Category: <span>Travel</span>

Date: October 26, 2014

We all woke up early today as we had to be at Marina Bandar Al Rowdha by around 8am. First up, it was breakfast at the Radisson Blu hotel.

Breads Radisson Blu breakfast buffet — This was just the breads section. Also had fresh pistachios, almonds, cashews, walnuts and a variety of bread spreads.

Ham cold cuts buffet Radisson Blu Muscat — The cold meats and fruits counter. On the other side, there were other traditional breakfast dishes, puri-bhaji, omlette counter, corn flakes and a whole variety of hot & cold drinks on offer. All in all, a huge breakfast buffet!

Croissants pastry breakfast Muscat — I started off with some croissants. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to sample everything in the buffet.

Muscat residential neighbourhood Oman — After breakfast, we were picked up by our driver.

Muscat City highway Oman — We were on our way to Muscat City again

Muscat marina in morning Oman — The marina looked lovely early in the morning

Muscat roundabout Oman — I missed roundabouts of the Gulf 🙂

Oman petrol price — We stopped at a petrol station to fill up and pick up some water bottles. Being in a GCC country, I just had to take a photo of how much petrol costs out here. Regular costs 0.114 riyals, which is Rs. 18 ($0.30/€0.25) per litre!

Muscat township Oman — It was a fairly long drive to Marina Bandar Al Rowdha

Continue reading “Oman: Day 2 (Part 1) – Dolphin watching tour in Muscat” »

Date: May 16th 2014

All my major travel objectives on this 2014 excursion across Philippines was over. Now it was time to wind down a bit and just enjoy my last few days in Manila.

For lunch today, Gale took to me to Little Tokyo, located on Chino Roces Avenue, Makati City. When she told me about Little Tokyo, I thought it was going to be like an entire area dominated by Japanese establishments, like Chinatowns elsewhere in the world.

Little Tokyo restaurants Manila — Little Tokyo turned out to be a privately run complex housing many Japanese eateries

Chino Roces Avenue Japanese Manila — Chino Roces Avenue has a few Japanese supermarkets too

Little Tokyo Manila Makati — We went in and checked out the restaurants inside

Eateries Little Tokyo restaurant Manila — Quite a few choices — some exclusive ramen shops, some sushi bars — but mostly restaurants serving all

Shinjuku restaurant Little Tokyo Manila Philippines — We came back out and sat at the more popular Shinjuku restaurant

Tenshindon Japanese restaurant Manila — I had Tenshindon, rice topped with fried egg and crab meat gravy

Kani salad Shinjuku Little Tokyo Manila — Gale had a bowl of ramen and Kani salad (pictured above) — which was very nice!

You can check out the Shinjuku menu on its Zomato page.

Date: May 17th 2014

In my quest to see more attractions within Manila or close to it, I decided to visit the Marikina Shoe Museum today. It houses a large collection of shoes owned by the infamous Imelda Marcos, widow of the former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Aside from the many allegations of amassing immense illicit wealth, Imelda Marcos was infamous for possessing a collection of over a thousand pairs of shoes — most of it from expensive fashion brands. Some of those pairs are now housed inside the Marikina Shoe Museum.

Fortunately being the weekend, my friend Gale accompanied me today.

View from train to Marikina — We took the train to Santolan

From Santolan station, we took a taxi to get to Marikina.

Marikina big shoe Rizal street — Marikina is dubbed the “Shoe Capital of the Philippines” because of the many shoe production houses in the district

Marikina shoe museum building Manila — The Marikina Shoe Museum is right by Rizal Street and is a small building right in the heart of Marikina

Marikina shoe museum bend — There is an entry fee of ₱50 (₹71/$1/€0.90)

Shoes famous Filipino personalities Marikina — Filipino Shoes of Fame(?)

Marikina shoe museum displays Manila — Photography is restricted and I couldn’t take close ups of the shoes, especially those belonging to Imelda Marcos

Gale Imelda Marcos Marikina — This is my friend posing in front of a portrait of Imelda Marcos (when she was younger)

Marikina shoe museum attractions — Besides housing Imelda Marcos’ shoes, the museum also houses shoes from famous Filipino personalities

Venus Raj shoes Marikina shoe museum — Venus Raj is a Filipino beauty pageant queen

Mayor Guzman shoe collection Marikina — This is a collection of shoes donated to the museum from a former mayor of Marikina

Inside Marikina shoe museum art — There are some art decor around

Wooden cobbler moulds Marikina museum — Wooden shoe moulds line the pillar

Marikina shoe museum floors shoes — The collection of Imelda Marcos’ shoes is on display both downstairs and upstairs. We went upstairs next.

Marikina shoe museum Imelda Indira Gandhi — They had photos of Imelda Marcos with all the famous leaders and personalities she met the world over. That’s Imelda Marcos meeting Indira Gandhi.

Imelda Marcos shoe collection Marikina — I couldn’t take close up shots of the shoes because it’s not allowed, but you will see all sorts of high end brands of shoes here : Pierre Cardin, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and such

And that was it. We were in and out in just 30 minutes. The Marikina Shoe Museum does not house every single pair of shoe owned by Imelda Marcos, only a handful. But still, I didn’t mind. Manila doesn’t offer too many attractions and coming to Marikina by public transportation isn’t that expensive, so I would say Marikina Shoe Museum is worth a quick look.

Gale big shoe booth Marikina — Shoes of all shapes and sizes, all around Marikina

Philippines footwear center Marikina — We went in here next

Marikina shoe making Manila — This was like a promotion facility for the shoe makers of the region. They had a showroom in the front, and at the back was a workshop with all the tools and material used in making shoes.

Marikina shoe factory materials — I asked them where the leather comes from and a worker there told me it’s mostly from Taiwan and some sourced from across Philippines.

Cafe Kapitan restaurant Marikina — Cafe Kapitan restaurant

Lady of Abandoned Church Marikina — Our Lady of the Abandoned Parish Church

Lady of Abandoned Church Marikina Manila — We didn’t go inside as there was a mourning going on

Classic house Marikina Manila Philippines — Marikina seemed very clean and well maintained

It was a nice visit to Marikina. Feels like a nice neighbourhood to live in, to get away from the chaos of Manila.

Tonight was actually my last night in Manila, and if there was one thing I wanted to do in Philippines but hadn’t yet tried, it was karaoke! Like at a proper karaoke bar. Karaoke is probably the national past time in Philippines, especially given every Filipino sings in some shape or form 🙂

So Gale took me to Trinoma Mall in the evening.

Fish & Co value meal Manila — First we had dinner at Fish & Co. This was a pretty good value meal: fries, crisps, 3 fish fillets and 3 beef sliders… for about ₱350? I forgot.

Redbox karaoke Trinoma mall Manila — Then Gale suggested Red Box for karaoke. Being a Saturday night, we had to wait a bit for our room.

Red Box is a popular chain of karaoke lounge bars in Manila. It’s clean, reasonably priced — I believe it was ₱100 an hour for a room, and they had a great library of songs across genres.

Redbox karaoke machine Let it go — *Clearly* the most popular song of the year but not something I was ever going to sing

Westlife karaoke songs Redbox — Instead, I loved Westlife’s singles from their first three albums. Such good sing-along songs. So I sang them… all of them! 🙂

Gale Mithun singing karaoke Redbox — I wasn’t as good a singer as Gale was, but it was fun. I mean that’s the whole point of karaoke anyway.

We ended up singing for 2 hours. She chose her classic favourites, I chose “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and so on. We could have hung around longer, but it was getting late.

Mithun Divakaran singing karaoke — I’m glad Gale took me to Red Box. I didn’t know about the place and was instead thinking of hitting the many dingy karaoke bars that line Manila’s city streets.

May 19th 2014

I left Manila feeling sad that my trip was over. My 2014 trip to Philippines was better than my 2013 trip, but still not as great as my 2011 trip was. But I doubt I’ll ever enjoy quite the experience of that first trip. This time around I finally got to visit Oslob and have a proper whaleshark experience to make up for the disappointment at Donsol. I finally did the Mt. Pinatubo trek which was awesome and thanks to Gale, got to know about other festivals and places to check out.

But after three trips, I still couldn’t go to Batanes, which is still far beyond my reach (literally). There are places like Vigan I feel I should check out, but I like to think for an Indian tourist, I have covered Philippines pretty damn well. Would be nice to be recognized by the tourism board of Philippines and invited back (for free), but that remains a dream too.

Taking off Manila sky sunset — It was late in the evening when my flight took off from Manila

I landed in Hong Kong on time but my connecting Dragon Air flight to Bangalore was delayed because the plane coming from China was late.

British Airways A380 HK airport — Spotted an A380 for the first time. You wouldn’t get an idea of just how big this airplane is until you see it parked next to an A320 or something smaller.

Bangalore airport immigration queue — I landed back in India later than scheduled but the worse part was this queue at immigration. Fancy new extension and they still couldn’t get enough officers to man the counters.

It took me an hour to get out of the airport. My younger brother picked me up and I spent the night at his place because it was too late to head back to my apartment.

As I slept that night… I was already missing Philippines. The whalesharks, the natural but now familiar beauty, Gale, karaoke, the friendly people, jeepney rides, errr… the food not too much. (Sorry :P)

Until next time Philippines. Whenever that may be.

Previous post(s) in this series:

Philippines 2014: Pahiyas Festival in Lucban; Kamay Ni Hesus

Philippines 2014: Manila Chinese Cemetery

Philippines 2014: Corregidor Island tour

Philippines 2014: Bargain shopping in Manila; Paseo de Santa Rosa & Solenad

Philippines 2014: Japanese tunnel; leaving Davao for Manila

Philippines 2014: Scuba diving for the first time, at Samal Island (Davao)

Philippines 2014: Philippine Eagle Center, Davao

Philippines 2014: Attractions at Eden Nature Park… and getting lost

Philippines 2014: Sky Cycle at Eden Nature Park, Davao

Philippines 2014: Leaving Cebu for Davao; Davao City sights