klub icip-icip

so it happens that i finally decided to go to the phillipines to visit fenty, fie sian, rizki, ucil and all their friends
with the excuse of being "burnt out" at work, i managed to escape for a week:
visited a new country, met lots of interesting people, saw the most spectacular sunsets (see the picture!!! isn't it just breathtaking?!?!), ate the all-new all-different filipino food
and here's the report

fenty and rizki took me to eat halo halo in the restaurant aristocrat
while being fully aware that fenty has given a nice report once about halo-halo, i just can't help showing off that i have also eaten this infamous dessert of manila
the purple one in the glass is sweet yam ice cream
and we had to mix it with the rest of content of the glass
it made a super sweet dessert than even a sweet-tooth like me finds almost overbearing
but most probably that's coz ive just had a tall hot chocolate in the dungeon starbucks before we went to the aristocrat

interestingly the first eating place they took me in manila is a thai restaurant (instead of a filipino one)
named sala thai (sala mean living room)
very good food here and the chef turns out to be a friend of pom, the thai girl who lives in the same dorm with fenty, rizki and fie sian
we ordered tom yam, papaya salad and chicken dish
all of them spicy
if we bring pom here, we should be able to get a 10% discount (special for thai customer) but unfortunately she couldn't come
but still i had a very lovely first meal here

and now about the cafes and bars we visited in manila
here's some of the most interesting:
there's max brenner cafe in green belt shopping centre
the menu is a bit like cafe du chocolate here except that all the waiters here are bald
and then there's a bar called the hobbit house in a mabini street
where all the waiters are dwarfs
we have to pay entrance fee to get into this bar
and there are a lot of lesbian cafes near fenty's dorm in don syidoro street
where we can find lots of pretty boys/handsome girls a.k.a the girls who wear very short hair and looks like sweet-faced boys among the other "real" beautiful ones

then we went to boracay with two thais (feaz and pom - sometimes brother and sister and sometimes mother and son - very complicated ^-^)
feaz is the photographer (we had thousands of lovely holiday pictures thanks to him) whose secret obsession is to become a model =P
while pom is the leader of our holiday group, very good in bargaining, a true PR person, she took care of us all like a mom, making sure every one is happy
her secret obsession is to become miss thailand (thus explaining all her hospitality and friendliness ^-^)
somebody has claimed that she looked like the young version of actress christine hakim

this is sinigang
traditional filipino food, the equivalent of "sayur asem" in indonesia
the taste is almost the same
only here they put fish as part of the dish

we ate lots of sea food in boracay
this is scallop soup
pom and dana, another indonesian from makassar who's studying english for three months in manila, had a competition who could eat more scallops during dinner
and dana wins

this is pinky fish
also had it in boracay
nobody really knows what it is and we were quite suspicious of the colour
it tastes fishy and has lots of little bones

fenty and suman
after the sunday service in Union Church of Manila, we went to the market and ate suman
(equivalent to indonesian lemper - only the filling here is sweet)
i tried mango suman, which is very very nice

can't help not displaying this picture because of the spontaneity of the fishseller in sea side macapagal
this is the eating place that combines market and restaurant
we went to the market place to buy the fish first before going to the restaurant on the other side to have it cooked
when i took out my camera, the seller immediately made such a pose
perhaps another one with the secret obsession to be a model =P
bought two lapu-lapu fish, and two bunches of kangkung
the kangkung is fried with flour

and this is the long-lost almost forgotten ucil who is still in katipunan, still working on her thesis, and just had her chapter 3 file all destroyed because of virus ... poor girl
but still she looks happy when we met at gateway to see the movie "stardust"
then had lunch at a pinoy restaurant
she ordered everything for us with her excellent tagalog
here's dinuguan which is made of pig's blood - much like the traditional batak food in indonesia

all in all, i find filipino food rather strange
so could never really ate much and i can feel it that i lost weight a bit when the holiday was over
but it's been such a terrific holiday, one of the best in my life
thank you very much for everyone who have made it such, those who shared the room with me, take time to be my guide, willingly forgot their homework, dissertation, proposal, etc just to keep me company, cooked for me, picked me up from the airport in an indecent morning hour, saw me off for my trip back home, made me smile and laugh non-stop
this blog is dedicated for you all ... the wonderful people in manila ^-^