Makati and the shopping malls. Philippines Spring Festival 2024

Having recovered from the chaos of the bus trip from hell, we settled into Makati. 

Manila is made up of about 5 or 6 different areas, all of which have completely different feels and styles to them. We chose Makati as it is described as the best area for people new to Manila. It's also the nicest and cleanest area as it is the financial hub of the city. All the banks, embassies and international headquarters are in this areas so there is a lot of money. As a result, it's very pretty but had a very 'picture perfect' and manicured look. To me, it looked like so many other financial districts of other Asian countries. I could ahem been in Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong and they all would have looked the same. It was fine, but as a city, I did not take to Makati. 

We did however, have some of the best food of the whole trip. As luck would have it, the old red light district which has now been cleaned up and turned into a food night time area, was only a ten minute walk from our hotel. The focus of our trip became what to eat next as opposed to what to do or what to see.  

Our battle plan was to consult youtube "what to eat in Makati" videos and we made notes. Notes which we then followed. 

As I said, there really wasn't too much to do in Makati so wandering about became walking between shopping malls and restaurants, however we managed. 

One of the days we went to the science center and joined the kids having a great time watching dancing robots and 3D videos about space and earthquakes. The science center wasn't big but we still had a good time. Actually this day was Eddy's birthday so I spent a long time trying to make a birthday video in front of the dinosaur but had to keep starting again because of the endless announcements.