Spent My Birthday Weekend Roaming Around the Capital

Hello everyone!

I rarely post photos of myself because I'm more into travel and I believe that travels should be about the place and not yourself, but I give exceptions on special occasions (aka my birthday last Friday). It has become a tradition for me in the past years that I would post something on my birthday, but I chose not to have it different this time. This is a week late, but it's better than my other posts which took a lot of months before I got to upload them. I wanted to post during my birthday, but I got so busy with the preparations for a mini party at home. My mother insisted that we should prepare something even if I don't want anything because I have other plans. I also had to prepare for my flight later that night.

August 26, 2022 - I didn't invite anyone for my birthday. Only a few relatives nearby were invited by my parents. I spent most of my day buying stuff for my travel to Manila later that evening. I can't choose what to wear, so I quickly went to buy at least a pair of clothes. I also washed my luggage because it got so dirty after about a year of use without washing it.

At around 7:00 PM, I left the visitors at home because I had to go to the airport early. It was slightly raining, so I was expecting some traffic and I wanted to be at the airport about 2 hours before my flight. Sadly, there was no traffic and I arrived at the airport so early that I waited for my friends for about an hour. We planned this trip about 3 months ahead as our celebration for the August babies including me.

I wanted to do something different for this birthday. Most of the time, you can see me in the mountains or at the beach because I really hate crowded cities, but for some reason, I wanted to have a different experience.

Good thing my friends booked our flights from PAL (Philippine Airlines) because we would be at the Terminal 2 of Mactan-Cebu International Airport which should be only for international flights. We got to have some photos to update the followers and mariteses of Facebook. You know, as an influencer, you have to update your followers on where you're going and what you will be doing there as if they care about your life so much.

We arrived in Manila at around 12:20 AM (August 27, 2022), but we reached our hotel in Makati City at almost 2:30 AM because our taxi driver wouldn't follow the instructions from Google Maps. It got so frustrating because it felt like we were touring all around the whole National Capital Region. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't because I kept on thinking we might have been scammed that early in the morning. Good thing we finally arrived after more than 2 hours of arguing about where to pass. Luckily, our taxi driver was not a scammer.

August 27, 2022 - I still couldn't imagine how last week I was climbing Mt. Mandalagan with an injured foot and then a week after I was trying to experience the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila. I know I always dreamed of this: to be traveling. I was just overwhelmed by the sheer opposite of the experience.

My backlogs in my curation work had been piling up, so I slept at around 4:00 AM. I wanted to travel with less guilt considering there are so many compilation posts to upload. I just slept for a few hours because our call time was 8:00 AM. I woke up feeling tired but I was excited about what Manila had to offer. Our agenda for that day was to try Binondo Food Crawl. It was an experience worthy of another post! Just watch out for my post about that food trip. I think most of the places we visited will be showcased in their respective posts.

I really think I'm growing old because I can no longer keep up with the energy and vibe of the travel. Good thing my friends also felt the same! After Binondo, we thought we can still go National Museum of Fine Arts, but we were already tired from the food trip so we decided to go back to our hotel and rest. We slept until 9:00 PM. Guess what happened after? We went to a famous gay bar to watch the drag show. It was the first experience for me and I had fun! We went back to our hotel at 5:00 AM the next day!

August 28, 2022 - We slept in the morning after getting drunk at the bar. I woke up at 12:30 PM with a slight hangover. We decided to go to the National Museum of Fine Arts at around 1:30 PM. Touring around the museum after getting drunk the night before with a few hours of sleep is a bad idea. I felt terrible most of the time!

I just wanted to sit down and rest that I only took a few photos. There's so much to see at the museum, but we only have a few hours. We didn't visit all the rooms, so I will definitely go back and document everything there. I can say that there is a lot to see in Manila that cramming everything in a single won't just cut it. Besides, we overestimated ourselves. We thought we were still in our early twenties and that we could go on without getting drained.

After National Museum, we hired an expensive tour package to visit Fort Santiago and Intramuros, but we just ended up food tripping in Fort Santiago. We just ate there and had some rest. The tour was Php 150.00 ($3.00) each for 30 minutes. Because we just ate in Fort Santiago, we ended up paying Php 600.00 ($12.00) each after two hours and one hour of that was spent eating. Good for the tour guide/driver.

August 29, 2022 - We went to SM Mall of Asia (MOA) in the morning and Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in the afternoon. We explored IKEA at first because we wanted to eat at the Swedish Restaurant, but it was the wrong move. The queue was so long that we ditched the plan. Because of IKEA's design, you can't easily exit the building without going through all the floors and seeing all the displays there. I ended up realizing there's a lot of stuff I need if ever I'll have my own house. That thought alone made me so tired. We ended up eating at Wendy's.

I ended up buying more than what I ought to buy. No regrets though. It was a gift for myself on my birthday.

August 30, 2022 - After checking out from our hotel, we went to SM Aura Premier because our flight back to Cebu was still at the evening. SM Aura felt so expensive! I don't know most of the brands there.

Overall, my Manila experience was so jam-packed and we didn't even follow our itinerary. I can say that it was a great experience once in a while, but I had a hard time keeping up with the fast-paced life in the capital. It's not just for me. I'll definitely be back, but with careful consideration of our energies and probably with a more relaxed itinerary.

I'm just thankful for another year of doing what I really love doing. Excited for the future!

Kim Ybañez

_{Welcome to Kim's small corner in Hive. He is a chemical engineer by profession, but a blogger by passion. He is a wanderlust and an adventure seeker. Join his quests as he visits secluded destinations, climbs mountains, tries new and exotic dishes, and explores his country (The Philippines). He's also a trying hard photographer so stay tuned as he shares his photos and his thought process while creating them.}

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