Pampanga Food Trip

Aside from the annual Hot Air Balloon festival being held in Clark, Pampanga is also a destination for food tripping. The province of Pampanga is located 1.5 hours drive north of Manila. The province is also where the Clark International Airport is located where it offers more international flights now mainly for Cebu Pacific and Air Asia. So travellers and food enthusiasts can always visit Pampanga at least for a day trip.

Aling Lucing’s restaurant in Angeles City is a must-visit because of the sizzling sisig. Sizzling sisig, is a Filipino dish made from parts of pig’s head and liver, chopped, minced, marinated and seasoned with chilli peppers and calamansi and it all originated in this restaurant.

A few minutes drive down south to San Fernando, we reached a place for dessert. We went to visit what was recommended by some Filipino food bloggers which is Halo Halo ni Corazon. Thanks to Google map for finding the location of the restaurant. Apparently, the halo halo is way cheaper and better than other more famous Pampanga Halo Halo brands. This is not too sweet with banana, beans, pastillas sweets and corn as ingredients.

On the way back to Manila, we checked out food stores for Kapampangan sweets including Mochi which is a sticky rice cake with monggo beans paste as filling. It comes with coconut milk sauce to taste it better. Now i’m craving again while i write this post. There are still lots of food to try in Pampanga. Will check it out again next time.

Boracay Sunset

Undoubtedly one of the best sunsets in the world!

Malaysia Truly Asia

Malaysia will always be the first country I visited outside the Philippines. I also had first glimpse of a big airport too – Kuala Lumpur International Airport. AirAsia used it before until all budget airlines were tranferred to KLIA-LCCT terminal.

This first trip outside the country was also my first experience of a backpack travel – staying in a hostel, DIY itinerary and with backpacks! Maybe not so lucky to have a luxury travel as a tourist on my first trip but I got the idea that travelling is not always expensive after all. It was a very short stay as we were headed to Bali later that day so we only went to KLCC Petronas Towers for sightseeing.

The second trip to Malaysia was two months ago connecting to New Delhi via Kuala Lumpur. But this time via Cebu Pacific. It was a longer trip and this time I went to Batu Caves, exploring more city sights like Merdeka Square, Chinatown and shopping in Bukit Bintang. Not to mention i had my solo food trip as well from the classic Nasi Lemak to their classic white coffee.

Definitely Malaysia is truly Asia. I may agree that some cultures they portray in their tourism ads are not distinctly Malaysia but at least they promote tourism not only for the country but also for the Southeast Asia region. Apparently the Philippines is not on the tourist trail in the region but hopefully she will have the same tourist success stories like Malaysia.