The Manila Peninsula: A Love Story

Here it is: Blog Entry #50 for Domestic Travel, according to the official counters on my Blogger dashboard. Enjoy! 

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This is the lobby of The Manila Peninsula Hotel. 

Photo credit: wendyspearson.com

18 years ago, I made the mistake of going stag to my high school homecoming dance at The Peninsula. To ease the humiliation, I sat down at the Lobby Bar and ordered a Diet Coke. This was around the time when  the Pen was going through one of their many lobby renovations, and it just so happened that they needed a few volunteer customers to help out for the on-the-job training of their new staffers. I agreed, they put my Diet Coke on the house.. and oh, what an excellent glass of Diet Coke that was, for sure. 

(Photo: Pinoyphotoalbum.com) 

16 years ago, Scribey and I snuck out to the Pen for mid-afternoon margaritas and a few smokes at the lobby. Granted, this was around the time when 1) nobody checked for ID and 2) smoking in an air-conditioned hotel lobby was still allowed, but we felt so grown up and sophisticated, even though Scribey had to smack me over the head a bit when I found out that the chain-smoker at the table next to us was a then-B+ Filipino actor who, quite honestly, came off as a real douche.

Two Fridays ago, however, I almost fell off this balcony.

(Photo source: Orbitz.com)

And last Wednesday... well, let's just say that I had a life-changing cup of chamomile tea somewhere around here.

(Photo credit: Daniel Y. Go, on flickr.com) 

Even after all of this - and especially after coming this close to getting in trouble with hotel security - I still love the Manila Peninsula. Wonder when I'll be allowed back?

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That said - and out of respect for my new "friend," whose exact location I am no longer legally allowed to disclose - here's another one of the Pen's most recent guests, whom we can always count on to dress up nicely for a night at Salon de Ning.

Give It A Whirl

There was no way I was going to take this picture without the sun fading out into the night. 

Punahou Carnival, Honolulu, HI. Rides courtesy of EK Fernandez.

 

(To be honest, I don't know if this song is about a real carnival, but it did help me get out of that dark place I was in when I was a freshman in high school.)

Go Play Your Video Games

Photograph taken at the Museum of Technology and Transport, Auckland, NZ. 

You see, kids, when we were your age, our video game consoles were heavy and big, and all of the games came in  these hard plastic containers and we have to plug them in if we want to play. None of those things were connected to the Internet, and all the controllers were connected to the unit, so we didn't have any of those motion-sensitive wireless thingamabobs that you get to use nowadays... 

(...Yeah, yeah, I got on the Lana Del Rey bandwagon a few months too late. She's an oddity to me, but I think that we'll all be wailing to this song like we did with "Someone Like You" by the end of this year. Trust.)