I spent the day with my friend Day driving me around today. We had a good breakfast as usual. Our goal for the day was to get money changed from her neighbor who is a money changer and unlock my cellphone so I can us it on the network here. I was very grateful for her taking me out because she doesn’t like driving in Manila because they’re crazy drivers and lots of traffic.
The exchange rate at the money changer was 40.16 pesos to 1 USD, which is really bad. Last year, it was about 50:1. After that, Day drove us to the Greenhills area which had a big strip mall like you would find in Los Angeles. Very westernized but with and Asian twist. You had your usual 2 Starbucks, California Pizza Kitchen, Coffee Bean, etc. In addition to that, there’s a ton of electronic shops and a flea market type area of cell phone merchants; literally hundreds of them. They sell used, “new”, and imitation cell phones and accessories. It’s also a good place to get a phone unlocked so one can use there cell and a local SIM card on the Philippine network.
Day visited a few friends at a Globe Telecom store; where she used to work. She talked with “Mama Mel” who was an older lady that seemed to have a lot of local connections with merchants. We followed her to a cell phone merchant to try to get my phone unlocked. Mama Mel hooked me up with a deal of 250 pesos ($6.25) for my phone to be unlocked. After thinking about it I agreed to have it done. The merchant screwed something into the back of the phone and hooked up his computer to it. After a few hours (he had computer problems) and some coffee at Starbucks, I got my working unlocked phone back.
We went back to Globe where we met up with Day’s friend Jeni and went out to dinner. We ate at a place called Won Ton that was owned by someone Day knows. He gave us 50% off our bill. The food was quite good, but over priced. I had a bowl of won ton and beef for about $1.
- jason
Day visited a few friends at a Globe Telecom store; where she used to work. She talked with “Mama Mel” who was an older lady that seemed to have a lot of local connections with merchants. We followed her to a cell phone merchant to try to get my phone unlocked. Mama Mel hooked me up with a deal of 250 pesos ($6.25) for my phone to be unlocked. After thinking about it I agreed to have it done. The merchant screwed something into the back of the phone and hooked up his computer to it. After a few hours (he had computer problems) and some coffee at Starbucks, I got my working unlocked phone back.
We went back to Globe where we met up with Day’s friend Jeni and went out to dinner. We ate at a place called Won Ton that was owned by someone Day knows. He gave us 50% off our bill. The food was quite good, but over priced. I had a bowl of won ton and beef for about $1.
- jason
3 comments:
HAHAHA YOU ARE SO PAKE!!! Complaining about the peso-dollar exchange rate... sheesh. No more $1 beef bowls for you!
Greenhills!! fun I was there too. I think most of the restaurants are overpriced. They usually give locals a heavy discount. You just need to learn tagalog and speak that to them. : ) Congratulations on making it alive in Manila traffic.
Starbucks! I don't think I'll be going there for a while...
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