We headed down to the mall below our accommodation for breakfast and chose a Singaporean place called “Nanying”.I had a noodle dish with soup on the side and Jives had a Laksa like thing… Not quite a soup but with the peanut flavours. 

We then walked about 30  minutes to the nearest metro station and took the train to “United Nations”. We wanted to once again check out the intramuros but on our own time this time. 

We started our little tour of the intramuros at Puerta Real Gardens where we walked on the wall and enjoyed the lovely gardens. It reminded me a lot of Tainan in Taiwan and its lovely old forts covered in trees.

We then walked through the centre of the intramuros to San Agustin Church where it started to pour rain. We stepped into a shop called “Balai Pandesal” and sat at the window with a beverage, watching the rain pour down. 

Once the rain let up a bit more we visited San Augustin Church, which was lovely. The floor was covered in tombs, reminding me of West Minister Abbey in London. The ceiling was carved and incredibly detailed, with blue and grey glass chandeliers, so elaborate for a church. 

Next we walked around the Casa Manila until it began pouring rain again. We stopped in a little second story restaurant called “Batala Bar” for a pint of craft beer as it rained. I had a chocolate stout and Jives had a mango IPA. We sat right in the window overlooking the beautiful old courtyard. The beers were delicious but pricey. 

We next walked along the walls of the old city (one of our favourite things to do when available) and then headed back towards the metro stop. I began pouring rain once again as we arrived at the station. We had to wait quite a long time to purchase tickets, maybe 30 minutes as it was rush hour. The train was packed!! It was difficult to stand, almost as packed as a Japanese rush hour train. 

Back at the hotel we dried off and then headed to a sushi restaurant for dinner. The sushi was ok, but the staff was so rude and the experience was terrible (the lady literally grabbed money out of my wallet and walked away, refusing to give change). I never leave bad reviews but this was so terrible I broke my rule (we left some nice reviews for other places we had visited on the trip at the same time, to balance out the negativity).  

We woke up at 8am and packed up our stuff in the room, leaving at 12. We went downstairs and had breakfast again at the Singaporean place. We then called a Grab and it took us to the Lyf Hotel in Manila. The ride was 15 minutes and cost 190 Peso. I gave the man 300 peso (only $2.50 Cad more) and we seemed genuinely stoked! I like to tip cab drivers when we travel, it’s such a tough job for such little pay. Gas is expensive everywhere in the world… We arrived at the hotel at 1:15pm and they wouldn’t let us check in until 2pm which is fine, but they also wouldn’t let us sit in the lobby, which was weird. They told us we had to leave and come back. We went to a mall nearby and we got Jives a hoodie, as it was 6 celsius in Japan and -17 celsius at home and we would have to shovel our car out at the airport when we arrived. 

We checked into the hotel at 2 and did a load of laundry so we could be clean for the ride home. We loved the Lyf hotel in Cebu, but this one was weird. We got stuck in the elevator as only half the elevators worked. I am still glad we booked the hotel though, as it provided a great place to rest before two days of flying. We had some snacks and waited for our laundry to dry. Our flight wasn’t until 11:20pm so at 8pm we packed up and checked out of the hotel. The lady at the reception was confused, as she was the one that had checked us in at 2pm.

Our driver to the airport was lovely and chatted with us the whole way to the airport about travel and family and other tourists he had met. We tipped him quite a bit as we were leaving the country and didn’t want to take any change with us. We also gave him a Bumbling Tourist business card and told him to check out our videos, which he was receptive to. We then waited in line for two hours to check in to our flight. We arrived at the airport four hours early, yet barely made it to our flight in time. I got pulled aside for an extra security screening as I always do (I think it’s because I smile at people…) but the secondary screening machine was broken so I had to stand around awkwardly for half an hour as they fixed the machine…. The flight to Japan was amazing, as always JAL is an incredible airline. The staff always introduces themselves to us and makes sure we get a vegetarian meal. 

We arrived in Tokyo a bit later than expected, but customs and immigration was quick and we were stamped in for our second Japan visas of the year, maxing out our Japan visits for 2025 by February 20th! I actually had three visas in my passport active in 2025 as our visa from October 2024 expired in 2025…. Looks like someone likes Japan a bit! We then tried to find lockers to stash our bags, but the airport lockers were all in use. We took the first monorail of the day (5:18am) to the end of the line and stashed our bags in a locker there. Then we jumped on a Yamanote train to Ueno station where we walked to Asakusa to visit “Tanuki Street” which I think had sprung up since our last visit to Asakusa. 

Tanuki Street is just west of Sensoji Shrine and is one city block lined with little tanuki “shrines”. There are maybe ten little red boxes along the street, each with a different shiny silver metal tanuki inside. We spent some time here before making our way to a kombini for a warm tea and a rice ball.

It was a brief time in Tokyo, only a few hours total. We headed back to the airport, picking up our bags along the way. At the airport Jives found a weekly Shonen Jump and we sat and read as we waited for our flight. We both agreed that even though we only spent a few hours in Tokyo, it had been worth it. 

Our flight boarded a little late, which was fine…. But it proved VERY problematic when we arrived in Chicago on our layover. 

Arriving in Chicago we had to go through customs, immigration and baggage claim in order to get to the area where our connecting flight was… Every single step of the way was confusing and there were zero signs. Everyone I asked for help completely ignored us. We got yelled at by multiple security and border officials that then refused to point us in the right direction. I had to run through the airport in sock feet in order to catch our flight. We had not stepped foot in the US for over fifteen years before this (and on that one occasion we had a short layover in New Jersey). We felt that with the “muslim ban” that had gone into effect in an orange moron’s first term, we would steer clear of the US in protest. Now I am unsure if we will ever step foot in the US again, not even on a layover. Our entire time in Chicago was terrible, I think we got treated so poorly because we were masked in the airport and the US can’t handle that. 

We arrived in Toronto at 12:30pm and it was -16 celcius. Two days previous a Delta flight had flipped over at Pearson and burst into flames. The plane was still there as we landed, very ominous. Scary. Thankfully no one was killed. We made our way to our car and began digging it out from under two feet of snow.