Binondo and Some

Despite of the excruciating heat that was Metro Manila weather, my sister and I traveled back and forth UST and Katipunan/Ortigas to submit documents for my med school application. Yes, I’m still not done with all this craziness. After going around the Metro for about 4 hours, we decided to eat a late lunch at Hanayo, found along this smocket side street in Dapitan.

I’ve mentioned Hanayo in one of my older posts before, but this time around, we went and sat in for some Korean lunch. For 100 pesos, they make a decent Korean meal. I ordered sweet and spicy squid which comes with a bit of kimchi and some fish cake (which was super yummy!).

 Sweet and Spicy Squid

 Extra order of fish cakes

For our side order, my sister got us some chapchae with 3 slices of seafood cake. This one was definitely not worth the 100 pesos. The chapchae turned out unbelievably dry while seafood and vegetables with pancake batter just doesn’t suit my palate.

 

After reenergizing and rehydrating ourselves, my sister and I headed to Binondo to meet up with my dad so we can go home to Batangas. I remember going to the Sto. Cristo side last year to buy materials and goodie bags for Kythe Week. For today, we focused on Ongpin Street where we roamed around for two hours just looking around and buying a lot of food.

A trip to Ongpin for me will never be complete without passing through the narrow street of Carvajal. There, one usually finds fresh produce like broccoli, dried and fresh fish, sea cucumber and some street food. But the best part about Carvajal Street is Ho-land.

When my sister got tired and dehydrated from all the walking under the after-lunch sun, we went to Tasty Dumplings which turned out to be a bad choice. I ordered wintermelon iced tea for myself and dalanghita (what is dalanghita?) juice for the thirsty sister. And just to add another item to our stealing-some-aircon time at Tasty Dumplings, I got an order of steamed kuchay dumplings which were extremely dry and tasteless. We should have walked farther along Ongpin Street and stayed at President’s tea house instead.

We stopped by a local grocery named Bee Tin Grocery where we bought all these yummy dried fish, mango pudding, chocolates, and rice crackers for munchies. And for our last stop before going home, my sister and I met up with my dad at Lord Stow’s Bakery which serves the best egg tart I’ve ever tasted. Usually, my dad would just take home a box of egg tarts from the bakery. I never knew where he bought and how the place or the glass egg tart windows looked like. I like how the bakery smelled of warm egg tart or warm bread with a hint of coffee aroma lingering inside the small bakeshop.

I went home today feeling a bit more Chinese than usual.