The Girls of Auto Salon 2010

This is my post with the least words but the most photos. As what a popular song says, "a picture paints a thousand words", so the photos are more than enough for this post. Regrettably, I was only able to bring a camphone, so some photos do not give much justice to the beauty of the subjects.

Auto Salon 2010 at SMX

We just arrived from the Auto Salon 2010 at SMX Convention Center along Mall of Asia grounds in Pasay City. There are many amazing displays of vehicles, as well as merchants offering their various products and services. Below are some photos I was able to capture using just a camera phone, as I forgot to bring a real digicam.

 

Above is the oldest car in the show, a Citroen originally built in 1925, displayed outside the exhibit center. Below is a yellow Ferrari car.

168 Shopping Mall in Divisoria

Last Sunday, while most Filipinos are glued on their homes to watch the Margarito-Pacquiao boxing fight, Wife and I chose to do our Christmas shopping to take advantage of less crowd and traffic at Divisoria. But upon arriving by 9 am at the mall, we were quite surprised with the huge number of people, realizing that its not only us who have thought about this timing strategy. :)

We did a walkthrough first, looking at the merchandise on offer by various stalls, then compared the prices.

NOAH Shop & Forest Camp in Negros Oriental

There’s not much to see in Dumaguete City, although its a cool place with its seaside Rizal Boulevard, Silliman University, and many options for inexpensive food trip here. On our first day in Dumaguete, we spent the morning at Manjuyod sandbar, 54 km north of Dumaguete. We have also visited 2 old churches in Dumaguete and Bacong here.

Prior to visiting the Bacong church, our gracious and lovely host Ms. Pearl, took us to a stonecraft factory in Bacong. Its called Negros Oriental Arts & Heritage Shop or commonly referred to as NOAH.

NOAH’s main products are decorative and multi-use items made from rock material found in the province. The rocks are cut, carved, glued like mosaic patterns to their respective frames, before being glazed and polished. As we saw the painstaking efforts and fine craftmanship on each handmade product, I can say that their selling prices are worth each peso spent by their customers. Once these products reach the shops in Manila and abroad, they would cost much more.

Dumaguete's Rizal Boulevard

While in Dumaguete, we stayed at Honeycomb Inn, one of the bayside hotels along Rizal Boulevard. Its a low-rise medium-range hotel with a homey-facade facing the sea. Unfortunately, the room given to us on the first floor has no window for seaview. 

Our room has very basic furnitures but clean. Amenities include the usual shampoo, toothbrush, and nice-smelling bar soap. Set breakfast is included on the Php 1,000 nett rate per night, with choice of Filipino, American, Chinese, or Continental varieties. Their front desk people are courteous and helpful. The only downside is that they don’t provide complimentary drinking water, whether in dispenser or in small bottles.

Batanes: My Dream Destination

I’ve read and watched so many nice things about Batanes -- the northernmost tip of the country and with most number of typhoon visits; the only place in the country with 4 seasons; the smallest province with unique landscape; the province with lowest crime rate; friendly and courteous Ivatans (Batanes inhabitants) who have preserved their culture and way of life, inspite of globalization and new technologies.

Batanes is one of my top dream destinations. Why? Below are my 10 reasons why Batanes is worth a visit:

1.  Nice Beaches

Devoid of tourist crowds, Batanes beaches has unspoilt fine white sand beaches that could rival Boracay and Palawan beaches. I’m a beach buff, so I would like to see how Batanes beaches fare with the other 2 top beach destinations in the country. The rock formations like in the photo below are added bonus.

Christmas Lights in Makati

The city of Makati is the premier business district of the Philippines. Boasting one of the highest revenue generating cities of the country, their local government can afford to flaunt their wealth by decorating their main business roads with Christmas lights each year.

Usually, their Christmas lights on the road islands have yellow color and without any form or shape. This year their Christmas lights have white color and are arranged vertically like big cylinders or funnels. Another difference is they have a special effect, like a dropping luminous white liquid, or a low shooting star from afar.

The photos above and below are taken along Ayala Avenue in between the Makati Stock Exchange and BPI branch.

Dumaguete Food Trip

Our culinary tour in Dumaguete started with a new breakfast experience at the east side of public market. Its called “budbud kabog tsokolate”, consisting of cooked millet seeds unwrapped from banana leaves (lower left item, locally called also as "suman"), cooked red glutinous rice (top item), and thick chocolate syrup from local cacao fruit.

The cooked rice and millet seeds are usually dipped into the chocolate syrup. The "suman" or "budbud" are available in 3 options – plain, with chocolate, or with jackfruit.

If you need protein with these carbo-rich foods, cooked eggs or ham are available from the same carinderia-type stalls that sell this unique Negrense food. Aside from the 3 food items above, we also ordered cooked ground corn and hot chocolate drink, for a total bill of only Php 95 to break our fasting.

Manjuyod Sandbar, Negros Oriental

Below are two of the photos I saw from the net, showing the 7-km sandbar of Manjuyod (pronounced as man-hu-yod) during low tide at calm sea in Negros Oriental.  Located along Tanon Strait that separates the Negros and Cebu islands, its what enticed me to see the place, about 54 km north of Dumaguete city.

After breakfast, we rode the Manjuyod-bound Ceres bus from Dumaguete terminal. Fare is Php 50 per adult person, on this northbound route with views of the hills on the west side, and seaside views on the east side. The bus trip took 1.5 hours due to a lot of stops to load and unload passengers. We passed the towns of Sibulan, San Jose, Amlan, Tanjay, and Bais City, which is another takeoff point if we were able to avail the usual tour package which includes dolphin watching, etc. Unfortunately, the Bais City tourism office had not responded on my online reservation, while a private tour operator I was able to contact is charging Php 3,000 for boat rental which is just too expensive for only three of us.