me, asking for money, asking for something, telling me she has no money for food.  At this point, I just have very little tolerance for that kind of stuff, but finally she was trying to sell me a pair of sunglasses, which I finally bought for $3.  Pretty good deal for some fake Oakleys!

We eventually left this super touristy location and by this time it was slowly getting  dark.  The sun had peaked over the horizon and the temperature was starting to cool outside.  Overall, I had expected the weather to be too hot, but to my surprise, it was just perfect.  I couldn’t have asked for anything better.  In fact, a few times, it had that Hawaiian-style rain where it starts to pour for five or so minutes, the temperature is cool, but not cold, and then in ten minutes or less, the weather is back to normal and all the clouds have cleared.  Such a refreshing feeling.  Before getting the the restaurant for dinner, we stopped by this small fruit stand on the street.  I am not sure why we stopped, probably the tour guide got a cut of our purchases because it seemed like an awfully strange place to stop, but it was no problem.  They had rows and rows of fruit being sold.  Since the climate in the Philippines is similar to Hawaii, tropical, they have all this great fruit for such low prices.  The mangoes are huge and really cheap.  We ended up buying 3 big mangoes at around 75 cents each or 5 RMB.  Over the course of the trip, we finished them and they were delicious, very easy to peel which made eating them without any kind of knife a task easier than I expected.

So now the big finally of the night.  The experience you have all been waiting for (and probably heard by now).  We pulled up to this big shopping center, what appeared to be the location of the restuarant we were going for dinner.  We were in this large bus and it was still drizzling outside so it was kind of difficult to see anything outside of the bus windows.  We pulled into the parking area for this shopping mall and in the distance I saw a sign that red in big red and gold colors:  ‘A Taste of Mandarin’.  I thought to myself, oh my god, you have to be kidding me.  No, it could not be, could it.  The first day we are in the Philippines and the tour guide is taking us to a Chinese restaurant?  I thought to myself, it must just be a coincidence.

Our bus pulled closer and closer, heading right in the direction of this restaurant I saw in the distance.  It was not looking good.  My mind was racing; ‘How could we be going to this place?’ ‘It’s the first night in the Philippines, there is no way they would do this.’  ‘Why is nobody saying anything’,  Eventually you know the rest of the story, we were taken right to this stupid Chinese restaurant.  I was complaining, mostly to myself and some to JJ.  She also thought this was ridiculous, but I guess more so since I was being such a pain in the ass.  But really, YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME.  On vacations, there should be standard for tours and this is how it goes.  On the first night, you eat local food.  You try a nice local restaurant with fancy food, experience the culture, the tradition everything that is interesting about the place you are visiting.  You are visiting their country so this is the least you can do.  After a few days, I admit, this gets old and you naturally want to eat your own style food again (remember in China, I now feel this everyday, lol).  So in the very least bit, you must stay away from you own food for at least 2 DAYS before you revert back to your own country’s food.

Let me elaborate by providing you with an American version of this story.  Imagine yourself in this very luxurious American tour you have purchased through your travel agent in the States.  You paid top dollar for this tour and they told you the accomodations were of the highest quality, the food was great and all-inclusive, the hotels were nice and everything about the tour was worth the money.  You discover on the first night that the tour bus, containing 30 people is headed to dinner at Denny’s!  They have a Denny’s in the Philippines and the tour guide was you to have a nice meal at Denny’s (Maybe the Grand Slam is still available for dinner, its 24/7 right?).  Can you imagine how the people on the tour would react to this?  It would be chaos, it would be immediate cuts in tips, it would be complaining, and frankly, its such a ridiculous example, it would never happen, ever.  Transfer back to the tour I was on.  Nobody said a word.  I was in a boat all by myself.  Nobody made a peep.  I still cant believe it.  (And for those of you who wonder, was it like very fancy Chinese food?  NO!  It was about a 6/10 dinner, nothing special and definitely not any better than an average meal in Shanghai!)

I tried to get out of that place as soon as I could, I tried my best to avoid embarassing myself and arguing too much (which I probably failed to do with JJ, although as I said before, I’ll give her credit, she seemed almost as pissed off about that as I did by the time we left the restaurant).  We decided to make another stop at the mall before returning back to the hotel.  The bus dropped us off at the same mall we visited the day before, and I ended up buying a few more things, I think a t-shirt and some other clothes.  Some of the other co-workers of JJ liked the store I bought stuff at, so we showed them where I found some shorts, which ended up only costing me $5, such a good deal.

When we got back to the hotel, it was another night of gambling.  This time, it was not too late, so we were able to experience the casino when it was jam packed with people.  The table games were really busy especially the craps games.  They had all of these games that I had never heard of, mostly just spin-offs of Blackjack.  The funny thing about the casino that I noticed when I walked into the main room was a man sitting on this very high chair.  It was like that really traditional job where the foreman sits on this high-rise chair, looks over all table games and tries to find anyone who looks to be cheating.  I gotta believe in this day and age, the casino had cameras and security but it was pretty hilarious to see this guy watching everyone in the room, as if he would be able to discern any form of cheating (I wonder, has this ever worked once in the history of casinos?).

An even better aspect of this second time’s visit to the casino was my favorite room in a casino, which was not open since it was not too late.  YES, THEY HAD A POKER ROOM!  I actually thought the poker room would have been bigger considering the popularity of poker over the last few years, internationally even (but also because they had signs everywhere for Holdem Tournaments and weekly shootouts and Omaha High/Low games).  I ended up joining the only available poker table in the room, a no-limit game which nhad about a $60 buy-in.  I guess JJ was slightly curious about this and she sat behind me and watched (just like that Asian girlfriend does, right poker players?)

I played tight, kind of nervous because even at $60, that is kind of a lot from a Chinese perspective.  I won a small hand early, giving me some winnings.  About 45 minutes into sitting down, I had pocket jacks, and the flop was all low duds.  It was a pretty big hand, with four or five players.  There was betting and raising and eventually re-raising all-in.  I still had more chips than most of them so I decided, reluctantly to call.  I was heads up still with another player, who eventually called me to the river.  I knew I had him beat but I was not sure about the other two players who risked all their chips on this hand.  When the cards were flipped over, it was pretty cool, I had everyone beat.  It was a HUGE hand, I think I pretty much tripled up on that hand, maybe even more than that.  I had so many chips that by the time I cashed out, I had over $200.  It was quite a good night and considering I only played for an hour or so, that was a great hour.  (Plus, I guess JJ was pretty impressed).  Once I won  that hand, I found less interest in playing poker and more interested in keeping my winnings.   Kind of funny how that works.  Anyway, I eventually cashed out, left the casino and we went to bed.  it was a good day.