Here I am with my part 2 blog about my Philippine vacation. I stayed everyday of my first week sleeping in the hospital with my mom. I saw the other side of my work, I was the family member of a patient and not the staff. It was hard and exhausting physically and mentally. I didn't even know how I survived, needless to say, I have very high respect to those loved ones who were so devoted taking care of their family.
My mom was finally discharged home and was so much better than when I arrived. So I planned to have some time with my cousins and friends on my last week of stay. Unfortunately, the weather was really bad. It was raining hard almost every single day. There were typhoons one after another. First it was Egay then Falcon. If you noticed, the typhoons were named alphabetically. That means, the next one will have to start with letter G, and if I'm not mistaken, it's already coming soon. Believe it or not, kid's school were suspended almost the whole week because of the weather. The good thing back home was that there's always somebody in the house, whether it's the parents or the maids.
Oh yes, speaking of maids, it was awesome to have someone doing stuffs for you all the time. To be honest, it felt weird to me at first because I was so independent in US. But then it didn't really take that long for me to be in the princess mode again. I loved every minute of it! Guess it's about right to enjoy it while it last.
Let's talk about how I made this last week an awesome and affordable vacation. Almost everyday, I had either friends or relatives with me. Since the weather was bad, we decided to do a lot of eating out and shopping in the mall. I craved for a lot of authentic Filipino foods that we didn't have in Chicago. We went to many of my favorite restaurants such as Goldilocks, Jollibee, Greenwich, Chowking, Cafe Marcelo, Dencio's, Gerry's and Countryside. I was with at least 3-8 people each time and believe it or not, our bill just ranged from $10-40 each time, and that's already eating to the max. Isn't that awesome? I also enjoyed home cooked as well as street foods. I had pork barbecue on the stick, pandesal (bread), chicharon (pork skin), taho (soy drink with vanilla and tapioca), halo-halo (mixed sweets with crushed ice and milk) and even the famous Balot (premature duck egg). They were all MASARAP (yummy)!
Shopping, it's what every woman loved to do. I was so excited that I bought lot of things for really unbelievable cheap prices. I got panels and sheers for almost my whole house for only $150, 10 pairs of scrubs for $150, clothes ($5-10 each), and lots of hair accessories for my girls for I don't even know how much I spent because I bought gazillion of them (ranging from .25cents to $3 a piece). My two luggage bags weighed more than 50 lbs each that I had to leave some of my clothes to my mom. And oh, I want to mention too that I had a pedicure for $3. I was planning to have a haircut ($3) and hair color and treatment ($50) but I ran out of time.
So there's my Philippine vacation, eating, shopping and spending time with families and friends. Please check my Photos section in my Facebook Page "Awesome and Affordable Family Vacations". Next time, I'm planning to take my whole family with me, on a much better season, of course, and explore the tourist spots in the islands. Now I'm back in Chicago and looking forward on our upcoming cruise to Bahamas in a couple of weeks for my daughter's 10th and my 30something birthday celebrations.
MABUHAY!
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