Humbug

So Manila is a bad place to celebrate Christmas. Or spend any time in really. It's like Edmonton, only instead of snow it's carpeted with street kids. It does have the largest mall in Asia, but they don't sell anything of interest. It's basically the same 4 stores repeated through four large buildings. I thought one saving grace for this would be I'd be able to pick up a waterproof case for my camera, but no one sells them. We went to another giant mall today to check, and the only store in the entire building that wasn't open was the one we wanted to go to. Bah.

Yesterday we stopped at 7-11 on the way home and there were some scruffy kids outside, so I thought, it's Christmas, let's give them some cookies. It was a horrible idea. Suddenly I was surrounded by screaming kids, pushing and shoving at each other and snatching cookies out of the hands of the tiny ones, and when I ran out of cookies their eyes bugged out and they started screeching for money in rage. It is not an endearing holiday memory.

It was very similar to when I thought I'd take a cracker out into the water while snorkeling and suddenly I was in a cloud of fish, most of whom were trying to eat my arm. I am full of increasingly bad ideas.

At least the food here is good. The food in KK was awful. And we didn't get food poisoning from the raw oysters we ate. Merry Christmas! We have a reservation for Coral Cay on the 30th, so as long as that doesn't fall through at least things can only get better.