Manila Trip 2018 - Day 3

The third day of the trip was pretty much a free day as well. We weren't scheduled to meet anyone until later in the week. Anyway, we had a lot of food in the mini-refrigerator (that I forgot to mention the hotel had). Therefore, we had breakfast just inside the room. After that, we got ready to go swimming again.

The weather was a bit cloudy this time. Also, there were no other people in the pool -- but that was fine. It's a really small swimming pool anyway. Naturally, this was a chance to take a pic of Nagi in another one of her swimsuits as well.

Nagi is cute and sexy as usual today

We spent just about an hour in the pool and then went back to the hotel room to get changed and hit another one of the nearby shopping malls. By the way, I got my shirt wet when I jumped into the pool and forgot to take it off, so I had to get inside the elevator with just a towel around me. An older guy who got inside the elevator looked pretty surprised to see me like that. Anyway, he was pretty polite about it and asked me how the water was. I told him it was pretty good, but the chlorine was kinda strong.

With that episode aside, this time, we were going to the Power Plant mall, which was actually just a few blocks away. Still, because of the big buildings and the confusing layout of the streets in Makati, it was better to use a Grab Car again to get there. This would be the first time my mother saw this place. It was her idea to visit it.

The Power Plant was pretty much the same as ever since I'd last been there about 5-6 years ago. It's pretty much a one-strip mall with its own movie theater and indoor parking -- pretty much a necessity since it was located right in the middle of the city. The basement area is where most of the restuarants are located. The ground floor has some miscellaneous shops along with a supermarket. The second floor is where the clothing, bag, and shoe stores are, and the third floor has novelty shops, art shops, computer hardware stores, toy stores, and the movie theaters.

My mother bought some clothes and a bag on sale at Topshop and bought me a new pair of shoes at Topman as well. Meanwhile, I bought a few barbie clothes for Nagi at a Toys R' Us. Yup, Toys R' Us is still alive here in the Philippines -- for now.

After that, we decided to go to another mall -- SM Aura. It was also just a short ride away. I did make a blunder, though. I just went with the GPS suggestion for our location when I booked the Grab Car and it turns out the location was on the opposite side of the mall. Fortunately, our driver figured it out and drove over to our location instead. I apologized for the mistake and he was pretty cool about it. 

SM Aura is also a bit of a one-strip mall, but a bit larger than the Power Plant -- or at least it seems that way. We entered the building via the Elevator areas, which took us straight to the top floor of the mall. We had to navigate our way past the chapel and inside the actual mall area -- which was pretty simple. Thankfully, there are signs everywhere in Manila and people don't blindly assume that you know your way around -- quite a contrast from Iloilo City. While I'm at it, I might as well tell you. Probably, because Iloilo City is such a small place, people here expect you to know what you are supposed to do without any instructions no matter where you go -- enrollment at a school, bank, government services. There are no visible signs because people always assume that everyone else is familiar with how things work in Iloilo City -- and if you don't, it's your fault. We're pretty insular that way.

Anyway, back to SM Aura, we made our way to the food hall and yeah, we were pretty much familiar with this place as well. We had some lunch there and a dessert of crepes. After which, we planned to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp. The movie theatre was just right next to the food hall, which was pretty convenient. Also, I was surprised to see that you could choose your own seats when buying tickets. In Iloilo, there's no seat selector option because the Movie Theatres are huge -- about the size of a medium-sized auditorium, probably able to host at least 100-150 people at once. In contrast, the cinema inside of SM Aura had a seating capacity of about 60 -- which was actually a nice experience since everyone could get a good viewing angle on the movie. I chose our seats to be close to the far side from the single entrance/exit because I expected people to swarm in at the center -- I was right. In any case, the viewing angle was still pretty good since the projection screen was curved like those newer TVs.

The movie itself was pretty nice. It was action-packed and thus, never boring all throughout and it even had a tie-in to Avengers Infinity War.

It was about 4:30-5:00 PM by the time the movie was over. We saw that there was a National Bookstore branch in the mall so we checked it out for those Liquitex paints, but they didn't have any. We went over to an adjacent mall just across the road from SM Aura after that -- Market! Market! I liked to visit the department store inside of this place every time I'm in Manila -- we didn't do that this time, though. My mother doesn't think much of the place -- especially the crowd. Market! Market! Has a circular, three pronged structure with a fountain in the middle and three wings that jut out on each of its sides -- or at least I think there are three wings -- might be more.  Anyway, this structure seems to be common for Ayala malls -- which Market! Market! is. We checked out the National Bookstore branch there and struck out on the Liquitex paints -- again. Of course, at this point, we'd checked just about everywhere and were ready to give up on those paints.

Having nothing more to do in Market! Market! we walked over to Serendra Plaza, a commercial complex which sort of works like an outside mall -- and which was also just across Market! Market!

There, we saw a place called "Art Bar," an art specialty store. Finally, they had those elusive Liquitex Heavy Body paints.

After that, we walked over to the big Fully-Booked branch in one of the buildings in Serendra. There, I finally found the Bento Picasso watercolor set. Basically, it's a student grade watercolor set by Tokyo Finds that comes recommended by this channel:

I've been using it for a little while and it seems about on par in terms of quality and ease of use to the Sakura Koi field sketch set. It's a little bit cheaper too -- so it's a good alternative. I think the quality of the paints is somewhere in-between Sakura Koi and Prang. I'm doing a review of it in a bit -- once I set up my cellphone to record me painting (I deleted my previous footage by accident via memory card reformat). Look forward to the review!

So after Fully-Booked, we booked a Grab Car to get back to our Hotel. It was about a 30 minute ride due to traffic, but we still arrived at about 7:30 PM. We had dinner at the Glorietta food court again. With dinner done, we walked over to SM Ayala's supermarket to buy some cultured milk and some fruits for my mother and then it was back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we'd be meeting my aunt, but I'd basically bought everything I wanted to buy in Manila at this point: Some new clothes for Nagi, White Nights Watercolor Set, Tokyo Finds Bento Picasso Watercolor Set (bought by my mother for me).