Manila Part Six - Fancy Makati

Our trips to Manila almost felt like visiting three totally different countries, the madness of Intramuros, the calm and history of Corrigador and finally we visited Makati, which was totally different again.

When we first left our hotel in Makati Rich said to me "It kind of feels like being in Singapore" and he wasn't wrong. The heat was as still as heavy as it was everywhere else but Makati is amazingly clean. It's also full of malls, lots and lots of malls. Including some very fancy malls.

You guys probably know this about me already, but I'm not a huge fan of malls - I'm much more of a market girl. However, when its a million degrees outside I can be tempted inside, especially if there are icy treats.

The icy treat with purple ice cream is halo halo and its a Filipino specialty and includes shaved ice, condensed milk, jelly and all kinds of other goodies.

Makati did have some nice open park areas to sit in and enjoy the sun or shade, depending what you preferred.

We did enjoy the matcha kit kat seats in the park - I know its just advertising, but its pretty fun.

I thought I'd finish off with a post of this subway, which had a lot of fun art (some of it very Kawaii).

This  is also my final post for our trip to The Philippines! It's now been a few months since we took this trip, but I still find myself thinking about The Philippines quite often, I think I said in one of my earlier posts The Philippines is probably the most challenge country I've visited and I've traveled quite a lot through South East Asia. The divide between rich and poor is so striking and the country has been so much turmoil. In fact my earliest memories of The Philippines was hearing about the horrible things that were happening there on the news when I was a child (during Fernando Marcos presidency).

I feel like I learnt so much during our trip and its a really amazing country to visit, I would love to go back again soon and visit some of the other islands. Also I have to say the Filipino people are so damn nice and so willing to share their history - even the painful and difficult parts. If you have a chance you really should visit, I'm so glad I went and I really want to go back, but next time for maybe a month or more.

Sew 100 Wearable items - Complete!!

I was updating a few blog things today and I realised something, I have now sewn 100 wearable items - well actually 106 wearable items!! He's the full list and links to all the blogged items - go me!

I've read the list and thought I'd choose the five items that are my favourites - its a long list, so it was a tough to decide on only five.

Princess Bubblegum Costume

I think this is the only time I've actually put in an effort to create an actual cosplay costume and I still love it! I also love this cute photo of with Ria (as Fiona) - its mathematical! 

Easter Dress

I made this dress in Easter of 2013 and I still wear it ALL the time, in winter and summer at work and on holiday. Pretty good for a dress made from fabric I picked up for free at a fabric swap!

Mask Print Laurel Dress

There was a time in my life where I was obsessed by the Laurel Dress pattern and I made like a million of them because I've always loved the shift dress silhouette and this pattern fitted my really well. I haven't kept ALL of the Laurel dresses I've made, but this one is still going strong. I love the mask print and always get complimented on how striking it is - all I can say is "why thank you, I made it myself".

Rich's birthday robe

There's no point in denying it, I am a selfish sewist - most of my makes are for me! Or sometimes for small people I know, not for Rich. In fact I've only made him a couple of things, one of them is this rad space robe! I'm still pretty proud of it and it gets a lot of use.

The Vix Dress

This dress had to make it here, because for a dress made from an skirt its had a heck of a lot of wear! I wear this thing everywhere - to the office, in weekends and hiking.

It has also been all over the world with me - Indonesia, The Philippines and Malaysia to name a few. Because a good travel dress is a small dress (that doesn't up much space) made of polyester that dries in about five minutes and never ever needs ironing!

Although I have officially completed my 100 wearable items, I am going to keep sewing of course, and I'm also going to keep a running tally of everything I have made here  because its good to have a visual record of everything I make. Hope you guys liked my top five.

Manila Part Five: Corrigador - Day Two

Our second day on Corrigador was ALMOST a rest day (pretty much unheard of when we are traveling!). Simply put there wasn't too much to do, but that's kind of ok when you know you are heading back to the chaos of Manila.

We started the day admiring the view from the window of our hotel, it was already blistering hot in the early morning hours.

We spent much of the morning down at the waters edge, we didn't go swimming (some folks did) but we just soaked in the scenery. There were some monkeys in the jungle area near here too, but they were very shy so we didn't see too much of them. That's actually a good thing, my last encounter with monkey was at the Batu Caves in Malaysia and those monkey were way to familiar with people (I'm pretty sure they wanted to steal my ice cream).

The other animal island inhabitants were goats, so many goats! I love goats so much so it was pretty fun to just hang out with them under these trees (I also hoped that they existed to keep the grass down and they weren't being fattened up for dinner!).

 We also explored a few more of the memorials on the island, I especially liked this one to the "Angels" of Corrigador, the nurses.

Despite not doing much the day seemed to go pretty quickly and before we knew it the ferry had arrived and it was time to head back to Manila.

Next thing I knew we were in Manila! We finally found a taxi and arrived at Makati - out final stop on our trip to the Philippines.

Favourite Wellington Walks: Bolton Street Cemetary

If you've been following my blog for a while you will know that as well as crafts, creepy things and Hello Kitty I really like walking. I live in the inner city and its my everyday mode of transport and I wouldn't have it any other way.

One of my favourite places to walk, when I'm not walking to or from the shops or work is the Wellington Botanical Gardens and one of my favourite places in the gardens is the Bolton Street Cemetery.

I really like cemeteries, because I really like history because I'm nerdy (I have a BA in history and politics - because I'm THAT cool).

At the entrance of the cemetery is a memorial/gave to Richard Seddon (or as he was known "King Dick"), he was and still is the longest serving Prime Minister of New Zealand (although he wasn't officially a Prime Minister until 1901, before that we had a Premier).

King Dick's gave is the most impressive in the cemetery, although there are also quite a few other incredible gravestones.

 Harry Holland is another fairly important person in New Zealand Politics, he was the second leader of the New Zealand Labour party - the inscription reads "He devoted his life to free the world from unhappiness, tyranny and oppression".

The cemetery looks out over Thorndon, one of the older suburbs in the city - which I guess is ironic in a way as many of the early settlers (and Maori who lived in Wellington around this time)  are buried in the cemetery.

Another important figure in New Zealand history Samuel Parnell, his grave stone may be less impressive - but I'm pretty thankful for this guy - like it says below "father of the eight hour day". Thank you Mr Parnell.

It may be a bit weird, or a bit creepy - or both weird and creepy....but I really love some of the elaborate headstones in this place. This one with the love hearts and tiles really appeals to me for some reason.

The cemetery has lots of different paths, some are a lot clear than others. Although we have lived here for over ten years now (yikes) we only recently explored a "new to us" path.

 If you're thinking right now, those headstones are awfully close to those trees, that's pretty weird there is a good and pretty sad reason for that - in the 1970's the cemetery found itself in the way of a new motorway and the motorway won. Many of the graves from the original cemetery were dug up and the bodies were put in one big plot. The head stones wouldn't all fit around this one plot so they have been placed in various spots of the remaining cemetery. The whole thing make me incredibly sad if I think about it too much - the same thing would never happen today, but its pretty horrible nonetheless. 

 

At the end of the path there is an area with a bunch more head stones - including this one, with its fancy tiling.

This area also had a view of the city, the tall buildings you can see are mostly government offices, hotels or apartments.

I will finish off with a few more random photos I took on the day of this walk - doe you have any favourite walking spots?