A trip to the Philippines was always on the horizon for us with A having lived there a few years during his childhood, and he was keen to revisit. 2025 granted us an easy way to take a block of leave with the Easter public holidays and ANZAC day appearing close together, so it was a bit of a no brainer. It was also whale shark season (more on that later). And it was my birthday again, so time for a trip!

Airport and admin

Going to the airport was old hat now - take a ride share (Didi, in today’s case) to the airport, drop off bags (Qantas now has you doing it all by yourself as if they are a low cost carrier, not a good sign), pop by the TRS desk for a tax refund on A’s shiny new GoPro Hero 13 and go through security.

We sat by the duty free shops to pass the time and a mate of mine from work and his family walked right by us! We had a nice chat; he was off to Fiji with his entire family for Easter.

SYD -> MNL (QF19)

Our flight was served by a A330-200. It was fine, not super squishy. I had been boycotting Qantas because of their business practices during and after the COVID-19 pandemic but I was finally willing to sell out for convenience. There was simply no other airline that flew us direct apart from Philippine Airlines, which was shockingly more expensive! Other airlines weren’t much better and had long layovers, which didn’t appeal to me this time. I just wanted to get to and from Manila quickly and maximise our time on the ground.

The service Qantas provided was okay; an obvious downgrade compared to the before times. There was no inbuilt inflight entertainment system. Instead each seat was equipped with an iPad. Sign of the times? That said, it worked rather well, so not really a degradation of service, in this case. There was a pretty big library of movies to go through.

There was only one hot meal provided, which was lunch and it was rather sad. Gone are the days of the main accompanied by an entree, salad and dessert/fruit/snack. Now, we were served just a main meal (chicken/beef/veg) with a snack (some bad cheddar with rice crackers) and a bread roll upon request, all in paper and plastic. There was a dessert after - a Bulla lemon merigue ice cream stick, which was sickenly sweet. More snacks and drinks were handed out during the flight (rice crackers and cheap chocolate). Before landing, a hot snack was handed out - arancini or Bibigo mandu. I picked the latter which was ok.

We were seated in the middle section where there were 4 seats. A had the aisle, I sat next to him but had no neighbour and there was another guy who sat next to the other aisle. I noticed when we disembarked that he was ADF. He was well mannered lol, we both kept to ourselves and didn’t utilise the empty seat between us. He also declined the ice cream (dat discipline. That said, I only had half, it was just too sweet.)

Manila

We were picked up by A’s relative, who was an older gentleman. It was Easter Saturday and there were barely any cars on the road. But how bad could it be normally?

We had booked one night in Manila city because it was in between the airport and a few sights in the old town. On the way there were lots of giant malls (in Manila Bay) and some other interesting buildings, which A’s relative took the time to show us. This area was quite orderly and clean. The malls were ridiculously sized, however.

Finally, we reached our hotel, the Hop Inn Hotel (Ermita). Familiar name? Yep, it was the same chain from Thailand! We wanted something familiar to ease us into the craziness that would indoubtably hit us in the face that was Manila or The Philippines. And besides, it was cheap. It would do the job for one night. We checked in, dropped our bags, gave A’s relative a bag of gifts from us from Australia. Then he invited us to dinner, which we couldn’t refuse, despite taking the time to drive us to our hotel.

There were a good bunch of restaurants near the hotel, a few famous establishments (The Aristocrat, Shakey’s Pizza, Peri Peri Chicken, Andok’s, Max’s Restaurant).

Max’s Restaurant

Well, we had to start our trip with some Filipino dishes, so Max’s it was. A had some memories of a bad experience at The Aristocrat, his relative left it completely up to us and I wasn’t that hungry so I had no opinion; so we were left with Max’s. We left the ordering entirely up to A’s relative, who picked a nice spread, with entirely too much food. Of course, doggy bagging was a perfectly acceptable option (why isn’t it back home?) which he opted for at the end.

We had (going L-R in the above photo):

• Crab garlic egg rice (PHP108 for medium or PHP198 for large), which was the best. Exactly as it sounds. Very garlicky.
• Beef Kare Kare (PHP 898) - this was pretty tasty and not too peanutty tasting. So not like Thai satay at all. Hard to describe. It was a little sweet. Unfortunately the beef was overcooked. This was served with a small pot of ginisang bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), which was absolutely delicious. It was funky but umami, sort of but not really like Malaysian belacan. More palatable than the latter, I think.
• Chop suey (PHP348) was a mix of vegetables, but not the usual vegetables I was used to seeing in a mix together. There was pumpkin, eggplant, tomato, okra, beans, and bittermelon. I was glad A’s relative ordered some veg!
• Max’s spring chicken (half, PHP278) - apparently fried but not very oily, this dish was pretty bloody tasty! According to A’s relative, picking the spring chicken as opposed to regular makes all the difference!

For drinks, I ordered a Green Mango Shake (PHP128) which, to my horror, had sugar granules in it. Was this a sign for the sweetness to come? I had read (and A could confirm that) the locals are notorious for preferring their food and drink to be on the sweet side. To be fair, the green mango was rather unripe, but it wasn’t awfully sour.

A got an Ube leche flan shake (PHP148), which was absolutely ridiculous. The Ube shake was delicious, and would be the first of many. However, the addition of a massive hunk of leche flan was very over the top; it was so ridiculous that A was giggling about it. I had never had leche flan before and it was actually ok, almost better than panacotta… maybe. But to be honest, panacotta/creme caramel/flan were not really my favourite kind of dessert.

We were also able to drink the water provided by the restaurant. A’s relative said it would be filtered at establishments such as Max’s (mid tier eatery?) and gave us recommendations for bottled water brands.

7/10 Good start to the trip, on the culinary front at least. #ipinions