Thrilla in Manila

Hello ma’am, hello sir;

The title of this post if a bit misleading as the only “thrilla” that’s left in Manila is found in the numerous shopping malls and fast food joints.  But, if we are giving credit where credit is due then 7-11 is the ultimate king of Manila.  We stopped counting after 53 because it was getting pointless.

street view from the sky train

The fast food nation in North America can’t hold a candle to Manila and the Philippinos. We have never in our lives seen so many fast food places in one location until we walked into theSM City Manila shopping mall that was across the street from our hotel.  There are five levels of fast food restaurants with stores scattered around them and a food court with about twenty more restaurants to choose from.  As if there aren’t enough food options, they also have food carts in the middle of the hallways that sell anything from popcorn to shwarmas to Jamaican paddies.  This trend pretty much continues on the surrounding streets and other malls that are in Manila.  For God’s sake there were seven different Kenny Rogers Rotisseries that we counted in the four days we spent there.

family time on the boardwalk

One thing about Manila that we really enjoyed was the walk down their waterfront boardwalk which has some spectacular sunsets.  The boardwalk is built for walking, running and biking so its used as a social gathering for the locals.  Along with the couples holding hands and the men fishing, there are street vendors selling fresh green mangoes and numerous merchants peddling “real” pearls for about five bucks.  The only eyesore at the boardwalk is the fortress at one end that is the American embassy.

one of many family tombs

While in Manila we visited the morbidly impressive Chinese cemetery.  This place look more like a neighborhood than a cemetery with tombs resembling mini-houses (or not so mini) with fountains, fully functioning kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.  It is more of a showcase of wealth than anything else and the running joke is that it is packed with amenities that millions in Manila go without.  One interesting thing that we noticed was that a lot of people (we assumed the family of the deceased and maybe the caretakers) use the land and tombs for lounging, socializing and doing their laundry.  The latter was obvious from the piles of laundry that was drying in the sun next to the buildings.  The cemetery itself is huge and it would take around three to four hours to go through.  We opted for the shorter two hour version because after a while it all starts to look the same … and it was time to get away from the stray dogs.

Jeepney

There really isn’t much to do in Manila besides visiting one of the many many malls, walk the streets and eat.  A couple of cool things that we did notice were that there were: (1) more jeepneys (local transportation that we’ll discuss in another post) than cars, (2) basketball courts everywhere and we even saw one in the parking lot of the courthouse!; (3) a lot of 24 hour massage parlours;  and (4) a 10:1 ration of staff to customers in their department stores.

We would say that if you decide to visit the Philippines, Manila is worth a visit but we’d say for no more than two days.

For more pictures of Manila, click HERE (password: jollybee).

Thank you ma’am, thank you sir!
S&M

fisherman at the boardwalk

sunset over the marina with the volcano in the background

7-11 at the historic Intramuros

Rizal park

one of many streets in downtown Manila

Manila

rooftops in Manila

 

buying green mangos on the boardwalk

laundry drying along the golf course fence - downtown Manila

India Recap

We know, you’re probably thinking ‘enough already on India, move on!’ but we’re not done just yet.  There is so much to say on this country of opposites, so much we loved and hated and just a few more things that we’d like to share on this blog.  A few others we’ll leave for face to face discussion and S is working on a letter to the Indian government with some ideas on how to remedy the garbage problem so we’ll leave that out too :). 

too bad we can't zoom in to the interlocked fingers!

We’ll start off with some light humour before we get to some of the heavier thoughts we need to share. So, not sure how many of you have seen Russell Peters’ stand up, but for those of you that haven’t (you must! Here’s a link to a sample on youtube but check out his newest release Red White and Brown on DVD) he’s Indian but was born and raised in Brampton Ontario (yes, y’all, a fellow Torontonian of sorts :)), and his stand-up discusses some of the cultures he grew up with in Brampton and of course, he talks about his fellow Indians.  So, let us tell you if what he says is true:
1.  Do Indian men hold hands?  Oh they most certainly do and not only do they hold hand but they     interlock their fingers!!
2.  Are the guys ‘macking’ chicks while holding hands? They certainly try and it’s possibly the funniest thing in the world to see!
3.  Does it smell like shit at the airport? While we did not arrive by plane and we didn’t notice any particularly bad aromas at the Mumbai International airport as we were leaving, we can say that the country as a whole was not as overpoweringly smelly as expected.  However, when you walk by an old pile of garbage or a new urine puddle (as men urinate wherever they want) or the wind wafts the odours of these to you, then it smells pretty terrible.  We guess that it must be worse in the dead heat of the summer so we’re happy we visited the north in the winter and can’t really comment on much of the south as we didn’t go too far south. 

4.  Do all the men wear dress pants and flip flops? Yes, all the men wear dress pants, flip flops and you can’t forget the collard shirts.  Plus they have these woven shiny wool or polyester sweaters and vests that come in an array of colours but pink and red definitely dominate.  It’s a uniform that we even noticed on the Indian men in Singapore and Malaysia!  To get a better idea of what this style is like just picture an Indian John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.
5.  Do they shake their heads from side to side when happy or meaning yes? Yes, and it is quite addictive as S started doing it a few weeks into the trip!
6.  Do they twist their hand in a circle when they want to question something, such as “what is this”?  Yes, they do twist their hands to ask “what is this” but we did not notice this gesture as often.   That being said, the first time we saw this was on our bus from the Nepali border.  The bus attendant was hanging out the door yelling the destinations while twisting his hand wondering if anyone was interested in jumping on :).

Some of you must also be wondering about the Hindu holy animal, the cow.  As they are a holy animal they cannot be killed (and if you kill one intentionally or accidentally you will have to pay a huge fine and possibly jail time!) and that means that they are free to roam everywhere and we mean everywhere!  As you probably guessed, that means no beef either so what we found a lot of in both Indian and Nepal is buff, which is water buffalo meat.  It can be a lot tougher than beef depending on how it is cooked.  Before we move on from cows we have to tell you about an incident S had at a bus stop in Karnataka.   There was a smaller cow walking around the bus stop and smelling everything and anyone sitting around. Well, S decided that she didn’t want any of the cow snot on herself or her bag so she got up and blocked her backpack from the cow. Well this cow, who has probably never been stopped from doing anything in its life was not too happy about this at all so to show its disapproval it put its head down and started head butting S’s thighs out of the way (thankfully the cow had only very small horns)!! S got scared and jumped up over the bench to the other side, well, the cow was not satisfied and followed S around the bench to continue to show her who’s boss.  S understood and kept out of the cows way after that!

Some of you may be wondering about security issues in India with the shooting and bombings that have occurred in the past between the Muslim and the Hindu groups.  While there was a bombing at the main ceremonial ghat in Varanasi just a few days before our scheduled arrival and we were worried about going into Varanasi at first when we arrived we did not feel unsafe or that there was any tension while we were travelling around the country.  Granted there are policemen with machine guns patrolling the train stations and trains and there is tight security before entering the Delhi subway and there were a lot of policeman around the ghats in Varanasi (particularly the main ghat that got bombed where they have a Hindu ceremony every night), from what we could see the Muslim and the Hindu Indians seemed to coexist peacefully.  

An extreme you notice right away in India is the severe poverty of many of the people and in the major cities this is mixed right in with some of the wealthiest people in the world. For instance, in Mumbai people are living everywhere, such as the ramps to and from the subway station (cooking, playing with their kids and just hanging out while the world walks by) and just down the street one of the wealthiest people in the world is building a 27 story house!!  In Delhi we really noticed it as it is quite cold and a lot of people are just wearing thin pants, slippers (if even that, many are barefoot) and a shawl/scarf wrapped around their upper bodies and heads to keep warm.  What you also notice are a lot of fires (wood or garbage) burning along the sidewalks to keep people warm.  It was really an awakening experience.

woman mixing cement while man plays with child

We can’t end this recap without mentioning a few things S noticed being a woman in India.  First thing was all the staring but having talked to single female travellers we discovered that we were lucky to have been travelling together as they had more than staring to deal with.  As well, as in Morocco, hardly any men spoke directly to S and directed everything to M, including asking M what his wife’s name was rather than asking S directly.   This took a lot of getting used to.  Does this tie in with the place of women in society or is this a respect thing?  We’re not sure. Overall, as we saw in Nepal, the woman were modest in their appearance (in Nepal all women wore skirts and in India most wore saris or tunics over pants) and we would say 99% of the women had long hair tied up and all the little girls we saw going to school in their uniforms (all kids wear uniforms to school) had the same hairstyle: braided pigtails.   Now you would think that with this girls are girls attitude the women would be treated chivalrously but no, that wasn’t the case as we saw the women doing a lot of hard labour while the men sat around!!

Finally, just like in Nepal, men are chewing and spitting paan everywhere!!  Paan, for those who have never come across it, is a betel leaf chew wrapped around a lime paste and other spices and is said to aid in digestion and freshen the breath.   It is very obvious who chews paan regularly as a red food dye inside the paan stains your mouth and teeth red and as people don’t swallow the red liquid and spit it out, it also leaves red stains all over the streets, walls and sidewalks!

All in all, with all its extremes of scents, flavours and colours (as I’m sure you could tell from all our previous posts) we absolutely loved India.  It is a stunning country with an extremely rich history and a definite challenge for all your senses.  We absolutely recommend giving India a go!!

the most common way to advertise in India (and Nepal)

the Indian sedan

hard at work

Food in our 5th and 6th Moons

one of many yummy street vendors

The biggest problem with writing this post is that we have no idea where to start.  The food in India was so incredibly good regardless of whether it was from a restaurant, a hotel or street vendors.  We ate a lot and we ate as often as we could or our stomachs could handle.  What we are going to do is divide this post into breakfast, lunch/dinner, desert and street food.  We could write a book on this topic but to spare you chapters and chapters of reading we will try to keep it as short and to the point as possible (not possible) and try to describe the food to the best of our recollection.

To start off with let’s look at the staple seasonings in Indian cooking (though we have to say, the cuisine varies greatly across the country from region to region).  Most of the salty dishes will have a combination of turmeric, cayenne and/or chilly powder, cumin (both powder and seeds), garlic, coriander and you can’t forget the all purpose garam masala.  Most of the dishes will also come with a sprinkling of cilantro and green chilly peppers.   We found this to be the pattern from north to south with the south known to have spicier food than the north, though we really couldn’t tell as we always asked  for our food to be made “Indian spicy” and everyone was shocked but happily obliged :).  

aloo paratha and a sweet lassi

Our first introduction to real Indian food (not counting the many feasts we have had in Toronto) was breakfast in Varanasi.   We decided to try both Indian breakfasts on the menu, the puri/poori subzi and the aloo paratha.  These two breakfasts which are served with chai or for us foreigners a delicious (NOT) Nescafe coffee (according to M, the worst coffee option in the world) can be found as an option all over northern India.  Let us explain what these breakfasts are: the puri/poori is a delicious puffed Indian bread (unleavened whole wheat dough which is deep fried in hot oil or ghee) that  is used to eat up the subzi, which is a dry vegetable curry and the aloo paratha is basically a potato (aloo), onion and green chilly stuffed roti (unleavened flat bread baked on a griddle) which we got both baked like a roti and fried.  Add a cup of lassi (which is Indian yoghurt blended with water or milk and can be had plain, sweet with a bit of sugar or with fruit) and you have a great start to your day!  S loved the Indian yoghurt so much she had a lassi almost every day with breakfast, lunch and dinner :).

masala dosa

Along the Goan coast the most popular breakfast was muesli with yoghurt and fruit and we had this every day, though we can’t say that this is a particularly Indian breakfast but something made available for the tourists.   In the south, what we saw offered for breakfast were dosas, which are fermented crepes made from rice batter and black lentils and are stuffed with potatoes and onions and sometimes vegetables and served along with a few sides such as a chutney or curd (yoghurt) or a curry.  Yummy!!  In addition to the above breakfasts, we also saw chicken, tomato, onion or masala omlets on the menu and in Mumbai noticed people eating bread buns they dipped in their chai.
 

one of our typical meals

Lunch and dinner are another gastronomic adventure and the types of dishes available are as varied and numbered as the variety of people and provinces in India.   The best part about lunches and dinners in India in most restaurants we visited is that everything is cooked fresh for you, so depending on what you order, you have to wait some time to get your food, but it is always well worth the wait.  The options are endless and the majority of the menu is vegetarian.  We would first choose a curry, whether it be vegetarian or a meat curry, and then decide whether we wanted to eat it with a chapati or roti or naan (be it cheese or garlic or butter and garlic naan but sadly only in the evening when the tandoor oven was on) or with rice.  We have to admit, we rarely went for the all rice dishes such as the pulao/pilaf (can be described the Indian version of risotto) or biryani  (like a fried rice of sorts), as we just loved sopping up our curries with the delicious Indian breads or the basmati rice.  The curry options are endless … endless!! You can have lentil, or potato or cauliflower or paneer (Indian cheese made from buffalo milk) or mixed vegetable curry or you can have them with a variety of meat excluding, of course, beef.  We tried to taste every option but I think we only tried 1/100th of what there is out there.  So much more eating to do!! 

two plain naans, tandoori chicken, Indian salad and a veg curry all for $6

On the Goan coast we had a lot of fish and cheap and delicious fish at that.  The local fish is called the Kingfish and you can have a 2.5 to 3 kilo whole fish meal (either grilled, fried or tandoori style) from $6-$10 depending on the size.  Tuna, which is a lesser fish according to the Goan’s, was even cheaper!!  In Rajasthan and Maharastra we also found thali’s on the menu (thali means plate in Hindi), which like Nepal’s daal bhaat tarkari is a selection of dishes served on a large round tray with small bowls and a pile of rice.  Typical dishes include dhal (lentils), vegetables, chapati, curd, chutney, and a vegetarian or meat based curry.  Unlike Nepal, they are always served with a desert.  Now we can’t finish our lunch and dinner portion without mentioning the tandoori.  We have to say, the tandoor oven has got to be the best oven ever created!!  Anything and everything that comes out of this oven is absolutely magical.  Whenever we could we definitely ate something from the tandoor, whether it was tandoori chicken (which is chicken marinated in yoghurt and seasoned with garam masala, ginger, garlic, cumin and cayenne pepper and sometimes other spices and then cooked in the tandoor oven) or chicken tikka masala (which is a curry made with chicken skewers that were marinated in yoghurt and spices and cooked in the tandoor oven).   In Goa we also ate the tandoori Kingfish quite a bit.  Anyone that wants to get us a delayed wedding gift feel free to get us a tandoor oven :).

gajar halva on the left and a gulab jamun on the right

We mostly ate deserts in the Northern part of India, namely Delhi and then in the province of Rajasthan.  Our two favourites were gajar halva (which is a carrot pudding or carrot milk porridge) and gulab jamun (which are deep fried milk balls in sugary syrup).  However, this doesn’t mean that we didn’t love the hundreds of other deserts we tried on our many walks.  We had cheese balls in a cardamom spiced custard, cornmeal balls in a sugary syrup with saffron, rice puddings and many varieties of these types of deserts.  North Indian deserts all seem to be derived from a milk pudding or rice base and are usually soaked in a syrup.   Goa, outside of its "German Bakeries" which carried fake brownies and an assortment of cakes, also had a large selection of desserts mostly catering to the western tourists which consisted of caramels, chocolates, ice creams and lady fingers.  The most popular seemed to be a desert called Hello to the Queen which we tried once and it consists of bananas and crumbled cookies in a caramel and chocolate sauce.   Not Indian but not bad.

mmmmm .... bhelpuri in Mumbai

Now we save the best for the last … okay, maybe not the best but certainly a delicious and integral part of any Indian food experience: the street food.   In the north, the streets were filled with pakora’s, samosas, breaded and deep fried chilli peppers and vegetable cutlets, along with your vendors serving lentil curries with chapati and mixed street nuts with dried vermicelli, spices and fresh onion, chilli peppers and tomatoes.  For beverages you could always find chai, sugar cane juice and citrus juice.   It was really hard to go half an hour without smelling something good that made your mouth water and your belly crave more food!!  Our favourite of all street food was the famous bhelpuri in Mumbai.  While the vendors at Chowpatti are said to have the best, we found the one we had there kind of stale but were lucky to have a street vendor only a 10 minute walk from our hotel who had amazing bhelpuri - and you know it’s good when there are always people around him lining up to get some!  What is this bhelpuri you ask, while we had a few variations, generally it is puffed rice balls that are cut open and filled with a chickpea curry and topped with chutney (we think it’s a tamarind chutney), green chillies, cilantro, dried vermicelli and crushed rice balls. 

making vegetable pakoras

For those health conscious people out there worried that we weren’t getting our daily quota of fresh fruits and vegetables you will be happy to hear that our meals were always served with an ‘Indian salad’ which consists of raw onions, tomatoes and cucumber and a lime and we always made sure to buy lots of fresh fruit daily.   We sure miss all that fresh and juicy guava, papaya, mango, watermelon and oranges!!!!

In conclusion, I'm sure it's obvious that we were constantly eating while in India and that we absolutely positively LOVE Indian food.  We ignored all the warnings and ate anywhere and everything and minus the one incident we have already spoken about (due to our coffee craving after too much shitty Nescafe) we enjoyed every second of it and can't wait to do it all over again. 

Happy eating!
S&M

you guessed it, another curry and a butter garlic naan

samosas frying

making samosas

paneer pakora

murg hydrebadi and a paratha

sugar cane juice vendor

the simply delicious vegetable cutlets

a meat thali

a sweets display in Jaipur

cheese balls in a spiced cardamom custard like liquid

breaded deep fried chilly peppers

another dosa variety

desert vegetable curry in Jaisalmer

Last Stop: Gokarna

The coastline south of Gokarna

After our long stay in Goa we made the difficult decision and decided to make one final stop before leaving India.  Gokarna in Karnataka (a neighbouring state to Goa) received mixed reviews from people we talked to but we chose to give it a chance as it was only a short bus trip away.   Gokarna means cow’s ear as it is believed that Lord Shiva emerged from the ear of a cow here and it is also located at the cow shaped confluence of two rivers: Gangavali and Aghanashini.  It is a Hindu pilgrimage site as well as a tourist destination for Indians and foreigners alike as it has five beaches in its vicinity.  Gokarna beach forms the coast of the town and the other four beaches, Kudle, Om, Half Moon and Paradise, lie south along the coast.   It is about a 25 minute walk from beach to beach along a hilly and beautiful coastline.   

Kudle beach looking good

We made the mistake of making Kudle beach our  home base as it was located close to town, was within walking distance to the other three beaches and had the most accommodation to offer.  As soon as we stepped on the beach we realized that this wasn’t the right place for us: it was extremely crowded, dirty and smaller than the beaches we had enjoyed in Goa.  To top it off it took us over an hour to find decent accommodation.   They say that Gokarna is what Goa was like 15 years ago and we can see why: the place is full of hippies (though I don’t think these are the same hippies that frequented Goa in the 60’s and 70’s) and the accommodation is very basic.  The majority is with a shared bathroom (which is fine) and then only a bed and a mosquito net.  Most beds are a mattress on a dirt floor and the rooms look like windowless jail cells.  To add to this these new age hippies have attitude - they are quite into themselves and definitely not friendly to us ‘common folk’.  So much for the love movement in the 21st century.   

what a pretty pair :)

That being said, once we got out and walked down the coast to the other beaches we understood the draw of Gokarna.  The coast is absolutely beautiful as are the beaches along it.  We loved Om beach which is so named because it is naturally shaped like the Om sign.  It was clean and had nice white sand though it was quite narrow.   It offered the same basic accommodation as at Kudle beach but had a nice cross section of people who were much friendlier … they actually returned our smiles.  I mean seriously who couldn’t like us :).   We really liked Paradise beach which was the most remote and quiet but if you are going to trek all the way there you should stay a while.  We heard the auto-rickshaw will only go as far as Om beach but I hope we’re wrong on this walk isn’t the easiest even without a backpack … M even broke his flip flop but thankfully found a discarded one a few steps away! 

Sadly, after a handful of days here, we made our way back to Mumbai and ended our stay in India :(.   You’ll have to wait to see where our next stop was but we’ll give you a hint: it’s capital city rhymes with vanilla :).

For a few more pictures of our short stay in Gokarna click HERE (password: hippies). 

Until next time.  Same S&M time, same S&M channel. :)

Om beach

path to Paradise

small Half Moon beach

accommodation as basic as they get (at least they have windows!)

cowing around

sunset at Kudle beach