Philippines

Bibikinga coconut for the pre-arrival meal was an unfamiliar dish to me; basically a medium-dense cake, not too sweet, drizzled with a bit of salt and butter. No filling or anything, so pretty straightforward.

Final approach to Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL), even in the dark, showed just how sprawling a city Manila is. With the airport divided into three distinct terminals, Terminal 3 felt distinctly reasonable in size, unlike some other airports that force you to bask in their grandeur. Even the upper level food court along the hallways felt a bit pedestrian.

The somewhat inappropriately titled Runway Manila is the skybridge from Terminal 3 to the massive Newport World Resorts and Hotels across the road, and makes for a super easy exit from the airport if you're staying in the Newport World Resorts complex-- multiple medium and large hotels, a sizeable shopping mall, housing, parking, a McDonald's a church, and more. You can more or less tell where the airport's section of skybridge ends and the Newport World Resorts one begins, as the latter is much more stylish.

With a rainy (and later thunder/lightning) day plus a very early arrival, spent most of my time exploring Newport World Resorts and the sprawling Marriott Manila. Breakfast, while not to the level of the best hotel breakfasts in Asia, was still quite good, the west tower lobby bar looked impressive (especially for a Marriott!), the room was spacious, and the view of the golf course was actually quite lovely, even with the clouds and rain.

Somewhere in there a bunch of work got done, then when it was time for dinner, ended up eating my fill back at the Marriott's executive lounge, just like I did for breakfast. Beef riblets were good if a tad sweet, the fried salmon was even better but a tad too heavy, the pata tim was probably not good by Filipino standards, but as my first time having it, I enjoyed it. The staff encouraged the dinner hour special, which turned out to be a deep fried sweet and sour broccoli. Not the way I usually see broccoli-- was a nice presentation, even if deep frying and then covering in sweet and sour sauce is a good way to make a healthy vegetable about as unhealthy as you can get (at least they had a pot of normal sauteed veggies to make up for it!). Finally, chicken tinola soup was actually quite good.

Wrapped up the night at the rooftop pool, which was, again, quite beautiful for a Marriott, even if it was too hot and humid to stay for long.