SOLO TRAVEL TO THE PHILIPPINES | First Impressions of Manila
thank you it was the Rolling Stones that said you can't always get what you want honey but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need I'm gonna hope that that's going to be the case of my situation in this video where um I have spent about a week in Manila now and unfortunately things just haven't been going great if I'm being honest where the first three four days I was actually very sick with a stomach bug that I had on the tail end of my trip from Bali so I did the responsible thing and just rested in those days the days where it was beautiful and sunny out but now when I'm thankfully feeling better as you can see we are dealing with the tail end of manila's rainy season it's a little rain obviously never hurt nobody but uh it does make things much more complicated for me to film and make it aesthetically pleasing so I'm gonna try my best I'm gonna try my best guys because I really want to shine Manila in the best light I think it's a really cool City and I have been enjoying my time here so the area that I am in right now let me actually flip the camera this is BGC and it is the second largest business district in Manila after Makati the area that I am staying in but all along I had plans to shoot my intro here because it has all these cool skyscrapers lots of amazing street art but yeah that's how it goes it is just gonna be raining probably all afternoon so instead after walking around here for well maybe 20 30 minutes I'm gonna do as the locals do and I'm gonna take you guys eyes to an epic Mall foreign I have taken you guys is not just a mall not just any mall is the Venice Canal Mall I had actually seen the small in somebody else's video so I knew that I had to make a trip to check it out for myself and since we are very fortunate that the rain has stopped at least for a second um let me actually take this time and tell you guys about some of my first impressions of the Philippines the very first thing that happened right as I was passing through immigration uh here in Manila really caught me off guard was first of all the immigration officer spoke amazing English very impressive but second of all he asks me a peculiar question where well first he's just like where are you from and I was like oh you know Calgary in Canada and he was like where in Calgary and at first I was like is this a trick question like why why does you know he want to know that and so I said well you know in the southwest corner of the city that's where my mom lives and he's like oh is that near Chinook Mall and I was like what how do you know where Chinook mall is totally took me off guard that an immigration officer knew so much about Calgary where honestly the majority of people don't know where Calgary even is and then to play off this point I was just walking down the street and some really friendly people uh just came up to talk to me once again spoke perfect English that's going to be a theme of my first impressions is that everyone here speaks incredible English but second of all as we were talking they were saying that they had some relatives in Red Deer so yeah absolutely wild that I feel like I've met so many people that know so much about Canada all in all my first impressions of the people here is that they are incredibly nice I feel so welcome and uh from a tourist standpoint overall it has been quite easy to get around and figure things out thank you and look at this guys just like in Venice they have the love lockets as well on this gorgeous bridge and another thing that I feel is definitely worth mentioning as a first impression of the Philippines is that they have started celebrating Christmas so early it is the end of October right now and you will see like Christmas lights over there just decorations all over the place Mariah carries on every radio station and it's funny because I feel like we celebrate Christmas fairly early in North America maybe about mid-november the Christmas decorations will start coming out but apparently they've already been up for like two or three weeks here they start in the beginning of October so like three months of Christmas thank you and another very important thing that I have been saving for when I arrive in the Philippines is trying the famous Jollibee from what I've heard this place is the equivalent of like KFC I guess because the primary thing that they serve is fried chicken um I've had some Filipino friends that I actually worked with um at the Thai restaurant I used to work at in uh Toronto we had like half Thai staff half Filipino and when Jollibee opened in Toronto they were so psyched look how cute their mascot is I love this little b character so yeah I want to give you guys my first impressions of Jollibee all right guys my order has arrived well actually I am missing I think it's called the Boku pie they said it'd be ready in five minutes it's like a hot coconut pie I think oh perfect thank you very much there we go pie so this will be my dessert look how cute uh but yeah for my main I decided to obviously try something that you would not see in Canada which is fried chicken and then also their famous spaghetti and then I got this which is a sarsi float I have no idea what Cersei is it kind of looks like Coke or Pepsi but I don't know so I thought I would try it all right the light the lighting is not fantastic in here but we're gonna have to work with it let us begin with the sarsi look find out what star C is beer very nice really nice yeah to me this would just be like a root beer float delicious and now we have the famous chicken and spaghetti let's begin with the chicken foreign I mean I haven't had KFC in quite a long time but I'm pretty sure this is better than KFC fantastic Fried Chicken like I'm not kidding you guys like 10 out of 10 for the Fried Chicken I'll be honest though with the spaghetti it's not looking super appealing if you know what I mean it just looks very Bland like just tomato sauce a little bit of cheddar and I don't know these kind of fat noodles on top so oh what in the world you guys there's hot dogs in the spaghetti okay interesting interesting it's okay it's okay I'll be honest and say I wouldn't come back for the spaghetti I'd probably get fries instead but the chicken is fantastic I would get that with a side of fries root beer float in my opinion is very good we definitely get it again and last but not least let's try this little oh okay I'm worried I ordered the pulo one okay I'm actually a little bit confused guys because I thought I ordered the Pula one that's the coconut one but on this side it says peach mango maybe they just use the same packaging for all of them I don't know yeah it's just cute little pie um let's try it um I did get the one I ordered it is like a white filling inside which is the coconut and it's really very happy with this very good first impression of Jollibee I can definitely see why people like this and I will definitely try it again while I'm here in the Philippines so welcome to Manila guys a city of many contrasts and home to a population of approximately 15 million people in the metro area if you stick to the more tourist areas of Manila you will find that it is very Foreigner friendly really easy to get around overall quite safe and very modern but if you are looking from the bird's eye view of the city there is of course a lot of poverty some that is very extreme and there are some parts of the city that would be extremely dangerous for tourists to visit as a solo female traveler I overall found it quite easy to get around and in sticking to the fairly safe areas I didn't really have any problems a few safety suggestions that I would have for both men and women that are coming to Manila for the first time is to really pick the best possible area for your accommodation something really Central second of all I would never recommend getting the regular white taxis off of the street it is definitely better to use grab the top safety precaution you really have to watch out for even in the tourist areas is of course pickpocketing try and have your bag in front of you not have too much money on you at one time and just don't be swinging your cell phone around everywhere that's really the main thing now that's not to say you can't go to the more local areas I actually did just that and you will see the full Vlog uh as my next video where I actually hired a local tour guide who was super nice and we went into an area that I didn't see any tourists in and I was definitely a bit of a circus attraction but people were super nice and it was just a really eye-opening experience into what life is like for the average person here in Manila you guys know that I like to focus on the best parts of each place but I think it would be irresponsible of me to not mention some of the things you should watch out for and while Manila is a fantastic City you can't just walk anywhere you can't go to every single district and not be at risk of certain things happening so just keep those things in mind and I'm sure you'll have a great time now if you're looking for a recommendation of where to stay in Manila especially if you're coming here for the first time I would say Makati that is the area that I have chosen to stay in a little closer to the district that is called publishion it's fairly accessible to other areas the tourists would be interested in and it really has everything you need now to give you guys an idea about pricing as far as accommodation goes in this area well let me give you a very first a general example of where I'm staying love di Makati not sponsored obviously it's a very popular hostel chain in Southeast Asia but I did choose to stay in a private room which was 40 US dollars a night and if I remember correctly their dorm rooms were going for about 15 US dollars a night if you wanted something a little bit more high-end and there are some beautiful you know luxury hotels here in Makati I would say that a three-star hotel is going to start around 70 US dollars a night and then if you want to stay somewhere really fancy like the peninsula over here those kinds of five-star hotels are starting around the two or three hundred dollar a night range overall I think this is a great option for anybody who's coming here for the first time because like I said it's very tourist friendly you do see quite a bit of foreigners walking around this area it's also nice because they have pretty long Boulevard so you can actually go for walks it's really easy to get grab taxis here or to use the public transit so all in all a great place to start your journey foreign now another must if you are coming to Manila is the historic area of intramurals this is the oldest part of the city dating back to the 16th century when the Spanish had colonized the Philippines so a very touristy area but very beautiful and to see it I decided to do a bike tour with this local company called bam bike Eco tours I'm standing right in front of the building but one thing I didn't anticipate is that a lot of the roads are cobblestone so I don't know how comfortable that is you know biking wise I guess we'll find out foreign thank you I feel like this is the perfect place to end off today's video friends this is Park Rizzle just outside of intramuros lovely place to go walk around but that brings us to the end of my introductory uh video to Manila I hope you found it helpful and I will actually have one more video coming out after this one where I visit a much more local part of the city that I definitely wouldn't recommend visiting on your own you definitely need a local guide and I guess one last thing I want to mention is that unfortunately I only have three weeks three weeks here in the Philippines which sure to the average person just on vacation would be a very long time but for somebody filming doing a full-time job it's really not a lot of time the reason I can't extend my time here is because I'm meeting somebody very special at my next destination and have to be there at a specific time so really the only two places that I'm going to be doing in the Philippines is Manila and then I'm flying down to Palawan and I will do a few different stops on Palawan before leaving to my next country so 100 I'm gonna have to come back to the Philippines this is just a tiny Taste of everything this country has to offer so as always let me know your thoughts in the comments guys have you been to the Philippines specifically Manila I guess for this video leave your thoughts and suggestions down below and as always I'm sending you guys so much love I hope you're having a fantastic day and keep being your own kind of beautiful bye guys
2022-11-03 15:23
