We woke up early even though the blinds were closed, likely because we fell asleep so early. It feels really late when it gets dark at 6pmevery day.

We had breakfast at the Mercure, then walked over to Bill’s office. He wanted to check in with a couple of people to ensure that the month end work would get done today. Everyone was really sweet and Charlene even had a gift for me, a nice sun hat that will come in useful today. We then hailed a jerky cab to the Dampa Seafood Market on Manila Bay. it was not very big, but really cool. We saw all kinds of shrimp, prawns, lobster, fish, crabs, muscles, oysters, other shell fish and a first for us, sea monkeys. We received lots of attention, especially from the restaurant staff (one straight, one gay and one transvestite). The prices are very high, but the reason was because you select your seafood, then they prepare it at one of the neighbouring restaurants.

Then we hailed a short cap ride to bayside near Mall of Asia for a short stroll along the waterfront restaurants and amusement park.

I was able to order a refreshing Thai Iced Tea in the mall and we wandered around for a while in the a/c.

We hopped into another cab back to The Podium Mall, Ortegas and had a great lunch at the Wild Flour. We had some of the green tinged muscles that we saw at the seafood market in an amazing broth, a Cuban sandwich, and a crab nicoise sandwich. The food and service was very good!

We then walked over to the Tipsy Pig pub in the Capitol Commons area. The wifi was not working, but were spending our time catching up on the blog while sitting on the patio having a drink.

We took a Jeepney back to the hotel. It was my first trip in the low cost public transportation vehicles that we had seen on The Amazing Race. They are convenient, but not comfortable - hard bench seats, no breeze or a/c, diesel fumes, stuck in traffic... but otherwise it was kinda fun!

After a short break and refresh, we walked over to Marco Polo’s rooftop lounge for the sunset. Although we could only sit on the opposite side of the restaurant and not actually see the sunset. We had a couple of drinks, Bill had a cool flaming drink and I had a not so cool vodka and soda.

We were finally able to connect to wifi on the iPad and able to email the contents of the blog, so we can do an update. Hurray! We were also able to check into our Malaysia Air flights to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow too. We are ready for the next part of our adventure now!