Letter from Manila - Santol - of course!

Gotta love their standard of trench reinstatement. Did they even compact the fill? Is it at all likely that another crew will come to slap some cold mix on it or is that it?

So, a couple of things and firstly for all the foodies out there I went to try the Boy Shawarma for you, which is just around the corner from our new place. Hmm, the things I do…

I order a chicken one (they only do that or beef and the beef’s generally not too good here) and received a large foil parcel looking about the size of a donkey’s wossname. Not bad for three quid, I think. However, whilst I was waiting, I had a look at the various bits of blurb around the place. Did you know that according to Boys, authentic shawarma only contains meat, French fries, pickled gherkin and garlic sauce? None of your upstart stuff like onion, tomato and the like, Just traditional French fries, as eaten in the Levantine since time immemorial. And no, they can’t make it spicy.

Anyways, I get this thing home, unwrapped it and, for the purposes of investigation, opened it up.

Yup, French Fries, one lonely laser cut slice of pickle, a few small chunks of (fried, not grilled) chicken hiding in the corner and about half a pint of garlic mayonnaise. So, mainly fries then, and the bread it was wrapped in was thick and chewy. To sum up, it was rather unpleasant, especially when coated in lashings of synthetic garlic flavoured mayo, to which I have a particular aversion.

It also gave me the worst gut-rot since mixing with rat-pee contaminated ice at a festival up in Pampanga. The three quid for what is basically an unleavened chip butty with added garlicky bacteria suddenly didn’t seem quite such good value.

Probably not going back there.

This morning was a bit of a strange one. Today sees the start of the new academic year. Yes, a whole new year of Walang Pasoks and spurious water shortages to look forward to and of course, the world famous Malate Catholic School pick a week with Independence Day in it so they don’t actually have to educate anyone for five whole days in a row. Heaven forbid!

No that wasn’t the strange bit, more like expected, but what was peculiar was being kissed goodbye outside school by one, rather than two. Felt odd, somehow.

Anyway, to cheer us both up, I’ve agreed to meet Tania after school at Café Adriatico where I’ll have a couple of cold ones and she’ll demolish a chocolate milkshake that’s bigger than her head!

Sounds lovely. My local Kebab place now serves up the meat in a naan bread so you can actually pick it up with it disintegrating! ''Tis gorgeous.

For the people with acid reflux, like me, this thread is taking a very dark turn. Nom nom nom

I'm on Lansoprazole but you can overwhelm it with beer, kebabs and curries. All the stuff I like

Eh, no, the miracle pill of choice changes every week, don't you know.


Best kebab I've had in a while was made by a Pole working in a Hungarian owned place based in a large cupboard under the stairs of a row of flats down a side street accessed through a side door down an alley off that. My Lithuanian friend took me there and none of the conversation was in any dialect I know any of.
Took me several hours to monster through it. He took his home and fed his wife and toddler with the rest of it.
The owners moved to the city now and are doing very well, but too far to travel just for another one...

Where would you be without a satnav?

Still lost.

I gave mine to Madam in disgust. She doesn't actually use it to find anywhere, but she loves the little moving screen as she drives along.

The reasons I ditched it are as follows:-
1) Virtually all streets are named after dead politicians or clergy (the exception being the lady that invented banana ketchup)
2) There are IIRC 16 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila
3) There aren't enough dead politicians or clergy to go around therefore everywhere has the same street names - it can take an hour just to get the bloody thing looking in the right direction!
4) They have the habit of changing street names willy-nilly. So for example, Buendia Avenue. Everyone then names their buildings accordingly; Buendia Tower, Buendia Vista, Buendia Pig Intestine Emporium, etc., at which point they rename it Senator Gil Puyat Avenue. There's one street near me that's been renamed three times in the last decade.

Garmin just can't keep up!


Ah, but only she knows where it is!

We're just over a quid a litre here. Not too shabby.