Manila!

The first thing I said when I got back to Swarthmore was "Twenty-four hours ago, I was still wearing shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts and eating mangoes with every meal." Coming back to a freezing-cold Philadelphia wasn't the most awesome thing ever. But seeing everyone who was abroad last semester is fantastic!

Anyways, the Philippines was great. The country is going through what they call a "cold spell," which means that the temperature is absolutely perfect and 70ºC every day. The first few days were spent in the Cordillera mountains, near the city of Baguio (~150mi southwest of Manila). The American embassy maintains a compound there for expats to visit to get out of crowded and polluted Manila. It's gorgeous:

From Manila Winter 2009

And for you history buffs out there, the Japanese actually surrendered their control over the Philippines in this building:

From Manila Winter 2009

We went into Baguio city proper a few times (not that interesting of a city, unfortunately) and ate at this cute cafe one of these times. They served a lot of chocolate, such as hot chocolate made with Carabao milk. It was delicious.

From Manila Winter 2009

From Manila Winter 2009

And the sticky rice was really good too!

And back to Manila...

From Manila Winter 2009

Manila from our 53rd floor window. The large concentration of high-rise buildings is Makati, the major commercial section of Manila.

With the abundance of amazing mangoes, and still craving that sticky rice, I decided to make Thai sticky rice with mango, Kow neuw moon, as often as possible.

From Manila Winter 2009

The dish is super easy to make if you have a rice cooker. Just replace the water for the same amount of coconut milk and add a bunch of sugar (about a 1:2 sugar to rice ratio, but this is definitely personal preference) and voila! It helps if you have sticky rice (short grain), but plenty of people use medium or even Jasmine. This is definitely a recipe worth fiddling with since the payoff is so excellent.

Last bit of news. We got a puppy! His name is Leo.

From Manila Winter 2009

From Manila Winter 2009