I got up early and took a taxi to the Cultural Center of Philippines building. Today I was going to go to Corregidor island, used by US forces as a defense base and a key island in the Philippine battles against the Japanese in World War II.
This is the CCP building, close to Manila BayI got down behind the CCP building and walked towards the rightEventually you come across signs pointing to the Sun Cruises office. Although the ferry leaves at 8am, you are asked to ‘check in’ by 7am or so.
If you want to do a tour of Corregidor island, you really don’t have much choice besides going via Sun Cruises. They have a monopoly over the ferry service to Corregidor island and tours conducted there. I paid ₱2200 (Rs.3000/$48/€38) for the day tour. I couldn’t find anything less from any other tour provider. You can get the fact sheet about the island here.
Sun Cruises offer cycle tours to Corregidor island tooWe left the dockI took this photo before departure, but it was pretty full by the time we leftThe view of Manila skyline from sea30 minutes later, I could see Corregidor island in the distance
Being really hot during the day, I decided to step out only at around 2pm.
I began my outing by having a KFC lunch. The outlet I sat at had cheddar cheese coated KFC. It was bleh! It’s basically the same artificial coating you find on cheese balls crisps but now on KFC. The meal cost ₱99.I then went to Ayala to withdraw some money from Citibank branch there
After withdrawing some money, I walked around the area (very posh, mind you). Lots of malls and office buildings.
Asian Institute of Management — it’s one of the top-ranked B-schools in AsiaI entered Greenbelt 5 mall, which is just one of many malls under the Greenbelt name in the areaThis is Greenbelt 3, the posh mall with all the really high-end brandsI spent some time at the SM department store picking up some t-shirts for my younger brother. SM has official merchandise from popular anime like Naruto, One Piece and other cartoons. Pretty cheap too, t-shirts can be found ranging from ₱99 all the way up to ₱399.
After that, I went to Carriedo (LRT station) where SM has a clearance mall
I had seen this building from taking the LRT, figured I would check it out
I found some great bargains inside. Besides a bunch of in-store brands by SM, they had a few name brands and foreign brands in short supply (maybe export rejects). None the less, I found H&M cargo shorts for ₱400. Definitely export-reject-worthy Rip Curl swimming shorts for ₱200. And then some bermuda shorts for like ₱100 each. Not everything was cheap, but then again, coming from India, I wasn’t planning on buying many clothes from Philippines anyway.
One thing I found funny was just how many sales persons are there to sell you socks. Like, super-aggressive when it comes to shoving socks in your face. Think perfume sales people offering a spray to get you talking to them — but a lot more of them selling packs of socks! High margin socks I presume? 😀
Outside, Carriedo is home to a rather large street market
I have gone to my friend Santhosh Singh’s farm before, but quite a lot has changed since our visit. First, Santhosh gave it name — Amrutha Dairy Farm. But later decided to not put up signs anywhere. Why? We’ll get to that later.
Amrutha Dairy Farm is located in Haalenahalli, Madhure Hobli, Doddaballapura.
I mean, here’s a map of its location.
Beyond that, all I can say is: good luck finding it on your first try!
The weather seemed nice for this visit
It is a bit of a challenge to find the farm, but if you follow the direction path highlighted on Google Maps, you can get there with relative ease if you use your phone as a GPS device.
We parked inside the farm. This is the farmhouse Santhosh and his brothers built.
The dairy farm was set up nearly 4 years ago. The initial plan was to setup a milk processing center, but when Santhosh realized the heavy investment that was required, he realized it would be better just starting off with just producing milk for the time being, and slowly ramp up.
Santhosh *only* has around 30 cows
Santosh is parallely working on a heifer rearing project (heifer is a young cow before she has had her first calf). This is to contain the operational costs on the business, such as drought in the area for consecutive years. So yeah, like many Indians, even these guys suffer from water and electricity problems. They also have a hydroponics system which can produce very nutritious green fodder (up to 1ton per day) and this was built completely from scratch by them after taking technical help from some guys in Europe and New Zealand.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. They have such a facility in the farm.They feed the cows a hybrid napier grass grown at the farm and maize procured from nearby farms along with prescribed nutrientsThis might look like a lot of cows but only 6 cows are ready to produce milkHelloThe farm has some extra land which Santhosh and his brothers are contemplating how to best make use of.
When word spread about Amrutha Dairy Farms, a Netherlands-based group came to India and approached Santhosh to join hands with the farm to set up a milk processing plant to produce products like khova, paneer and cheese. Continue reading “Visit to Amrutha Dairy Farm, a learning experience” »
