Day 1 - Easing into it

Day 1 was planned to be a relatively relaxing day to ease into being in a different country, the heat, and get over the travel, maybe have a sleep in.

I woke up at around 6.30am so no sleep in, but still got about 10 hrs sleep. I slept reasonably well, had the aircon going all night cos the Air BnB aircon isn’t very effective.

Once up I had a shower, which I was unable to work out how to make it have warm water… But seeing the temp there is pretty hot it didn’t matter too much, even cold water is kinda warm. I put on sunscreen and insect spray and headed out to start my day.

First up was breakfast, at the moment I am trying to keep my food choices relatively basic as I am trying not to upset my Crohns, so opted to have McDonalds. I had some hotcakes, a sausage pattie and a Hot chocolate. The hotcakes tasted the same as everywhere else, but the sausage pattie was flavoured differently.

After this I decided to go visit a mall, cos u know, aircon and all 😄 I am staying near a mall, but my Grab driver had suggested I visit a different mall called Ayala Center, cos it was bigger, so I opted to do that. I had a look on Google maps to see how far away it might be, and it was a 20-30 min walk. By this time it was already pretty hot, but I decided a walk would be a good way to see the area, so opted to walk.

The walk was quite interesting, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, or what kind of areas it would take me through… There was one part that took me past an area where people had homes or businesses that were right up against the footpath, and had metal bars in front of them. As I walked, I noted that if I stopped for a few seconds the heat from the concrete radiated up, so the goal was to keep walking (self generated breeze).

On the walk there were two people who wanted to interact, however I was not comfortable doing so, so just said “no thank you, Sorry” and they seemed to accept that. Later in the mall a person had a chat with me about random stuff, but eventually they indicated that they wanted me to buy them a drink from Dairy Queen (yes they have that over here), which again I declined.

I was pleased when I got to the mall and was able to step inside into an air conditioned area. I walked around the mall looking at shops etc, spent a reasonable amount of time looking around a store called “metro”. It’s kinda like a supermarket, and farmers on a massive scale all in one, with multiple levels, and mini stores inside. I came across an international section, an there appeared to be a New Zealand section within it, although it didn’t seem strictly NZ related…

I purchased a couple of things, and carried on walking around the mall… When I say this mall is big, I mean its HUGE, 7 levels or so and lots of different hallways to walk down and explore. Another shop that was memorable was a store called “Rustans”. This was another store that has lots of different things in it, kinda like the Warehouse/Farmers combined. It spanned up at least 5 different levels… One of the levels that had electronics, tv’s, headphones etc they were having some kind of church service, there was a speaker and there were rows of seats where people were sitting. In addition to a reading from the Gospel of Mark there was also some brief singing… it was quite unique!

I ended up with VERY tired feet/legs after a bit so had a sit down in Dairy Queen before deciding that it was time to head back to the Air BnB for a bit. I took a Grab from the mall back to the Air BnB where I relaxed for a bit and attempted to cool down.

After an hour or two I went out to get dinner, and on the way to get that I had a quick wonder around the mall close to the Air BnB…. It was also very large, but no way near as big as the other one I went to. I decided to get Jolibee’s for dinner again, and this time I took it back to the Air BnB.  I also grabbed some more bottles of water from 7-11 (as suggested that we should only drink bottled water).

I got home and had dinner and that was the end of my day, went to bed around 7.30 pm.  On this day where I was trying to take it easy I did 19,550 steps. 

Below some random photos I took, they aren’t necessarily in any order or mean anything in particular.