Breakfast: spinach soup, Singapore noodles (quite poor);
dried anchovies and salted egg; chicken hot dog; a replay of
the agar. This time barely enough to forage. The soup was
especially notable for tasting like rotted leaves.

A taxi to the National Museum took almost the exact route
that the previous one had - it looks on the map to be a bit
zigzaggy, but I think (mind I say I think) the drivers
avoid some bottlenecks this way, either that or there's some
grand conspiracy among the industry. Two subsequent rides in
the other direction took closely parallel routes.

The Museum of the Filipino People is mostly made up of a
pretty interesting ethnological collection with some cursory
nods to the natural sciences and some cool archeological
stuff (though, interestingly, the Philippine gold, so richly
displayed at the Ayala, was nowhere to be found). Allow an
hour to two hours depending on whether you like old-style
museums or whether they annoy you.

Across Finance Rd. and down the way is the National Art
Museum; there's not a safe place to cross, but a museum
staffer wades out in traffic and holds his hand up, and you
scurry around the trucks and taxis to get to the other side.
Cheaper than building an overpass I suppose. A notable
feature is that the permanent collection, such as is
displayed here, is all of Filipino artists. There are a few
works by foreigners in some temporary exhibits, but all of
them lived in the Philippines. I was struck by a room of
mid-20th-century impressionist/realists collectively called
Dimasalang (after Jose Rizal's pen-name) - Sym Mendoza,
Romulo Galiciano, and others -, who painted evocative images
of Manila from that generation. The permanent collection
also includes a lot of religious stuff, which didn't move
me; it was reminiscent of Spanish and German art of a few
centuries before. Fistfuls of modern art, mostly leftist in
theme; nothing, not a piece, by my new favorite Zobel, who I
thought from what I'd seen was a particularly bright light
in Filipino art. Turns out he was a Spanish citizen, so that
might be part of why he is excluded from the exhibitions;
also that he was from a prominent fascist-leaning family,
which also might color things. So why is his work so
prominently featured at the Ayala Museum and not elsewhere?
It turns out his full name was Fernando Zobel de Ayala y
Montojo, and the Ayala Museum, though not built under his
watch, had been his idea. Allow 90 minutes to two hours.

As we were close to Intramuros, and I was hungry, we walked
to the well-reviewed Patio de Conchita, which is in an old
house and has a really wonderful seedy old feeling about it.
It was of course siesta time, but they opened the cafeteria
line for us, and we had a tasty if shopworn meal. Instead of
keeping the food warm on the steam table, each individual
dish is warmed up in a skillet when ordered and has that
reheated taste that some don't mind and some (read lili)
abhor. I got two dishes for us, rice, and a bunch of beers.

Adobo smelled pretty good, so I asked for that. The first
piece, which looked nice and fatty, I gave to lili, and she
ate it with pleasure. Unfortunately the rest was a mixture
of chicken and beef, obviously leftovers from the lunch
rush thrown into one dish, rather shrivelled but tasty.

Pork belly in sweet soy was pretty decent, though also not
in its first youth. It was also from a native pig, so rather
gamy (good) and not very fatty (bad). Which led me to the
speculation of what would happen if you force-fed pigs to
make foie gras. Which reminds me that, contrary to popular
impression, pigs will stop eating when they are no longer
hungry.

The rice was good, and lili deigned to eat some of that.

I tried a Red Horse, San Miguel's strong product. It was
malty and alcoholly, nothing special - like the light with a
shot of Tanduay in it. lili had a San Mig light, P20 less. I
wish I'd read the writeup on the product site: "Red Horse
Beer is your extra strong beer that brings you that pure
alcoholic experience. It is not your ordinary beer -
rebellious and flavorful yet bold and intense. It is sweet
and bitter smooth, giving you a fueled kick. Excite yourself
with this deeply hued distinct tasting beer." Pure alcoholic
experience? Fueled kick? All righty then.

The taxi back to the hotel, hailed from near Plaza Espana,
was meter plus 100 (rush hour, the driver said). I shrugged
and said okay, whereupon the guy took us on a hair-raising
trip through the worst of traffic that got us back in half
the time the trip over had, at only about P75 more. Well
worth it.

That had been a small meal - for her a tiny one -, so we
went off prowling for more sustenance shortly after dark.
This involved crossing a number of busy streets and barely
avoiding various holes in the sidewalk.

I found a stall off Chino Roces that smelled really good;
we plopped down on the plastic chairs out there and had an
assortment of satays and a Coke; this came to P59 for a
modest meal. Pork was standard, that is to say pretty
yummy. Chicken gizzard, which lili wouldn't touch, was
crunchy rather than chewy, the yummiest of all. Chicken
intestine was stuffed in the Latin style, which made it
kind of strange (we encountered this issue as well with the
beef intestine at Don Julio in Buenos Aires), but it was
inoffensive enough. I believe lili wouldn't even look at me
when I ate this.

By way of reward, I took her to McDonalds on the corner of
Kamagong for a Big Mac, which she found less fresh and less
good than that in downtown Makati a day or two before. Still
it did the job.

Back at the hotel I had a shot or two of Fundador (quite
acrid, not much fruit, lots of neutral spiritlike taste,
worse than what I recall it being) instead of my usual.