Today we took a cab out to the Green Hills Mall and then Ocean Park which is the aquarium out here. Green Hills is the counterfeit mall and that place is crazy. The mall actually has 3 different parts. The first part is actual stores and legitimate vendors. The second part is permanent little store fronts that are sorta skechy but I'm sure they're ok and the third part....well the third part is like an indoor flea market. The picture here is of the third part from one level above. Every stand is full of counterfeit items. Everything you can imagine.....there was even a stand of counterfeit Nike clothes. I bought a Breitling watch for 1100 pesos which is about $23. He wanted 1200, I said I would give him 1000 and he said 11. That's the first time I've ever haggled. It's a gorgeous watch and I thought if after 4 weeks it is still working I would go back and get 2 more. The watch I bought was white and I would get a black one and a blue one. Well I woke up this morning and it had stopped. I set the time again and the second hand started moving again. I'm going to put a new battery in it and hopefully it'll be ok. I also bought 4 movies at $100 pesos a piece....a little over $2. I bought Tropic Thunder, Righteous Kill, Iron Man and Eagle Eye. I haven't checked the quality yet but everyone here who has bought them said they are good.
We took 3 cab rides, one to the mall, one to the aquarium and one back to the hotel and we got 3 different types of drivers. The first was awesome. Took us right to the mall no problems. Cabs are really cheap here and it was about a twenty five minute ride and it cost us 95 pesos. The second ride, the driver drove us in circles a little and either he didn't understand english very well or he was just ignoring us. He drove us through some very lower class areas of Manila and it was really sad. I couldn't imagine living in some of these little huts and outhouse type buildings. When you would stop at a light there are people that walk through the cars either selling meaningless crap or it will be a woman who is leading a blind man and they are begging for money. It's really sad. They walk right up the window of a car and stand there for a ten or twenty seconds staring at you and then move on to the other car. The guys I were with were staring back at this little boy selling flowers and when they make eye contact they won't leave until you look away. We were at the light for about another minute and the kid wouldn't leave because they wouldn't stop staring at him. I kind of wish they wouldn't have done that but oh well.
Now one thing they tell you about cab rides is to make sure they turn on the meter. A lot of cabs don't turn on their meters and then when you get to your destination they tell you how much you owe. So we got in this last cab and there were 5 of us, as usually I'm the biggest so I sat in the front and the other 4 took the back. This guy refused to turn on his meter. I said, "dude, turn on your meter." He said something like, car overful I'm not turning it on and Tyson said, fine pull over and we'll get out. He got mad and said, there's too many, you pay me 300 pesos for the ride....I said, absolutely not, you can let us out. He said, fine and slammed on his meter and said, then you pay me an extra 50 pesos.....I said, alright 50.....which of course is 3 pesos more than $1 US....All and all it was a pretty good day. There's not much to say about the aquarium, I posted a picture from there too. It was fun but wasn't very big and there really wasn't anything exotic there, just the normal fare.
It's almost 10am Monday morning as I write this. I'm heading to the gym then I'm going to go hang out at the pool for a little bit where Jeff Schwartz is swimming laps. Then we're going to go Jeepney hoping for a few hours and hopefully I'll have some good stories from there.....until then....
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