San Francisco

San Francisco - Both Young Jin and Lesley are on the same SQ flight to San Francisco.  Upon arrival at SFO, Young Jin decided to go solo and go hunting for some nice handbags for his wife.  Lesley and I headed to our hotel in Walnut Creek via the BART.

The Hotel is a very nice with modern fittings in the room - Mariott Sports @ Walnut Creek.  After checking in, we headed back to San Francisco to meet Young Jin.  We did not want to lug our heavy luggage around SF.

As we were feeling hungry, we went to Chinatown but could not decide which restaurant to have our dinner. 

Sweet and Sour Pork

 But it was too sweet for all of us....very different way of cooking from Asia

Roast chicken

Lesley and Young Jin tucking into the dinner

Ice beer

Manila - The 1st morning meeting was cancel so Lesley and I decided to have a later breakfast @ 9am.  There were new dishes on the breakfast menu and I tried both of them - Crispy Danggit is a breakfast dish in Philippines - the taste is crispy, very salty and pungent. Danggit in English it is called Rabbit fish or spinefoot.  It is abundant in Philippine waters and is caught, split open, dried in the sun with salt and transported to markets to be sold.

The otther dish is Sotanghon Guisado - which is saute glass noodles (also called Tang Hoon, Chinese vermicelli or Cellophane noodles). 

Late morning, the duty manager escorted me to the Executive club floor for my new room. 

Dinner was at a location called commons restaurant located @ 162 Valero Street Salcedo Village Makati Metro Manila Philippines.

I tried this soup - Suam na Mais with Prawns.  Suam is Corn soup prepared in a Filipino traditional way.    The Country Style Spareribs is fried and thus too dry for my liking.    We also had deep fried Tilapia.    Then came the ice beer called San Miguel light sub zero beer.   Fhilipinos love their iced stuff...it was real fun.

Ice Beer

Ice Vodka

Watch the you tube to see some tricks and amaze your friends...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHNTfuks_ww

Cafe food for the day...

Manila - As we had to leave early in the morning for meetings, we met for breakfast downstairs at Paseo.   I had a different variety for breakfast but in fact it was the same as yesterday.   I had 2 eggs fried sunny side up - ate the white only, tried their noddle soup (nice) and also the spread of fruits.  My favourite was the passion fruit - wow, so sweet unlike what I had ever tasted.   The best ever...I need to find some to bring back home.

Lunch was at a cafe in Ayala called Momo Cafe. We had 3 plates of food to share amongst the 3 of us dinning there.  A brightly led, fun and friendly atmosphere for dining with a loft. 

We had..
Old Fashioned Beer Battered Fish and Chips
Sweet and Smoky Hickory BBQ Rib-lets - Pork ribs in Hickory sauce
San Francisco styled Seafood Pesto style cream linguine

Overall, the food was good with a nice dinning experience.

Behind the park are the rows of restaurants & cafe - Momo Cafe is one of them

Another nice view

After a customer meeting at Mandaluyong city, we had dinner at cafe called 'Tokyo Cafe'.  This cafe is theme after a Japanese style of fusion family restaurant.   They seem to have many branches in Philippines.  This cafe seems to go by the theme of the urban yuppies, and had an ambiance of coziness and trendiness.   The food cannot be classified as your typical Japanese cuisine but Fusion with Western dishes.   Amongst the 5 of us - we ordered a wide variety of dishes with some dishes flowing off the table. 

I am more of a traditionalist and thus it was not exactly my cup of tea.   The best was the Japanese cheese cake.   I ordered Katsu (Pork cutlet) and it as tough and dry on the inside unlike the ones I had in Tokyo which much care were taken to prepare one Katsu meal. 

We came back to the Hotel to rest and at about 6pm decided to visit the Largest Mall in Asia called the Mall of Asia owned by SM Malls. 

Taxis in Manila is a big problem - they will always will try to size you up by chatting wiht you.  Some will tell you sob stories of their poverty, some will try to offer cheap transportation around Manila, others will offer a fixed price without meter - ALWAYS DECLINE - as 9 of 10 are cheats. 

When we board one taxi at the hotel, the taxi driver does not want to do turn on the meter and charge us 300 pesos (which is the distance to the airport) so we walk out.  As it was traffic jam it took closed to 45 minutes to reach our destination.    The Mall is huge and there were many people everwhere - the prices are much cheaper than in Makati.   After walking for a while, we decided to watch a movie at 9.05pm - Transformers - the Dark Side of the Moon.  Lesley accompanied me even though he had watch it - cost 185 pesos about S$6 - $2 cheaper than in Singapore. 

It was an entertaining movie but the picture quality was not as good as Singapore cinemas.

Opening my room door, I smelt smoke and was told that mine is a non-smoking room but downstairs is a pub.  I complaint and was told that they will change my room tommorrow at 10am.
This will be my 2nd bad experience at this Hotel.

Back to Green Belt...

Manila - It was wake up @ 7:30am and then for breakfast at Paseo.  This is Mandarin cafe that offer breakfast buffet - they have a wide selection for breakfast.   Their fried chicken is tasty, scrambled eggs was good.   Their tim sum selection does not taste good - har kow skin was thick and not succulent.  Char Siew Pow was OK.  For the fruits section, I tried the Chiku (which was not sweet), Custard apple (the first fruit I tried was bland, but the 2nd fruit I choose a good one and it tasty very sweet). 

Off we went to our customer for training and spent the whole day with them.  We had Pizza ordered in from Yellow Cab Pizza.  

Lesley and I walked around Green Belt many restaurants and we finally settled for a Japanese Shabu Shabu restaurant located at the 2nd Floor of Green Belt 3 - Thousand Cranes Resturant.  The food is fresh and reasonably priced.  Worth visiting again..

We walked to our hotel to have some drinks @ the Martinis and the band was playing oldies tunes from beatles and Elvis and called them the Bloom Brothers.   They have a facebook - http://www.facebook.com/thebloombrothers

Young band with lots of energy and good voice and had an enjoyable time and left only when they decided to invite guests to sing on stage.  It was a total disaster when it because karaoke and the guest were singing out of tune.  It was really bad and thus spoilt their reputation.

So strange...

Manila - I think once you start to record things you will find that 'humans are in fact creatures of habit'.  Lesley asked me whether I wanted to start at the same hotel again and I decided hmmm, let's change to Mandarin Oriental Hotel.  I thought I have not stay at this hotel before, but I did exactly last year 2010 in July - how strange....

I knew that Mandarin Oriental is part of the KrisFlyer programe so I asked for the room to be credited with 500 miles and was told that my room is below the point crediting status. So, I asked what is the point level to be given the miles and it was 6,000 pesos.  My room  rate was 5,999 pesos - so I made a big fuss that because of 1 peso the hotel is not allowing me to get the 500 miles.  How stupid can they be?  Maybe I should not stay here again...the front desk need to check for 5 pesos whether I can get my 500 miles - what a joke?

Of course, I will get it.

Dinner, we went to Fely J's Kitchen @ Green Belt 5.   Unlike staying at New World Hotel, we had to walk about 500 metres to Green Belt.

Website: http://ljcrestaurants.com.ph/fely-j/
This restaurant serves Filipinos cuisine and it's delicious. 

The waitress are friendly and very knowledgable - such a contrast of service in Singapore even though served by Filipinos.   The waitresses are paid so much more in Singapore but their service is 10x worse than in Philippines - why?

We had the Relenong Pusit - which is actually sotong stuffed with prawns and pork, Lechon Kawali - 3 layer pork fried and their FJ delicious rice; which came in a huge plate with fried anchovies.  The food is really but we could not finish the rice.

We were tempted to try their desert - Tequila Chocolate cake (very nice...) and Sikreto Maria (literally means Maria's Secret, which turn out to be rice pudding, mangoes topped with vanila ice cream.