Sunset Dinner at Port Orient

Living in big busy Manila is fantastically convenient. All your needs are a walk or phone call away.

I live in Katipunan, right in front of the country’s top university, Ateneo de Manila University. Around my place are National Bookstore (where I get my chick lit for whenever I am depressed), a whole lot of fast food joints like McDonalds, Jollibee’s (not just one but two branches!), KFC, Chowking, Kenny Rogers Roasters, Teriyaki Boy and many more, Villman’s (for my gadget needs), Rustan’s and Shoppersville (for my weekly groceries), BPI, Banco de Oro, Megalink and many other banks (for my banking needs!). And SM North, one of the world’s top ten biggest malls, is a 30 minute taxi ride away.

But all that convenience doesn’t buy any love from me. I am and will always be a country bumpkin. I love fresh clean air (as opposed to the smoke and dirt of neverendingly-busy highways), wide blue skies (as opposed to polluted violet ones full of skyscrapers), stars (can’t see them in Manila), trees, rivers and oceans (I don’t even know if there’s any accessible to the big city). I love nature. I am most comfortable without any frills, just give me cheap food and a great view, and I am happy. 🙂

To fulfill this need, Gim took me dinner at Port Orient, a shoreside shack of a restaurant here in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines, where I am blissfully vacationing (in spite of a terribly sunburnt achy face).

We ordered barbecue – lots of them! Pork barbecue, our favorite, mmm! And also liver barbecue, which Gim loves but I hate. And barbecued innards, which we both love! Heheheh. I’ll not say which inner parts, you may be grossed out haha. And we ordered around 5 puso‘s, which is rice wrapped and cooked in triangle-shaped banana leaves. Plus a liter of Pop Cola, a local softdrink like Coca Cola.

Our table was situated right on the shore, and our sandals embedded in sand. A few feet away, right in front of us, played local children and crashed ocean waves. Have a look-see. 😀

 
  
  

Here’s me and Gim playing cute for the camera. Hehehehe.

 

I am not sunburnt here. You’ll see how I look in my later posts. (I will be horribly fattened and sunburnt but still very happy hahaha.) Here’s what’s looking right back at us:

 

And a closer view at the pretty clouds.

 
  

It was a wonderful day. 🙂

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3 Comments

  1. hi flisha. our first trip as a married couple (you can call it a honeymoon, if you like) was to dapitan. not to dakak because we wanted it to be more lonely planet-like but to one of those 350 per day resort shacks lining sunset boulevard.

    I still think that was one of our best trips ever. dapitan is so magical.

    and we also had loads of barbecued meat when we were there.

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