Manila Nightlife

Steve & Niall managed to clear the joint with their woeful karaokee attempts
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If you want to party then make sure you have a night or two in Manila. Coincidentally two of the guys (Dave & Steve) that I had met in Hanoi landed into Manila on the same day as me with another friend of theirs Niall. Given we all had pretty much the same time in the Philippines (2 plus weeks) and agenda (beach time & partying) we decided to explore what the Philippines had to offer together, which as it turned out worked our very well for me as there are not many westerners who aren't sleazy sex tourists over here to mix with.

Walking home in the early hrs of the morning with Stevo!
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Finding cheap accommodation was not easy which we didn't expect & I ended up paying 10 dollars US for a single room - given how little I had been paying in the rest of SE Asia it seemed like a lot!

ended up at a Catholic church & caught the end of the Sunday service, I even went up for communion & shook hands with the priest afterwards

Before we ventured out on our first night I took a stroll about the Ermita area I was staying at and ended up at a Catholic church & caught the end of the Sunday service, I even went up for communion & shook hands with the priest afterwards - not something I expected to be doing in my first few hours in the Philippines but I knew it would make my mother happy!

Church in Intramorus
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With mass out of the way Steve & I headed off to the Hobbit bar (we never managed to meet up with the other two guys on our first night due to technical difficulties with email that were entirely Steves fault) which is owned and run buy hobbits. It was very bizarre sitting at a table and have hobbits reach up the table to give you your beer & pass you your food - we didn't really know where to look at first! Most people get about Manila in jeepney taxis so we jumped in one and didn't really know where we were headed but got chatting to a local couple who asked us to join them at a place called Cowboy Grill & what a night it was. The place was packed & live bands were entertaining the crowd - they were excellent. It was so good we went back the next day with the guys, got chatting to a bunch of lady boys & partied with them all night. I have one of them emailing me now all the time & wants me to come back & see her again! It was a bizarre night - needless to say the lads were getting all the attention but they didn't advance on any of the lady boys offers - maybe they would have had I not been cramping their style....?! Instead we ended up in some random karaoke bar were the lads managed to clear the joint (ok so it was 6am and the place was near empty anyway)!

One of streets in Intramuros
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We did attempt to do some sight seeing while in Manila and cabbed it over to spanish area of Intramuros. Once there we took a horse and cart type ride around the region, stopping at various points along the way to snap some pictures.

On the morning we left Manila it was a mad dash to catch our ferry to Puerto Galero. We ended up taking a taxi to the ferry terminal which was nearly 2 hours away I believe - it was a rough journey but nothing a MC D's along the way didn't fix!