Friday, 9/11

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTT!!!!! Today was Scott's 27th birthday! we slept in a little, then left the hotel around 11:30 to go to Greenhills Shopping Center, because we heard they had lots of cool native souvenirs and stuff. When we got there, i knew it was gonna be a a great birthday for Scott, because when we'd been getting ready to go, he;d said "Y'know what'd be the BEST birthday meal? Shoney's breakfast buffet!" and, while there are no Shoney's here, we did immediately encounter a restaurant called Flapjacks that serves giant breakfast platters with all our favorites, so that made for a very happy birthday boy! After that incredible meal we found the movie theaters and bought tickets for a movie i have really been looking forward to called Gamer- i knew it;d be something Scott would really enjoy since it was about video games and reality combined and so i was beyond excited to be able to see it on his birthday- especially since i didn't think it was coming out for a while yet. we went into the theater and immediately sensed something was wrong. the movie seemed to have started already. hmmm... after a few minutes we realized we were an hour early and the previous showing hadn't ended yet. OOPS! We spent the next hour exploring the shopping center a bit, and discovered that large chunks of it were a lot like D*Talipapa in the sense of there being tons of booths with similar products and people yelling for you to come buy from them. it was cool but kinda overwhelming! i did, however get a really cool Cell Phone case for P200 (about $4) before we headed back to the theater. The movie was awesome and these theater seats were the best we have had here, comfort wise! Afterwards, we explored the mall some more, shopped for souvenirs, Scott got to bargain some :-) and then, exhausted, we decided to head back to the hotel and rest up for the evening ahead. We got all dolled up and left the hotel at about 8:30 PM. it was raining pretty heavily, and there was traffic, but we had a really good and knowledgeable cab driver, and so our trip was about 20 minutes down to Seaside- the area home to a huge fresh seafood market and tons of restaurants where you take your freshly caught freshly purchased seafood and they cook it for you. immediately upon exiting the cab we were mobbed by people trying to get us to come to their restaurants- it was insane and overwhelming for me, but as usual, Scott was a cool customer. since it was raining, and we'd heard that the rest of our group was running late, we decided to duck in to one of the restaurants and grab a beer. i was feeling a little weak, so i ordered a couple crabs to hold me over till the group arrived- lunch had been 9 hours ago, after all! our group arrived at 10- it had taken them over an hour to get there, not having had a taxi as good as ours, i guess. They came bearing a cake! we had a cool experience watching them order all the fish for our meal at the market, and then it was taken to the restaurant/karaoke bar where we all filled a booth and the party really began! everyone was hemming and hawing about who was gonna sing first, so i did it. :-) i sang a lot actually... almost everyone sang, and the food was great, and we stayed till 3:30 AM, shutting the place down! We got home at 4:30 or so- after having to wait a bit to find a cab, and got into bed around 5:30. WHEW! what a day! Pictures in the next post.