7NNT25: Day 21 – Manila

Soundtrack: “Abracadabra”, Lady Gaga

The day started slowly, as I was still feeling the effects of the hike. I figured I should get out of the hotel room for at least a while, so after reading about the Legazpi Sunday Market, got a Grab and headed out. At this point it seems my bank with the nice card that refunds international transaction fees has developed issues with Grab, so I spent some time arguing with the app before choosing the cash option. Figured I’d be able to sort later.

Legazpi Sunday Market isn’t huge, but has a bunch of great food options as well as some shops selling bits and pieces. A couple of stalls in I found Diana’s kitchen, which immediately attracted me as they had huge slabs of pork with crackling on display, and a whole tray of just crackling along with some other meat dishes, as well as a short queue of local looking people. When it was my turn, I basically pointed at a few things and asked for some of each, plus rice, which they were more than happy to take my money and give me in a little bento-like tray. I didn’t ask what I was eating, but I think one was lechon, and the other something beef, along with a decent helping of crackling. I found a chair and set to work demolishing the wonderful food, or as we discussed on the hike yesterday, the “Philippine protein bar”, i.e plates of pork. Next was the drink stall, where I went for a pandan and coconut drink that was very refreshing. Pandan is just so good, I do love coming to south east asia and binging on it.

The next new food experience was something called halo halo. I’m a sucker for any food stall that offers some random concoction that includes “salted egg”, I couldn’t say no. What I received was a tall cup of colourful things, shaved ice, and a block of salted caramel custard on top, I’m guessing that was the salted egg part. I managed to find a free table just for me, where I sat and started on my halo halo. A couple came along and as the tables have a sign that says “share a table, make a friend”, I guess it was make a friend time. Turned out to be a good move, as the couple, him from Italy, her a Filipina who’s lived and worked overseas, had some great info to share. The first was how to properly eat halo halo. The clue is in the name, which means “mix mix”, so it’s not about eating through the layers, grab that spoon and get mixing. And wow, once the ice starts to melt and everything comes together it’s a wonderful and unique thing. There’s corn, and sweet taro syrup, and small red crunchy things, and coconut milk, and other weird little crunchy things, coconut pieces, lots of flavours and textures, every spoonful is different. Halo halo, worth checking out. It’s similar to ice kachang, but more coconut and less flavoured ice, and no beans. From my table friends I also got some local perspectives about malls, Jollibee, souvenir shopping. and the Philippines in general. And gravy: apparently fried chicken must be eaten with gravy, it’s the rule, at buffet places where folks can serve themselves, filling up a bowl and then dunking fried chicken pieces in it is not frowned upon. I also got my second recommendation of checking out the sardine run at Cebu, so it seems like something to check out.

I did a bit more wandering around the markets, there was only 1 stall selling local craft things, which were pretty but not really what I was looking for. There was so much wonderful fresh fruit, and I could have eaten until I exploded (one stall had the most amazing nacho tower, and another had brisket that looked amazing) but I was still feeling the heat so headed back to the hotel for a long nap, lots of water, and air-conditioning.

Waking a bit more refreshed, it was time to face the fear and take the plunge: SM Mall of Asia, the 6th largest shopping mall in the world. Still no luck with my preferred card and Grab (fyi Grab help is not very good) but was able to get it to work with a different card (hello international transaction fees). SM Mall of Asia is, as expected, huge. It has a football pitch, ice skating rink, at least two archery ranges, a shuttle bus, huge stuffed animal mascots, shops for almost everything (I didn’t see a car dealership, but there were 3 musical instrument shops). It’s an established fact that I suffer from what I call “mall blindness”, I really have crap direction sense in large enclosed spaces when I can’t use external reference points. So while I definitely ended up going in circles for part of the time, indication of how large the mall is that it took me 2-3 hours of walking to find the Ikea. I wasn’t necessarily looking to go there, but just figured I’d notice it easily. Nope. And because it’s the Philippines, not only did Ikea have meatballs, they also had fried chicken (with rice and gravy). In the interests of research, I ordered a piece, and it was pretty good, definitely acceptable. I was a little disappointed that the gravy wasn’t the same as in Australia (which I sadly have an unhealthy love for). Here the gravy wasn’t the wonderful creamy joy that is served with meatballs, it was closer to the local standard gravy mix style, so sadly that dream of cultural culinary fusion remains unrealised.

Noodle 9.0: Pancit Sisig (Rita’s Original Pancit Malabon)

MOA (I’m obviously in total holiday brain, as it took maybe an hour of seeing references to MOA before it finally dawned on me that was the TLA for Mall of Asia) has many food places, many many. Having two days noodle free it was time to go back, and small and not over-crowded Rita’s Original Pancit Malabon was the place for me (there were queues just to get into Jollibee). Given the choice of either pancit malabon original, with prawns and egg, or pancit sisig, I went the later. Pancil is the name of the noodle, it looks like and has a texture similar to spaghetti, which surprising as it’s a rice noodle. Totally gluten free, the yellow comes from the oil used in cooking the dish, and the sauce clings well making for something very tasty indeed. I’m looking forward to more pancit on my travels.

Life is all about choices, sometimes the choice is between resting a weary body still recovering from heat exhaustion, or going out to a drag show. Such was the choice that confronted me, and I chose the rainbow pill and headed out to O Bar on a Sunday night. Manila has several well rated drag bars, but O Bar was closest. It’s nestled into a semi industrial estate, up a narrow road (narrow in the manila sense that it would be a normal sized road it half of it wasn’t full of parked cars). I handed over my 900 PHP, which included 3 drinks, and was shown inside and guided to a table. As with many things in my adventures, there was some confusion as I thought I was ordering a small San Miguel pale, but my server Rocky came back with a bucket and 5 beers, which was apparently equivalent of my 3 drinks. Aside from the initial fear of having to drink all that beer (don’t get me wrong, I like the beer, but all 5 bottles had been opened and I’m trying to at least stay the right side of embarrassingly messy drunk on this trip). Waiting for the show to start, looking around the smallish crowd, I thought I saw a queen I recognised, but it was just a glance. A bit later I noticed a bunch of folks looking up at the group upstairs, and well shit I was right and hanging over the balcony was none other than US trans indigenous awesome globe stopping queen of queens, Sasha Colby. In this club. Just hanging out. I found a local who was also having a fanperson moment, and they told me that not only was Sasha in the house, but Philippine drag race alumni Captivating Katkat, Precious Paula Nicole, and Marina Summers were all up there too. Well shit, looks like I picked a good night to go out. The O Bar warm up act were a bunch of male dancers, who seemed to be all about doing a few moves while wearing no shirts, they didn’t seem to be busting themselves to impress the crowd, and the crowd didn’t really seem to engage, so it was a bit flat. Then out came some queens and things got moving. Saw some amazing performances, including Manza who does an incredible aerial performance on ropes, jaw-dropping stuff. Every so often I’d look up and see that the upstairs stars were all really digging the performances too. Towards the end of the first set (by this time I’d had 3 beers, managed to give two away to another table, and was working through several cokes) Sasha got dragged up on stage for a bit of fun and posing. During the break Sasha, Captivating, Precious, and Marina came through the crowd and I had a fan moment to get selfies and thank them for being wonderful and brave and inspiring to so many. Sasha was awesome, she made sure the camera was angled just right, and we had a laugh when I showed her a pic from a previous meet and greet I’d done with her and Anetra a few years ago. hen it was time for the second act, more awesome performances, including a pair who may have been drag kings who sang incredibly. Then it was time to say goodbye, tip the performers, get a few more selfies, and get a Grab. That took a little longer than planned, as the weird gated industrial estate seems to confuse GPS, and there were at least 4 cars that obviously got better offers after accepting my ride and then cancelling. While waiting I saw Sasha leave, a little worse for all of the shooters the crown and queens were passing her way (I hope someone asked her the next day “How’s the head?”). When I realised she got into a car that Marina Summers was driving, I’ve moved Marina up in my estmate as one of the craziest drag queens around — it takes a lot to be a queen, but all that and drive in Manila, that’s just psycho-loco. Got chatting to others waiting for their car, and when theirs turned up it wasn’t the right size, but as they were headed to right near my hotel I let their remainder, C, hop in my ride. He told me a little more about things to see, another recommendation for the sardines in Cebu, before he nodded off having had a good night with much gin apparently.

So far I’ve seen three amazing drag queen performances to “Abracadabra”, so when I finally get to Singapore I hope Lady Gaga can be at least as good. Because of course she reads this blog, I’m throwing down the gauntlet.

Back at the hotel, I was tired and happy. Happy to have managed to cross paths with the amazing Sasha Colby, as she was performing in Perth when we were in Uzbekistan, and while I had bought tickets I didn’t manage to find a buyer, all I can say is that’s someone’s loss. Happy to have seen an amazing show, and meet some incredible queens. I want to live in a world where performers such as these are recognised for their art, and are also recognised as people who have all of the same rights and opportunities as your average white male. I’d also like a world where I can go out and see such performers and be in bed before 4am, but equality first, sensible bedtime second. And maybe I was wrong about choices, and it’s always the right choice to catch a drag show.