Hey Jaypez, see you at Hyatt.

Weather in Manila is very humid and hot all year round. If you're out and about during the day, if you're anything like me, you're drenched before long.

You'll be assumed to be a local if you look like a local, but the minute they realise you don't speak Tagalog, they're going to know you're not a local.

Any danger you might face would probably be more because you are alone than because you are a foreigner. If you have someone local like a relative with you, you should usually be safe wherever they are willing to take you. If you just wanted to take taxis (always metered) from your hotel to safe areas such as malls, you should be okay, but you can do more. I guess it depends on what you want to do. You're more in danger of getting scammed than getting hurt if you aren't careful.

High in the high 80s or low 90s, lows in the high 70s. If you are outside, you also have to deal with intense sun during the day. It would be perfectly acceptable to take another shower and change your clothes in the middle of the day and you should consider packing accordingly. If you are tall or have something like a 36-inch waist you might have some problems shopping for replacement clothing. The XL t-shirt here is like a large in the States. For those who are traveling to the Philippines for the first time, places such as casinos, high-end restaurants, and night clubs often have dress codes requiring long pants, a nice looking shirt, and no sandals.

Definitely the national pastime. We have it on TV. Billboards advertising feed or medicine are common along the highway and each town has at least one cockpit. If you drive through the country side rarely you will pass a house with out at least one chicken tethered to a string or in a green pen. Even in the congested urban areas you will find them. If you like to gamble watching a **** derby would be a good experience for a tourist.

The funniest thing about Manila to me is how everyone asks me if I play Baskeeet.

I'll be there in 2 months from mid November.

I thought it was basketball. Last time I went there was routinely 3-4 games on TV. Usually filled with the worst players ever put on TV.

I have just got into Makati, will be here til start of December. People are quite friendly here, there is always "hello sir" and "thank-you sir" when you enter and leave most stores. A lot of stores (even 7-11's) have guards with shotguns out the front..i feel quite safe in Makati. P Burgos is a kinda crazy experience. The main strip is filled with girly bars. You get surrounded by girls as soon as you walk in, and the basic idea is that you choose 1 (or more) to sit with you, and you are expected to buy them a drink which is usually around 350 pesos. If you want to leave with one be prepared to pay anything from 2000-3900 pesos to the bar for what is called the "barfine" and then a tip of similar value is usually expected from the girl in the morning.

Also in that area are sports bars where a lot of expats hang out that are not associated with the red light scene, so its not necessarily an area to be avoided if you arent looking for "pay 4 play".

Aside from that there is the Greenbelt Malls, which have some bars and restaurants (particularly Greenbelt 3). Be warned that Cafe Havana and outside the starbucks there is filled with "Freelancers". Those two are on ground level, the other bars are a few levels up and seem to be pretty legit, but quite small really.

Embassy - This seems to be the main club to be at. I have only gone into the main embassy club myself, and there are two sections, a dance section and an R&B section. I was meant to meet a girl there but she was over an hour late so I left. Just a sidenote, the concept of promptness is generally lost on Philippinos, so this girl being so late wasnt completely rude like it would be by Western standards, but I wasn't having a bar of it nonetheless.

I cant think of much else to say right now....there are plenty of restaurants to eat at here, but being from Australia I'm used to being spoiled for choices of fresh foods, and this is definitely a large step down from that. You will often get an extra look and smile from a girl here that you wouldnt get elsewhere, but you do have to be mindful of what a girls motivations might be if you get involved here....I am not speaking from experience, but rather from advice given to me by a Philippino woman, so it is worth noting.

A lot of apartments here generally want to lock you in to a 12 month contract, and for something decent you are looking at around 60k pesos a month. I am currently in a studio with air con, cable, and dsl (not very fast and not entirely reliable) which is costing around $50 per night.

Yet to check out the live poker scene here so far, will post again if I observe anything that might be helpful.

One trick with P Burgos is you can go around 4am and if your girl likes you, she'll ask you to wait for her outside when the bar closes at 5am.

You could find a short-term place if you look around. Everything is negotiable. A lot of hotels even offer discounted monthly/weekly rates. $50 a night for a studio sounds like a bit much.

And I know what you mean by lack of fresh foods here. There's no fresh milk and the eggs are not refrigerated, wtf?!

I guess I should note that this is one of the more expensive places for such things, if it is what you like.

Yes, if that is what you like, P Burgos is more the "touristy", overpriced area. LA Cafe has a cheaper price, and there is another area that is cheaper again. You are taking a bit more of a security risk if you go to LA Cafe from what I understand (I have never been there). As Paul B noted, you can pretty much at least halve your price if you avoid the barfine, though you are more likely to pull this off later in the night or if the girl is into you. P Burgos probably has better quality to choose from, but you pay for it.

There are places with cheaper bar fines, is what I was getting at. I'm not really the person to ask and you might get better info from locals who can afford to play poker. Just don't go where the Koreans and Japanese go, as I hear they don't like sharing women with other ethnic groups and they overpay by a ton. On the other hand, if you are balla and want to toss around money, I hear a KTV is the place to go.

Also I must admit, some of you white people seem to pick ugly women, or at least it seems that way to the Filipino eye. The worst is going to Angeles and seeing the fat middle-aged white dudes is t-shirts and flip-flops with girls who they think are exotic and who are a decade older than the guys think.

As for fresh foods, I would hate to be a vegan in the Philippines. Most vegetables would be stewed. A fresh salad seems to be only found in restaurants serving Western food. You are better off ordering chicken or pork than beef. I eat almost no beef when I am in the Philippines. On the other hand, fresh fruits can be plentiful. When I go back to the US, I can't bring myself to eat mangoes or pineapples because they pale in comparison with both price and quality. And the seafood is what you would expect.

I can only give second-hand info on the sex and I am not a local so I can't give restaurant reviews, but I can talk a bit more about native food from the viewpoint of a Filipino-American if anyone has questions about straying from familiar Western foods.

For starters, I'll say that Filipinos like sweet tastes and don't like spicy flavors. If you are looking for something that might resemble Thai cuisine, this isn't the place. Instead, there are sour dishes. Vinegar is a key ingredient in many dishes. It's a flavor you should get used to if you eat locally. You may eat crab legs with melted butter. A Filipino will instead eat crab by dipping the meat in vinegar.

And if you are complaining about unrefrigerated eggs, I think you should try the balut.

Why don't you eat the beef?

I once went to a steakhouse called Alfredo's were they had three price tiers: native, Austrailan imported beef, and American imported beef. There is a difference in quality. Most Filipinos are used to ordering steaks well done because it is probably hazardous to your health to order something medium rare.

Beef dishes in the Philippines are usually stewed meats, which is one way of dealing with tough cuts of meat. It's not like I refuse to eat the beef, but I would rather load up on things like shrimp and crab which are more expensive and not as fresh in the U.S.

Melo's - 22 Jupiter St. Makati (next street down from Burgos) is one of the best steak restaurants I've been to in my life.

intension, I'm from Australia also. Email me on jonny@rakebackSTAT.com if you wanna hang out - I live in Rockwell, a few minutes from Burgos. If you catch this very shortly, Paul B and I are heading into Burgos now. My phone is 09278558456.

Having money and being a foreigner gives u status in the Philippines, but alot of these old white dudes look like they will basically go for anything that will pay attention to them. There are alot of good looking women there, and alot of ugly ones too, and the old white dudes tend to go for the later.

I was around 2 months this year in Philipines, mostly Manila. I was staying @ burgos street in the red light district alto red light district wasn't the reason I was staying there for.

Basically everything was near... shop with fresh fruits, a lot of eating out places, very nice internet cafe, nice hotel in which I was staying before - "makati palace". I did rent a room for a month like 45,000 peso which was around 1K$.

I was playing there mostly live in Hilton and the card room there called "Metro club".

And yes the city is huge, dirty, and you have little sense of what's going on but to take a cab and ride for 30 minutes and pay 4$ is why I liked it so much...

It sux if you don't know anyone there, but if you can play and go out at night with some filipino girls which I think are the most beautiful of asians then it's worth it.


Cebu -

I was there around 1 week coz the cash games were very low staked... game for 120$ buy-in wasn't around the clock and was considered high stakes. You were getting free alcohol, deserts, food for playing at that stakes and you were the "high-roller"... there was one game with businessmen,politicians in waterfront casino on the weekend when the minimum buy-in was 500$, maximum 1,500$ blind were 2,5$/5$ and people who were playing there were the worst ever...

"You called my allin preflop with A2??? And you get lucky over my KJ?!? fu!" for a pot over 3K$.

I did enjoy philipines a lot... people are very friendly, girls are extremely nice and you can feel like the king of the universe there. I am considering renting an appartment there next year to go crazy about playing online but we'll see... didn't decide yet.

And yes... Boracay is sweet

Hey, what are some good hotels in makati

nice area and how much are the avg prices

I stayed at the Citadel Inn ($35) and enjoyed it. I would recommend staying right on P Burgos. As Jonny (yoyo) would say, Burgos is "the best street eva." If you've got a bigger budget, look into staying at the Oxford Suites or Makati Palace ($70-100).

The two nicest hotels in Makati are Shangrila (which is world-class and puts a lot of Vegas hotels to shame) and The Peninsula (which I haven't stayed at but have heard only the best things about). Prices would be around $300/night on the online booking sites.

An adorable hotel is Diamond Hotel in Malate, but that's in the dangerous area of Manila (in it's favour is you can get ridiculously cheap rooms there online for what really is a 5 star world class hotel, I stayed there for a month at $90/night when I first moved to Manila after getting a cheap rate on wotif.com - also it's near a couple of the cardrooms like Hilton and Ambassador).

If you're a pure degenerate (which I completely respect) staying on one of the Burgos St hotels will be very cheap and a good option - there are also some very fast internet cafes near Burgos St if your hotel doesn't have good net.

I stayed in Makati palace and i was paying 100$ U.S for a double room per night. Later I did rent a room for a month for 1000$ U.S which wasn't as nice as the previous one but the view from 19th floor was really something. It was just a bit smaller and the carper wasn't as nice. But the rest was fine.

There is Internet cafe 168 which belongs to koreans and the connection speed is really amazing, also chairs are comfy and basically it was the best internet cafe I was in ever. ( not to mention korean food that could be brought to the desk by the staff )

Internet in Makati palace is ... well... not bad but there are 3 different options.

- some rooms have no internet at all ( yay.. )
- some have extremely slow wifi ( which is free )
- some have plug-in cable for which u have to pay like 15$ for 24/hrs but the speed is good and reliable

Hope I helped.

all of this information helped alot
I think it is better to stay in makati even if the tournament is in malate

is p burgos street liek the night life of the philippines type street? lol

how long by taxi is the ride to hyatt malate from makati citadel inn or makati palace

No, P Burgos is just the red light district. But it's close to the main nightclubs, which are in Makati and Fort.

It's probably a 20 min - 50 min cab ride from Burgos to Malate, depending on traffic.

rofl ship it just booked =D

thx for all the help guys lets get a drink there : )

I'm gonna be in Manila for the next month. First time here. I'm staying on Makati avenue near P Burgos intersection. If anyone wants to hang out with a 23yo poker pro from Aus my number here is 09272697971.

I may check out the Embassy club later on tonight.

Cheers

Oliver.

I also posted about this in the thread about live poker in Asia, but does anyone know anything about poker games in Angeles?

At least three pokerrooms there from what I heard from a guy living close to there last week. I've only been to one of them, but there's supposed to be good action there these days so I might go back.