Carlsbad Caverns

My siblings reminded me last night that I hadn't blogged in a while and that I still have a backlog of restaurants and travel destinations to blog about. So, since today is a lazy Sunday for me, I thought I'd make good use of the outdated 40 inch plasma TV I bought 4 yrs back and put on a Robin Williams movie as I blog.

The last vacation I could remember taking was to Odessa, Texas to visit my cousin who just recently moved there with her family. There's really not much to see in Odessa, but at the time, "nothing to do" and "nothing to see" were exactly what I was hoping for. Plus, I wasn't there for sightseeing or the food (though I really did enjoy Rosa's cafe). I was there to play with my extremely lovable godson who made my weekend absolutely fun and memorable.

As much as there was nothing to do in Odessa, New Mexico was only a 2 hour drive away so my cousin and her husband thought to make a roadtrip to Carlsbad Caverns and I'm glad they did. The visit to the Carlsbad Caverns was probably the longest I've spent walking underground in my life (not that I walk underground very often). The cave is huge and it probably took us an hour to follow the whole trail around the Big Room. Who would have thought that looking at underground rock formations could be very exciting?

Because it was quite dark in the cave, it was difficult to take good photographs, but my camera tried its best anyway. Enjoy the pictures!

I highly recommend visiting the Carlsbad Caverns and a big thank you to my cousin and her husband for bringing me here.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park
3225 National Parks Highway
Carlsbad, New Mexico

Manila in Instagram 2013

My trip to Manila last year was so eventful that I wasn't really able to keep track of all my pictures. So, here's a summary of my trip using posts from Instagram.

First dice game with my family after 9 years - almost everyone in our table rolled the first prize!

Right after arriving from Japan, J and I had lunch at Green Pastures. While waiting for our table, we had dippin dots ice cream. After lunch, we had some fries from Potato Corner!

And we also had some gelato from Morellis. Yup! Two kinds of ice cream, some fries, and pasta for lunch!

Pre-birthday celebration with my birthday twin! Sip and Gogh was the most fun thing I did in Manila!

More birthday festivities at Bale Dutung and at home!

Traveled far to eat panizza from My Kitchen. Nom Nom.

Treated J to Tsukiji because he has been very sweet. 50$ per sushi plate - worth every penny!

Lunch at Wild Flour followed by tea at TWG with my pretty aunties! 

Last meal in Manila - Goose Station doesn't disappoint.

Bale Dutung

Friends have been telling me about this place in Pampanga Anthony Bourdain visited a few years ago where you get to experience a 10-course Filipino meal. However, whenever I vacationed in Manila in the past several years, I never really stayed long enough to afford to spend a whole day traveling to Pampanga from Manila, eating for 3 hours and traveling back. Last year, I gave myself a 3-week vacation so I was in Manila for a little less than two weeks, which was more than enough to be able to spend a whole day dedicated to a food adventure. And since it was the first time I would be spending my birthday in the Philippines after nine years, I wanted to make it extra special. 

Bale Dutung exterior

My younger brother J who is the only sibling living in Manila was kind enough to organize my birthday celebration. Bale Dutung is by reservation only and requires a minimum of 12 people to dine before they'll open up the restaurant. There were only 8 people in our group, so J had been checking with them for availability since August (my birthday is in October) and reminded them each time that we were interested in getting the Anthony Bourdain menu. Thankfully, there were two other groups who made a reservation so we were able to go in with just 8 of us and since we were the first one to make the reservation, they chose to serve the Anthony Bourdain menu to everyone.

Bale Dutung was a long drive from Manila and it's in a residential subdivision, not your typical restaurant location, so it was more difficult to locate. The eight of us carpooled in two cars (thanks to Q for providing her driver, to C for providing a second car and of course, to J for driving us there himself!). We probably made three or four wrong turns before we got to our final destination three hours after leaving Manila. Everyone arrived hungry and eager to start the food fest. 

Mary, our perfect hostess

Mary, our hostess, gave us a little introduction to what we were about to experience before we started our meal. She also described each dish as it came out, instructing us the proper way of eating it, telling us about its history and sharing personal stories throughout the meal. It was such a unique dining experience!

Preparing our juice

Our meal started with a refreshment. I think it was dalandan juice with a brown sugar ice cube. I've always enjoyed drinking dalandan juice growing up, so this was perfect, especially after the three hours we spent on the road. 

Dalandan juice with brown sugar ice cube

We also had some crackers with three kinds of spread. 

Skyflakes? :)

Our first dish was Ensaladang Pako or Pako (edible fern) salad. I'm not too fond of salad. The only salad I could really eat as a meal is the Field Fresh Chopped Salad from Trader Joe's. However, since we spent around 50$ for this meal (which, come to think of it, isn't too bad!), I finished my pako salad with no complaints. If I were given a chance to customize the menu, I would leave this out though.

Ensaladang Pako

Our next dish was the BBQ Paldeut and Claude'9 Talangka Rice. In English, that's BBQ chicken tails with lemongrass marinade and crab fat rice. The chicken was very tasty, but I would like more crab fat with my rice, please.

BBQ Paldeut at Claude'9 Talangka Rice

We ate the dishes slowly because we were also busy listening to Mary explaining the significance of each dish. In my case, however, it really just took me longer to finish eating because I was too busy taking pictures and then asking my friend L about what Mary actually said. My friends teased me once or twice for not paying attention to what Mary was saying.

Next came the Adobong Pugo or Quail Adobo. This dish came with pandesal - I love pandesal - and some liver sauce I think. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Adobong Pugo

I keep looking forward to the following dish. Each dish that came out so far had been so different in flavor from the previous one that it got me really excited. We had the Hito at Balo-balo sushi next, which is sushi of crab fat and cat fish. I don't think they gave us enough, but that's probably a good thing at this point because after the quail, my stomach was already starting to get full.

Hito at Balo-Balo Sushi

The following dish was one of my favorites. They served us Pata Humba which is like braised pork belly. Very tender and delicious!

Pata Humba

Next, we had the Fried Lechon Flakes binalot sa tortilla at Claude'9 oriental sauce or in other words, Lechon Taco. It was like a taco with fried pork flakes. The center table was laid out with a variety of toppings and sauces we could add to our "tacos." I think there was kimchi in that spread. Everyone loves lechon, so this dish was a winner. Plus, it was really fun preparing our tacos.

Preparing our Lechon Tacos

My taco

Bulanglang Kapampangan na may Tian ng Bangus, Ulang at Tadyang ng Baboy (Milkfish belly, spareribs, prawn soup flavored with native guava) came next. This was a good time to take a break from meat and poultry. The flavors in this dish were interesting. I've never had soup like this before. The soup was creamy, just the way I like my soups, and the guava added a unique flavor to it. Adding bagoong (shrimp paste) to it to give it some saltiness made it even better. 

Generous helping of seafood

Soup being poured in

If there was one dish I went to Bale Dutung for, it was the Sisig. Sisig is a specialty in Pampanga and one of my favorite Filipino dishes. And because it's hard to find good sisig in Seattle, I'm always requesting for it whenever I visit Manila. Once I saw the big wok of sizzling sisig at Bale Dutung, I knew my craving would be properly satisfied. Suddenly, I was hungry again. Give me two plates of this, please!

Cooking the sisig right in front of us

Sisig Babi (Sizzling pork in onion and liver sauce)

After the sisig, I was already happy, but if we were to be served Kare-Kare next, I'll gladly take it too. Kare-kareng Laman Dagat was served next. It is seafood in peanut sauce. I prefer to eat my kare kare with beef tendons and eggplant, but this was cooked so well, I can't complain.

Kare-kare

Individual serving of Kare-kare

Our last dish was dessert! We had Tibok-tibok or pure carabao's milk maja blanca. It was served with Sinaunang Kape (coffee) - a great way to end our meal!

Our coffee and tea waiting to be poured

I love this carabao pitcher!

Tibok-tibok

We were allowed to pick one dish to repeat as we wish, but in the end, we were all too full to eat anything else. There was a lot of guest book signing and picture taking afterwards. We took a picture with the Tayags and asked for autographs. The eight of us also entertained ourselves with signing the guest book.

Signing the guest book

We also took our time looking through the products they were selling to take home. My friend Q gave me a dozen tamales to take home. They were the best tamales I've eaten - even better than Dona Juana's Mexican tamales in Wenatchee, WA, but I don't know if I can really compare them. The Bale Dutung tamales are Filipino tamales whereas the one in Wenatchee is Mexican.

The best thing about spending my birthday in the Philippines is I get to spend them with my best friends! They're the best friends in the world for taking time out of their busy schedules to make my birthday extra special!

Our group with the Tayags

Bale Dutung was worth all the effort - to be honest, it was really worth J's effort because I barely did anything :). If I had a chance to visit it again the next time I'm in Manila, I definitely will!

Bale Dutung

Villa Gloria Subdivision

Angeles City, Pampanga

(02) 668-4038

reserve@baledutung.com

Nara

We stayed in Osaka for two nights. The first day we spent eating and shopping around Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori, and on the second day, we took a day trip to Nara, which isn't really too far from the Osaka station. When we got to the Nara station, we had to take a JR bus to the Deer Park. As soon as we got off the bus, there were deer everywhere in front of the temple just down the path. There were all kinds of deer waiting for us. Deer that were eager to eat whatever the tourists offered them, like this one:

And deer that were lazy, like this one:

MM and I were fascinated by them. Some deer were friendly and polite, bowing to you asking for food like this deer:

While others were not as friendly, digging through your bags and nudging your hands looking for food , like these ones:

Or these ones:

Basically, once you give them food, they won't stop following you. The trick is to throw your food far away so they start towards that direction and you walk away deer-saliva-free.

It's a huge park. There were temples. The first one we saw had an admission fee so we just chose to take pictures from the outside.

After the temple, we decided it was time for lunch. There were a few restaurants near by. All of them looked good; it became difficult to choose. We ended up in this one restaurant that served bento boxes that included tempura, cold soba noodles and sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves. The sushi was a nice treat. I've never had them presented to me that way before. Everything was delicious and the restaurant was so clean. This was probably one of the best meals we had in Japan and it wasn't even on our list!

We saw a bakeshop nearby that we wanted to give a try so we went there to have dessert. One of my favorite sweet treats in Japan is soft serve ice cream. I probably ate two cones of soft serve ice cream per day while I was there. This bakeshop we went to specializes in Mikasa soft serve, so that's what I got while MM got a delicious looking pastry.

Outside, we spotted a deer that MM decided to feed some green tea. The deer ended up eating the whole cup. MM was so worried it wouldn't be able to digest the cup and that something bad will happen to it.

But nope, it was perfectly fine. In fact, it was so happy it gave us a smile - or a smirk or a "give me more food!" look.

We walked around a bit more and discovered a lot of lamps (?) in the area. And we saw more deer, though the deer that are further inside the park were a lot calmer.

We soon ran out of things to do or places to visit. We started heading back to Osaka earlier than planned, but we got off at the wrong bus stop, which was a blessing in disguise because we ended up seeing more of Nara as we were walking towards the station. We saw a street lined with shops. MM bought more cosmetics from pharmacies and I bought more Pocky from snack stores. We arrived back in Osaka in time for dinner. I told MM that we weren't having any more dessert after our meal because we've had way too many sweets during our trip. And I told her that I especially wouldn't have any more ice cream, but as we were walking around the Osaka station (which was the worst station to navigate around, by the way), we saw this:

I squealed upon seeing Grom - my favorite gelateria in Italy! I knew the no ice cream promise I made five minutes ago was doomed then. I told myself I would just abstain from ice cream when I get back to Manila (broke that promise too - didn't even last a day).

That is all I have of Japan. It's a beautiful country with some of the friendliest people I've met. I waited almost a whole year for this trip and it was definitely worth the wait.