Manila, Philippines Trip (Day 1)

My TCC Breakfast for Flight Day

24th July 2014, Thursday
Many things happened after my last trip, all my friends left the company and i got a new job due to "retrenchment" but i gained new colleagues in the new company. Lately got to know a new friend from Philippines in the new company, who invited me to go visit Philippines and her hometown. So, why not? Since i need a break from the stupid and boring work, so i agreed to go along. And then my friend booked the air tickets and planned the whole itinerary, even ordered a whole roast pig back at her hometown for our arrival. Oh well, it seems damn long to wait until our flight day and finally it came!! Time to fly away!! We met at the airport @ around 7 plus, and then we checked in our luggage. My friend gave me a Nike cap when we were having breakfast...hehehe....Then we went to our gate to board our plane. Our flight time is 9.35 am, and off we go.

Condo Building

We reached Manila @ around 1 plus in the afternoon. After we arrived, my friend went to draw some cash out for our expenses for the trip. Later we went out to meet her brother (Joseph), who was picking us up. In the airport, the waiting areas were indicated by the starting letter of their surnames. Eg: if the surname is starting with M, then u will need to go to the F-M areas to wait (something like that). This is something interesting...hahaa....Then suddenly, there was a super loud thunder sound, i thought it was going to have typhoon soon (as got reports of typhoons in Philippines earlier in the previous weeks). Then we met up with my friend's brother, and we went to take public bus to their condo building. The bus was like our coach buses, full with people and the ticket man walked in the bus to collect $ and issued the bus tickets. The ride was $25 peso per pax, and it took us like almost an hour to reach our destination due to the traffic jam. The vehicles really didn't move much on the jam, it is how bad people were saying the traffic jams in Manila....kekekee....After the ride in the bus, we reached our stop but we still need to walk a short distance to the condo. My friend was cautioning me to carry my bag infront instead of at the back...

Half Chicken with 3 different sauces

The condo building looks very nice from outside, looks like our HDB buildings. But the space inside was much smaller than our Singapore flats. When i walked in, can see the kitchen on the left side and there were 2 bunk beds. There was another room with 1 bunk bed and the toilet. The flat size was really small. Anyway, we put our luggage there and rested for awhile and we went out for lunch. We went to the mall nearby, and it was amazing that the security guards in the mall were doing bags inspection on people who were going into the mall (And is every shopping mall in Philippines). We went lunch in Max's Restaurant. It's the restaurant where it is selling the carmel bars (which was always brought back by my ex-colleagues previously). Ohh...the fried chicken was nice, crispy and tender. My friend don't let me drink the iced water from the restaurant, so she got her brother to get mineral water from the supermarket..heheee....The whole meal cost like $724 peso, which is like around $21 sgd..

Flan & Ube Turon

After the nice lunch, we went for dessert in Adobe Connection. We ordered Flan Turon and Ube Turon. It was a small triangular shape snack, not a bad snack....hehehee....Then we took a cab to Fiesta Market (along the way, past by the streets and saw tall buildings in the old and new CBD areas), there, are some small stalls selling the local products  from different parts of Philippines. After the viewing of the market, we walked to a shopping mall called SM Aura. It was owned by Philippines's biggest mall developer, SM Prime Holdings. So there were alot of shopping malls under SM around Philippines. This is just one of them, it was a big mall with all the branded shops in it but there wasn't packed with people. There, we walked around while waiting for my friend's sister-in-law to come meet us after work. My friend wanted to buy me a new basketball but we cannot bring it back to Singapore as the ball cannot be inflated to stuff in the luggage....so sadz....

Pork Knuckles

Then my friend's sister-in-law came and we went to phone service provider to get a data SIM card. And waited to top up the prepaid card, i got abit bored and was going to sleep mode soon. Me and my friend went down to the supermarket first to get some stuffs while her sister-in-law was helping us to top up the data card. Then later we all met up in the supermarket, after that we went for dinner @ Elias in Bonifacio High Street. There looked like got a lot of restaurants and shops in the area but didn't managed to walk along the streets to see. Dinner was nice but i was not even hungry for dinner.
But still, ate the rice and dishes but very slowly. My friend was telling her brother that i can finish up the rice very fast in Singapore but don't know what happened, i was like eating so slow in Philippines...hahahaha....

Different types of intestines to bbq

After dinner, it was already like 8 plus and we need to get ready to catch our bus to Baiguo later. So we took cab back to a food market (just behind the condo), which was only opened on Wednesday and Thursday (i think). There were alot of stalls selling different food and drinks but i was still too full to eat anything. I got a mango juice instead, the juice was very thick and can really taste the mango in it. We sat down and ate fishballs while my friend's sister-in-law went back to her office to take her stuffs back. Later we walked back to the condo and had shower, i almost falling asleep on the bed. Joseph and his wife were sleeping already while my friend unpacked some of her stuffs out from her backpack. And we waited until 11 plus and woke Joseph up to bring us to the bus terminal. We took cab to the bus terminal and we boarded the bus when we arrived. There was a lady steward onboard the bus who gave us a bottle of mineral water and a cake. And she also collected $ and issued us our tickets. After that, it was lights out and with that, it was about 4 hours ride to Baiguo.

Nature Parks Walk - Labrador & Hort Parks

Treasures of Hort Park

18th Jan 2014 - Went Labrador & Hort Parks with my friends as our morning exercise again. This time we went to have a walk @ Labrador Park first and today was not cloudy (the sky was not blue) as the last time i came. But at least it was still windy, and the tunnels were not opened again. Don't know when will it open again. I even told my friend the wrong dragon tooth gate...hahaaa....After the walk in the park, we made our way to Hort Park. The park was small and there was a garden fair when we reached there. But there were a lot of beautiful flowers around, and there were a lot of children playing around too. Too bad, we didn't make it back for the Japanese lunch as it wasn't opened yet.

Nature Parks Walk - MacRitchie Reservoir

A type of Fungus

Tree Top Walk

11th Jan 2014 - Went hiking @ MacRitchie Reservoir with my friends as part of our morning exercise. It was nice to have a hike in the morning and i didn't know that MacRitchie Reservoir was soooo big. There was a mountain hiking path and it was surrounded with trees and you even can see complete spider webs around the trees. We even saw a bunch of monkeys and there were 2 or 3 baby monkeys playing around. The monkeys were jumping from tree to tree above us too, it was cute. We took around 4 hours or so to reach the tree top walk, it was a suspend bridge. The wind is blowing when we walked the bridge and the bridge was also slightly too..but the bridge wasn't that long (the one at Southern Ridges is longer). And after that, we continued our hike and we reached a tower which one of my friend didn't want to climb up as she was tired. The rest of us walked up and one of my friend got scared of height when climbing down the stairs. Her boyfriend and me had to hoax her walk slowly down the tower...kekee...Then we continued to walk slowly back to the exit and along the way, we saw some monkeys playing too. By the time we finished our hike (which was around 3.30pm), we were quite tired and sweaty...After that, we all went home separately.

It was quite a walk there, we only walked around one side of the reservoir. Hope we will have another round to walk the other side of the reservoir.


Click here to see the complete walking trail from National Parks, Singapore.

Nature Parks Walk - SengKang Riverside Park

4th Jan 2014 - Went alone @ SengKang Riverside Park to walk the fruits trail. It was windy and so nice to walk and see around the park. There is a reservoir called Punggol Reservoir and a SengKang Floating Wetland. There are some fruit trees in the park too, but i went there too late, so by the time i tried to find the trees, it was getting dark. Saw lightnings too and it looks like going to rain soon. So i had to go home.

Click here for the complete walking trail from National Parks, Singapore

Europe 2nd Trip - Zurich, Switzerland (Day 15)

8th Nov 2013, Friday, Sunny

Swiss Army Knives

Today is our last day in Zurich and we are going back to Singapore tonight...sadz sadz....So we got up a bit late and then we got ourselves prepared. I had to go down to a Swatch shop and get my new watch to change cos the winder was spolit and it would come off if apply with some strength. So after breakfast, we went down the shops near the train station to check out but the shop was not the official shop. So we had to walk to the branch in the main station, luckily i was able to change a new one in the branch in the train station. We went to a souvenir shop called EdelWeiss Shop and had some shopping. After that, we went and took a bus down to the place for our cruise along Zurich Lake. Once we found the boarding place for the cruise, it was crowded with people. Then the boat (for a shorter route) came and we boarded. There was no seats outside, we managed to get a place to sit in the boat inside. OMG, it was so hot with my jacket on (it's 4 layers of clothes) and the boat was super slow.....I really sat until i was going to fall asleep on the boat ride, even the dog sitting under the table opposite us also hid and was making itself comfortable to sleep.

Fish & Chips (Nordsee)

Finally, there was some free seats at the outside, so we went out to have some wind blow. After the cruise, we saw swans and black birds around and went and take some photos on them. There were people sitting around having sandwiches too. After that, it was time for us to go back to our hotel and head out to the airport. We went to the bus stop and hopped on our bus to go back to the main train station.  We had our lunch at a restaurant, named Nordsee. It mainly sells seafood and i ordered a Fish & Chips. It costs $7.90 swiss franc and it tasted nice...i like it...kekeke...Once we were back in the hotel room, we took our stuffs that needed to go through tax refund. Then we got the hotel staff to help us weigh our luggage, so that we can roughly know how heavy. Amazingly, mine was the heaviest, which i was shocked...But anyway, we went down to Zurich main train station to catch the train to Zurich Airport, which was like 10 mins or so journey. We just stood near the train door until we reached our stop. Then we dragged ourselves to the airline counter and printed our boarding pass. After that, we went and find a place to lighted our luggage and keep our jackets too. After all this, we went down to check whether we can check in our luggage. Fortunately, the counters were open and we checked in our luggage and then we went walking around the airport, at the same time, trying to find the tax refund office to do our refund.

Passport Stamps

When we reached the tax refund office, there was a Singaporean couple who also came and wanted to do their tax refund. But they had checked in all the stuffs they bought with their luggage, and the husband was making a fuss that the shops staffs didn't inform them that they were required to show the stuffs to the officer when doing tax refund. The officer still insisted that they show the stuffs and the wife (think she doesn't want any trouble) tried to calm her husband and then they left the office. Then we went and showed our stuffs to the officer and done with the tax refund. After everything was done, we went and look for the airport lounge. It was so weird, we actually need to get our passport stamp to get to the lounge we wanted to go (it means we had exited Swiss...kekeke..). Me and another friend went to take food to eat while another one went to take a shower. It wasn't much choice but at least the food wasn't that bad to eat. We stayed in the lounge until it was time for it to close. Then we took our time to walk to our boarding gate, which we had to pass through the customs (which we got another stamp again). And then, i thought the custom officer had stamped the date as 9/11/2013 on my passport..hohoho...scared me when it turned out it was stamped with the correct date correctly. Then we had our passports stamped again, indication that we left Swiss, so in total we had 4 stamps for the whole trip. We had to take a tram to our gate and we also had some last-minute shopping before we reached our gate.

It was finally time to board the plane, i think i just fell asleep when the plane had started to fly. Super tired....this was the first time i actually slept the most on the plane. Luckily, this time, the guy who sat beside me was an Indian-looking guy and wasn't so big and i had my backpack placed on top. So i was having much space for my legs.....didn't get cramped this time...hahaha....We landed in Singapore on 9th Nov 2013. And so it marked the end of my Europe Trip (my only trip this year)......

Europe 2nd Trip - Bern & Zurich, Switzerland (Day 14)

7th Nov 2013, Thursday, Sunny

Cute Kittens

Today is just a shopping day for us, so we got up a bit late and got ourselves ready to start the day. We went down to the streets we went yesterday for shopping. I got to buy Nespresso capsules when i finally saw one Nespresso shop. We then stopped by at Läderach to get some chocolate, they sells their chocolate by grams, and the staffs had to break the chocolates accordingly to the size of what the customers want. There were a lot of different flavors to choose from, i just got some small teddy bear chocolates (they were so cute to resist...kekeke). We also kept a lookout for watches to buy..hahahhaa...i got myself a swatch watch, which costs $120 swiss franc and it was a design for this year's collection and a cute swiss knife (with picture on it). We then walked to the train station to shop, my friend got a new watch (swiss military hanowa brand) there. The staff gave us some bags with the train logo on it...hohoho..She wanted to give us more. After the shopping, we had to go back to the hotel to collect our luggage and head down to the train station. 

Rositi Fries

After the check-out, we headed back down to the train station. We got ourselves a hotdog bread at the station, it was so long but it was nice. It costs $1.50 swiss franc each and there were 3 sauces you can choose from (Tomato, Chilli & Mustard). After that, we headed to the train platform and waited for the train to come. It was a 1 hour plus ride, and i got sleepy on the train. I wanted to take a nap but the sun was shinning brightly onto me and my friend was like emoing that our trip was going to end soon...hohohoho....(I also don't feel like coming back so soon, was enjoying the scenery, food and i totally forgot about work..hahaha). Finally, we reached Zurich train station, and so we walked and dragged our luggage to try to find the hotel. We did managed to find the hotel with some help from Google map and checked in with our luggage. The hotel name was Bistrol Hotel.The room wasn't too small, it was quite ok for the three of us. After some resting time, then we headed out to walk the streets of Zurich. It was shopping again....hohohooo...There were so many shops to explore and there were so many things to see too. In the end, i got myself another 2 more watches... @_@...one watch was a Richelieu brand and another was Tissot brand. After all the shopping, we went to have McDonald's for dinner. There was self-service machine to place orders and pay using credit card. We tried to order from it but it wasn't successful. So we went to order from the counter. The Rositi Fries were yummy and there were different sauces to choose. After the dinner, we went back to our hotel.

Hotel Stayed:
Bistrol Hotel

Europe 2nd Trip - Bern, Switzerland (Day 13)

6th Nov 2013, Wednesday, Rainy

Rainy Day

Ahhh...raining today, cold cold. Today, we are going to Bern, another town along the Bernina Express route. And there was no hot water for shower too...so i showered slightly longer today (cannot shower with cold water...hahhaa). We all got up and packed our stuffs and went to have our breakfast. Took the chocolate powder home too... :P...and we saw the colored eggs too, my friends were curious on why the eggs were colored, so she asked the staff on why the eggs are being colored. The staff said it was to differentiate them between the normal eggs, the colored eggs were cooked hard-boiled eggs. They were colored so that people will know which were cooked and which were not. After the breakfast, we went back to our room to collect our luggage and went down to do the check out. It was still raining when we left the hotel, but we still walked to the train station.

Rainbow outside the hotel

Not able to take photos during the train ride, cos not able to open the windows and raining too. So we just sat around in the train, there were a lot of people on the train too. Once we reached Bern station, we went up to get a cab to go down to the hotel. It was a short distance from the train station, the hotel name is called Innere Enge. We were given to Room No 1, the room was quite big and there were photos, music scores and music awards hang on the wall. The toilet was also big and it had a big bathtub on the other side of the toilet. Once settled down, we ate up the instant creme brulee and rested for a while. Then, we headed out and explore the city of Bern. Just outside the hotel, i saw a rainbow opposite as the rain had stopped and the sun had came out. So nice to see a rainbow.... :).... Then we took the bus back down to the train station to start our self-guided walk (from Rick Steve's book). From the starting point, there was the Church of Holy Ghosts. Then across the street, was the shopping streets and there were a lot of shops. Some shops were located underground, there was a staircase for people to walk down to the shops. And there were also display galleries showcasing the shop's stuffs to attract customers to go their shops. And in the middle of the road, there were cars and trams passing and there were fountains too.The first one we saw was the Bagpiper fountain, these fountains are Bern's trademark from the 16th century and these were built to brighten the city and to show off the town's wealth...kekee....

View from behind of Parliament Building

After walking for some distance along the streets, we saw the Prison Tower, There was a clock on the tower too, with the hand on the clock is really a hand-shape. Then we walked to the left side, where we saw the Dutch Tower. It was a tower used by Swiss soldiers during war times, to hide inside and smoke secretly (as smoking was forbidden in Bern at that time). Then we walked further down the road, we saw the super mossy fountain standing. It doesn't look good-looking...hohoho...but it was made in 1983 and it symbolizes growth and life. And opposite the fountain, it is the Police Station building. As we were walking away from the mossy fountain, we saw some people playing chess. The board was on the ground and the chips were large size. 2 elderly people were playing on it. And suddenly there was a group of 3 young girls, who just ran towards us and tried to take photos with my 2 friends (so weird..hohohoho...). We then walked to the other side of the streets to see the Parliament and Swiss National Bank buildings. Both the buildings were very large and there was a empty square (which was having half the Swiss gold buried under it) in front of them....hohohoho....After taking photos here, we walked to the back of the Parliament building and we were greeted with a nice view over Aare River. The view was super cool, and from far, the peaks of Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau can been seen. Luckily for us, the sky was very clear and blue, clouds floating and the sun was out too. We managed to get some nice shots here. After the nice view, we continued our walk down, hahaa...we walked towards the wrong way. We had crossed over a bridge and actually, it was nice to cross over the bridge too. The wind was blowing strong and you got another different view to see the city...kekeke.....Anyway, we walked back again once we realized we had walked the wrong direction. Then there was Bern's Casino building (which wasn't a real Casino, it was the home of Bern's Symphony Orchestra), and then we reached Bern's famous clock tower - Zytgogge-Turm. It was so nice to look at, there were people just standing there, watching and taking photos of it. And we waited for some time, for the clock to ring. Then we continued our walk along the streets, more shops were there, on the lower and the ground level, until to a bus stop at Nydegg Bridge.

Brown Bear

We took a bus to Bern's bear park, which was 1 stop away...hohoho.....Once we alighted, we went to see the bears. There were 2 bears, 1 dark brown colored. and the other light brown colored. The dark brown colored bear was walking around, looking for food and the light brown colored bear just sat at the corner, under a tree. It doesn't really move much, don't know is it too hungry to move around. So we just spent some time around the place, see the bear walking to and fro, taking photos of the bears and the view. Then we went in to the souvenir shop but it was closed, there was a restaurant there too. After watching the bear, we sat down and see where we were going to have our dinner. So we decided to go a restaurant which was up on a hill, which was having a nice view over Bern. The restaurant name was Rosengarten. It was really up a hill, we had to walk up a super steep road to get the restaurant and there wasn't much street light around. By the time we reached the top, we were like panting...hahahaa....and we saw the night view over Bern city from there. The food list on the menu was really limited, my friends ordered spaghetti and i ordered a Thai Chicken Curry with rice. I like the thai chicken curry, it was nice (but it was expensive... >_<). After the dinner, we walked back down the steep road and went for some shopping in the shops along the way. There were some interesting shops, like one, there was cute cute white rats as display in the shop. And we also passed by a cinema, chocolate shop (Läderach). After all the walking, we took a bus back to our hotel to rest for the day.

Hotel Stayed:
Innere Enge

Places Saw:
Church of Holy Ghosts
Prison Tower
Dutch Tower
Mossy Fountain
Police Station
Parliament
Swiss National Bank
Casino
Zytgogge-Turm
Bear Park