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Mithun Divakaran

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Subic Bay town boats Philippines

Philippines: Strolling around San Felipe town; visiting Subic Bay

Date: January 3, 2023

After arriving in LiwLiwa yesterday and checking out the beach, we wondered how to spend the day today. We took a trike to San Felipe Public market, and tried to find a money exchange place that would accept Singapore dollars. Unfortunately, I learned that even though there are many Filipinos working in Singapore, in small towns across the Philippines… don’t expect money exchange centers to accept a wide a variety of foreign currency. US dollars are still your safest bet.

Santo Tomas sand river Zambales Philippines
The Santo Tomas river of sand

Fortunately I managed to find a money exchange place in the neighbouring town of San Narciso that would accept Singapore dollars and converted some in exchange for Philippines pesos.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we had an early lunch now that I had enough cash in hand.

Lunch pasta sisig Zambales
Cafe de Verde was the name of the restaurant but the food was quite forgettable. Mediocre at best. All this came to ₱590 (₹876/$10/€9.7)

We sat at the restaurant to do some work as the mobile internet in LiwLiwa beach wasn’t always reliable.

San Narciso Zambales Philippines
After we left the restaurant, we walked around San Narciso
San Sebastian Parish church Zambales
San Sebastian Parish church
Old house San Narciso Zambales
An old wooden house that’s now open to visitors

There wasn’t much else to do in this town, so we took a bus back to San Felipe.

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LiwLiwa beach blue sea aerial drone

Philippines: Getting to Liwliwa Beach, Manila to San Felipe (Zambales) by bus

Date: January 2, 2023

After mostly mall-hopping in Manila, just after the New Year, we decided to take a break and head out somewhere. I had looked for beach destinations in Luzon itself and that’s when my girlfriend suggested LiwLiwa beach in Zambales province. The town/village we would need to get to was San Felipe and we would have to take a bus from a company called Victory Liner to get there.

So we took a taxi to Victory Liner’s Cubao terminal, in Quezon City.

Victory Liner Cubao terminal ticket counter
Although we did get to the terminal by 8:30am or so, unfortunately the tickets for the 9AM bus to Iba were already sold out

So we only got tickets for the 11AM bus. Tickets to San Felipe cost ₱484 (₹726/$8/€8) for one. We booked our stay at Cafe de Liwa which offers a few cottages as well. The owners recommended getting down at San Felipe Public Market. So Victory Liner buses going to Iba or Sta. Cruz are both good. See this route map (orange is Zambales line) to get a better idea.

We sat at the terminal and I used the wait time to get some work done on my laptop.

Inside Victory Liner bus Cubao Manila
We boarded our bus by 10:45 in the morning

The bus left on time and the journey would take us around 3 and 1/2 hours. Watch the video at the end of this post which features clips from our bus journey.

Philippines arena sports stadium Manila
We drove past the Philippines Arena and Sport Stadium

Philippines Arena is where a lot of major concerts now take place. Now I know why Filipino K-pop fans complain whenever events are held at Philippines Arena — it’s so far from the city!

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Philippines: Divisoria’s 168 Shopping Mall and Tutuban Night Market

After arriving in Manila on 19 December 2022, I spent much of my time indoors for a number of reasons. Christmas time meant much of Manila would have been crowded. The weather also wasn’t the best during my time in Manila.

Since I had already seen most of whatever Manila has to offer as far tourists sights go (this was my fourth visit to Philippines), whenever I would step out, I would mostly end up hanging out at Manila’s many, many shopping malls.

So just before Christmas, I stepped out to take a break from work and headed to SM Megamall, once the largest mall in the Philippines until SM corporation opened Mall of Asia in 2006. I took the MRT train and got down at Ortigas station.

SM Megamall curved building Mega Tower
The curved building next to the mall is called the Mega Tower

SM Megamall was huge and I easily spent close to two hours checking out several stores, including all the fast fashion brands (H&M, ZARA, and Uniqlo) and SM’s own gigantic department store. I didn’t take any photos from inside the mall… because all malls look the same to me nowadays.

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