This collection of travel logs spans the week of 12/1 – 12/7, and involves great things like bad food leading to Diarrhea in our shoe sized apartment in Manila Philippines (day 157). We’re trying to see the redeeming qualities of this city, but it’s not going well. This week was full of struggles like issues with our condo, issues with USPS, weird interactions on the playground, etc. There were some positives here and there though like finding great pizza (day 158).

Travel Log: Day 157 (12/1), Philippines

I woke up this morning early again, before 5am. I felt pretty good initially but it was all down hill from there. JC and I went for a walk and I noticed I was a little achey everywhere. From there it progressed into the Czechoslovakian Two Step (diarrhea, credit Phil Hendrie) and was a pretty miserable day. I’m not sure what exactly did me in, but maybe the wings from last night. AC ate those as well though and nothing happened to her. We ate at home the whole day so as to not add any more outside food variables for now.

Toward the end of the day I took a DiaresQ packet and it was very effective. My stomach and intestines felt better almost immediately. My eyes were still aching a lot though, so I drank some salt water and that helped. Aside from some intestinal cramps here and there I felt pretty normal after that.

Travel Log: Day 158 (12/2), Philippines

I woke up feeling a lot better today. I still had some intestinal cramps here and there, but my body felt good overall.

We did school at 8am, despite our new plan being to start at 10am. We’re adjusting the schedule to take advantage of the cooler mornings, but we got a curveball today. We awoke to the kids smoke alarm having both red lights staying on solid, and their AC saying the filter needs cleaned. JC and I noticed this and went for a walk anyway, only to have AC call us and say there was a phone ringing noise coming from the smoke detector. We came back up and messaged the host, thinking we’d quickly get a response. It wasn’t until late in the day that we heard from her, and she is sending someone on 12/5. Because we thought we’d hear from her, we stayed in the condo and just started school earlier at 8am.

At around 10:30am we decided to make the scary walk to the mall as a family. We found traffic at the crossing to be more bonkers than the last time we tried it, but we pushed through it. The mall once you get there is an incredible pocket of calm and clean air. They must filter the air in there because it’s so nice, no hint of a haze across the long open spaces inside. We ate pizza at a place that reminded us of the Tokyo pizza restaurant we liked so much. It was very similar in taste and price, but possibly even better on both fronts.

We finished out the school day, and then went outside for a while. It was just the usual of BC playing with kids while the rest of us walked, until we went to get him. We all continued talking to the teenage boys that BC was already talking to, and they were really nice; wanted to know what snow was like. Then after several minutes this middle age lady came over and started touching BC’s face and hair saying how handsome he was. She then dragged BC and AC around taking picture with them, then with us. It was aggressive enough that it was putting us on guard a bit. We left shortly after, and researched that behavior a bit. Turns out to be normal in SE Asia, nothing to be alarmed about.

Travel Log: Day 159 (12/3), Philippines

Today there was an issue that took up most of my day. A reminder on the calendar said it was time to extend our temporary change of address with USPS. I thought that would be simple enough, but it wasn’t. I accessed our existing change of address and saw that I couldn’t change the end date. Researching that showed that I need to submit another new temporary change of address, so it’s two consecutive requests rather than one long request.

I filled out the change of address and it all went fine until the part where it attempted to verify my identity. That happens automatically normally, but it failed for unknown reasons. Because it failed, it requires me to go to the post office with a barcode to manual verify my identity. I obviously can’t do that, at least not without buying an expensive plane ticket and investing three days.

At that point I analyzed all mail pieces that have been delivered to our virtual mailbox to get my head around what USPS is forwarding. It’s only 26 items total and most of those were in the early days. We have only received two things in the past month. I made a list of all senders to identify those that are really important and changed those mailing addresses to our virtual mailbox.

I tried calling USPS today and couldn’t even get through to an agent to discuss this. They aren’t going to budge though as it states very clearly I have to do this in person. I’m giving up on this and we’ll just go without mail forwarding.

We made a couple grocery orders today, and just stayed in the complex. BC and I played a 3 on 3 game of basketball with some kids who showed up. The game ended abruptly with some of the kids scurrying around under the hoop post. I asked the one who spoke english well what was up, and he said one of the kid’s got his wallet stolen. They rushed off I’m guessing to talk to a parent.

Travel Log: Day 160 (12/4), Philippines

School started on our new normal late schedule at 10am. We got some walking in before that, bought water at Alfamart, and had breakfast. After lunch BC and I played some basketball. I beat him at PIG which I may have anyway, but he didn’t help himself at all by shooting backwards shots nearly every time. After the school day we went back outside and walked while BC played with his growing group of friends. I’m kind of blown away at the number of kids he knows and that know him. He was getting hugs and high fives when he walked out there this afternoon.

In the evening BC and I watched Trent the Traveler while AC and JC watched Gilmore Girls. The AC in our bedroom stopped working, and we went as far as messaging the host before unplugging it and plugging it back in and it started working. The plug is making some weird electrical noises when you touch it, like it doesn’t have a great connection.

Travel Log: Day 161 (12/5), Philippines

The school day was odd today. We did math, and planned on going to the mall after math for field trip Friday. We ended up never getting out the door though. BC did so poorly at math that I forced him to do extra time. He didn’t seem to remember basic concepts like one times anything is that anything. He also didn’t remember the method I showed him yesterday for multiplying decimals and knowing where to place the decimal on the answer. This is a frustrating pattern he is showing, and I don’t know how much of it is him being 11 or him needing to get his act together.

Out of the blue around midday, Nancy showed up at our door with another lady. She said that lady (Marcel) would be our new caretaker. We had no idea this was coming, or why it is being done. Later in the evening after JC and I were good and buzzed from FAC drinks, Marcel showed up and cleaned the AC filter. She didn’t say anything about the smoke detector with two lights permanently on, which was the main reason we contacted the host. At this point we don’t care though and we’re not reporting anything unless it’s an emergency. Filipinos really don’t speak functional english for the most part and each interaction is painful.

Otherwise FAC proceeded as normal and AC picked “Tex” for her movie. JC and I got a few walks in through the day.

Travel Log: Day 162 (12/6), Philippines

Today two activities dominated my day. One was figuring out where to go in Thailand. I spent a lot of time looking at different locations based on input from Claude. Many of its suggestions were too costly for lodging. Bo Phut Beach might be a good candidate though, and Bangkok is always there and very cheap. The second activity was trying to cut my hair in this matchbox apartment. There is no outlet in the bathroom, and no outlet in most places. That meant charging my clippers for twenty minutes at a time, using them for 1-2 minutes until they died, and repeat. The total time to cut my hair from start to finish was about two hours.

For happy hour we got some random drinks from Alfamart. They were all pretty good. AC and I watched some stranger things and we ordered Pizza Hut. The pizza was pretty close to the American version, but just a bit off to the sweet side as is typical here.

I think we probably offended Sheila by not taking her up on her offer to take us to BGC last Thursday. JC texted her about volleyball and Sheila said that her team was playing, but that she was not. JC followed up asking her if she was going to be there watching, and she hasn’t heard back as of yet. I hope we didn’t offend her, but in a level two country I’m not willing to get in a car with someone we just met that week and spent a grand total of 20 minutes talking to. In contrast I would have taken up that offer from a complete stranger in Japan.

Travel Log: Day 163 (12/7), Philippines

The days are really dragging along here more than anywhere else we’ve been. There’s just nothing redeeming about Manila and our condo especially except for the affordability. Affordability doesn’t make the time pass any faster, and usually does the opposite. The people are pretty great here too; I don’t mean this as a bash against them.

I continued looking at Thailand today and Bo Phut Beach seems like a good option, but there just aren’t very many places to rent there. There is exactly one good candidate. There’s something unsettling about booking a single good place, because why is that one available rather than there being zero places. I watched a couple videos on that island and it looks pretty whited out, which doesn’t even sound good given our current situation (seemingly the only whites in Manila).

We started kicking around the idea of leaving a few days early to go over to the airport area and spend time at The Mall of Asia and Intramuros. Hotels are pretty sparse and that will present some other challenges though, like more dirty clothes.

This afternoon we tried to book a ride over to Eastwood City, which has a mall that a local guy recommended. The ride was going to take 20 minutes just to pick us up, so I cancelled it immediately. Hopefully that doesn’t hurt my Grab reputation. Instead we walked over to SM Mall and stumbled on a Ju Jitsu tournament which was interesting to watch. We came back to our cell for dinner, and JC made a good potato and rice dish.

In the evening BC and I watched Trent The Traveler, and AC and I continued Stranger Things. At least that is helping to pass the time.