Tag: Delegate

Day 6 – Coffee!

Dave and I are very independent people. Some people don’t really know how we work, because we are so different. He is very science minded, and I’m all about the humanities. He loves reading about political science and current affairs, I’m all about the fiction. Dave’s a cat person, I love dogs.

Ok….I might be a dog person who also loves cats

But I mean…. Look at that derpy face!!!

But where it matters, we see eye to eye. Politics, religion… and coffee!!!

Unfortunately for us, the only coffee available in this part of the Philippines seems to be instant. It’s sugary, processed and tastes vaguely like marshmallows. Worst of all, I’m pretty sure it has negative caffeine in it. It’s upsetting, really.

Kopiko is slightly better than Nescafe… But this is what we see in every convenience store: a wall of individual portions of instant coffee mixture.

Today, we decided to go for a drive down to Oslob, and on the way, we ran into this sweet little place:

When we walked in and I saw canisters of actual beans you could choose from, I felt overjoyed. Our moods improved significantly from that point on, and we enjoyed the rest of our day!

It annoys me greatly that I didn’t turn that chocolate bar around. It was delicious, by the way (and if you’re in the weightloss challenge and reading this.. Dave and I shared it!!)

I’ll have more on what we did that day soon!

Day 5 – Market

We were pretty stationary today. Between Dave being sick and the rain that wouldn’t let up, we spent most of the day reading, playing games on our phones and napping.

And hanging out with Happy, of course!

Eventually, the weather improved and we ventured into town to get some food to BBQ for dinner. Before leaving, we asked Karen, one of the staff at our Air BNB, where we should go. She told us the market would have everything we need.

It was busy when we arrived so we knew it was popular

And we did find what we needed….and then some.

In Asia’s markets, you can buy dinner for tonight AND dinner for 3-4 months from now!

The thing about Asian markets is that they would be SO illegal in Canada. They’d never pass health inspections and they just couldn’t exist.

Dried fish is a staple at any market in Asia
I’ve seen dried sardines, squid, and every type of fish you can imagine
Of course, there’s plenty of fruit in these markets!
In this shop, you can buy just enough ground pepper, chili, ginger or garlic for 1 meal. Groceries are bought on a need to have basis in many countries. People don’t just stock up on pay day the way we did in my family
Taken on my way up to the second floor. Dried noodles and a whole lot of scales. Everything is sold by weight.
Even shampoo is bought on a day to day basis. Cell phone plans too, as I recently learned!!

We were careful to choose a vendor that had a decent set up (many vendors just hit their product with a plastic bag when you walk by so you can see they are keeping it insect-free). It took us 4 or 5 shops to get everything we needed (meat, vegetables, skewers, coal), but before long, we were on our way back up the hill to our little home for the week.

Their chicken didn’t have a weird purple colour to it like many of them did

I’ll be writing more about what we made in my post about the Bee Farm (coming soon!).