9.4.026 – Day 7 – The Girls International Whirlwind Restaurant Tour. Jan. 2026: Eating and Shopping!

Eating and shopping was the order of the day. We didn’t venture more than 500m from the hotel – mind you I’m sure we clocked up the steps in repeat visits.
To explain further the New World Makati hotel is located in the Ayala family’s private city of Makati. Opposite is the Greenbelt, compromising high end shopping – think top end Collins street or posh Chadstone!

Our Hotel.
Our security dog. Benno. There are multiple.
Hard work.
High end Greenbelt.
A perfumerie we had a smell around.
These had an atomiser pump underneath and pumped a very subtle puff of fragrant air up the nostrils.
It looked good.
Hand lotion.
Soaps

There are 5 Greenbelt buildings surrounding a greenbelt with trees and a stream (with a number of cats, BTW the cats are fed and looked after by their hoomans.)

Don’t need to feed the cats. They are doing just fine thanks b
Waiting for the shop to Open.
A bit like Aero (my old cat)
There is a Catholic Chapel in the Greenbelt. Still dressed for Christmas.
Sculptures in the greenbelt.

Connected by walk bridge is another shopping centre – Landmark-which has become our new favourite place – especially Bronwyn- this contains a food court which is well supported by locals and a supermarket. Supermarkets are always interesting to see what’s the same and different to home. Then there is a department store choc-o-block full of stuff we might need. A few purchases were made.

Jeepney on the road (using US Army jeeps for motor and sticking a small bus on the back)
All colours and shiny and front ends decorated.
Parked outside Landmark Shopping centre.
Some of the food court in Landmark basement.
Neat and full shelves. This was milk formula
All ages catered for.
Foil wrapped grapefruit.
Out shopping with their owner.
Huge apples.
Individually wrapped apples
Chatting with the family.
Small cabbages.
Lemongrass, pandan and snake beans.
Rice of all types by the kilo.
More rice.
Canned fish.
Sardines do handstands here. (Not the flat tins we are accustomed too)
Toilet tablets. The brand Albatross caught my eye.
No idea what this is in the cheese part.

Within the supermarket there were many, many staff – keeping the shelves packed, but lots of standing around too. There was a bunch of blokes putting up a Ferrero Rocher display for Valentines Day – so painstakingly. I was fascinated by how slow and precise they were – so revisited to review progress a few times during our shop.

Two blokes pondering the task
Others sitting and figuring out stuff
Getting to work filling the display with product.
Still lots of watching going on.
When we left it was further progressed.

We then discovered that Greenbelt had some middle of the road stores eg. Muji and H&M which also took some of our pesos.

Sitting with mum outside a restaurant in Greenbelt.
Nori explained that they constantly revamp or reconstruct here.
Looking down into where we have breaky.
The Green area of Greenbelt
Some of our spoils.
The Greenbelt waterway which has fish and a turtle.

We ate breaky at our local Wildflour, lunch in the Landmark food court and ventured out with no dinner plans and landed at Hossein’s – Persian/Middle Eastern cuisine. We lucked an outside table on a very pleasant Manila evening. We’ve discovered the air con too cool inside! We enjoyed our shared meal of Moutabala, Greek salad and shish lamb and chicken kebabs.

Aunty Sue had Black Sesame Latte and Granola and Yoghurt and Fruit.
Bron had the Banana Pancakes.
Bread Talk was our choice for lunch
Buying our Bread Talk lunch.
Cheesy thing for me
Chicken floss for Bron and a coffee bun to share.
Paying
Mmm. Not all that great.
Lunch in the foodcourt.
We paid with cash so we got Change to look at.
Pre dinner drinks in our room.
That’s better.
Dinner
Shish lamb and chicken kebabs.
Bronwyn trying on AUD$86000+ earrings at Tiffany’s.

On return from one of our shopping centre visits – (I had to accompany Bronwyn as she doesn’t have a physical bank card with her and lots of places don’t take Apple or Google Pay from phones) we had a look at the hotel facilities pool and gym etc.

Hotel pool.
Construction of something.
Skyline
Rescue Bar at the pool
Business centre
Sunset from the room (12th Floor)

BTW I think the Bali belly has passed – feeling much better through the day today.

Nicola Stuart

2 responses to “9.4.026 – Day 7 – The Girls International Whirlwind Restaurant Tour. Jan. 2026: Eating and Shopping!”

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