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 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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