My First Impressions of Mexico City

Ideally for my blog, I should write my first impressions of all the cities I have been to; but since I only write when I feel compelled to, I only write once in a while hehe.  So without further ado, here are my first impressions of Mexico City.

Architectures are awesome.  I guess architecture is really one thing that impresses me the most while traveling (this comes second to food).  The churches, government buildings or just random buildings are just BEAUTIFUL.  I find myself breathless when I enter a church.  I have been into approximately 30 churches in this trip and 80% of the time I am just shaking my head in disbelief of how beautiful the structures are.  It's like the artists gone crazy and art just exploded onto the walls.

Sometimes I see the buildings like they are superheroes.  They are so special and yet they are living and existing amongst normal buildings!  You will be walking through a random ally and BAM!  there's a beautiful building not even mentioned in any kind of guidebook.  I feel a little bitter when I walk around Mexico, especially when I see the churches.  It makes me really sad to remember and realize even more that Manila was indeed the 2nd most destroyed city in the world after WW2; otherwise, we would look just like Mexico.

Contradictions and mixing of opposing cultures.  You see sooo many churches but outside you will see people reading tarots or cleansing your aura among other stuff; or celebrating practices that are very non-Catholic, for instance Dia Delos Muertos.  Another example is that you'll see so many bridal shops around, especially near churches which shows the strong influence of the Catholic tradition but also nearby you will see adult shops that are open and not obscured. 

First World.  Third World.  Some things about Mexico make you feel like you're in a first world country.  Such as their super awesome intercity bus system, museums, and architectures--they are organized and well maintained; but also at the same time, there are parts that are so third world like pot holes in highways, noisy street vendors, local crazy buses, and sometimes inefficient store clerks.  The third world part I can most definitely relate to the Philippines lol.

Not a lot of beggars.  Mentioning above that it is a third world country, there really aren't a lot of beggars.  Kids who come near you are usually just selling you stuff.  People are just always selling things which is great!  I think I have seen more beggars in the US than I have here in Mexico.

Huge parks everywhere.  I love the abundance of parks around Mexico!  They are always clean, well lit and beautifully maintained. Sometimes I would just sit and watch people walk or sit around the park and once in a while shaking my head no to vendors trying to sell me stuff; I love how locals also utilize their parks, they would meet up or hangout there with family, friends, and lovers.  How I wish my lifestyle back in Manila includes "hanging around the park" and not worry about getting robbed or getting my clothes all dirty.

PDA or Public Display of Affection.  You will definitely see couples PDAing at the park; but the thing is, you see them EVERYWHERE!  I tell you, everywhere.  You will see a girl sitting on her bf's lap, you will see shameless necking, kissing, ass slapping, caressing, hugging, touching and some romantic lovin'.  


Foods look the same.  Yes, I do not speak Spanish and I do not always know how to read the menu, but so far, everything I have been eating looks the same!  They all look like tacos!  Meat on some kind of tortilla, sopa, bread, or taco. haha don't get me wrong, i love it!  they just look all the same to me. lol.


W.C. or toilets.  I appreciate very much the abundance of toilets around the cities.  When in need of a lavatory, just raise your head up and look for the WC signs and you're home free.  They are almost always clean and smell clean too.  They will provide you will tissue paper upon entering after you have paid the usual amount of MXN 5 (~PHP 20).  Sometimes if there is no attendant, the toilet is gated, like how it is in Metro stations, you drop a MXN5 in and you can go through the gate.

Gowns and costumes.  You could definitely tell that Mexicans love to dress up.  You'll see men in Mariachi clothes, women in gowns, or kids in costumes.  They seem to go hand in hand with celebrations and there are a lot of celebrations here in Mexico!  You will never be bored here.  Mexicans KNOW celebration.

Tourism.  There are definitely a lot of tourists in Mexico!  Why not?  This place is awesome!  But they have for sure, not reached their full potential yet.  You will notice that signs and captions in archaeological zones are usually only in Spanish and English.  Mostly the tourists here are from Europe and Latin American countries, I sometimes feel so out of place because most of the tourists speak Spanish.  Not much Asians (just mostly Japanese).  American tourists are scarce outside of Cancun (area), I guess it's all those negative propaganda in the US on how dangerous Mexico is and etc.  but the truth is, if you stay away from the borders (where the cartels are), it's very safe.  I have never feared for my safety in my 5 weeks here.

So many bookstores.  There are so many bookstores around here!!!  Both old and new, brand new or second hand books!  Not just books but magazines!  So much magazines too!!!  I guess Mexican people fond of reading.


Ridiculously difficult wifi password.  I don't get this at all! Almost all wifi passwords that I have to ask for are ridiculously long and difficult to remember!!!  Talk about security.  No one is ever going to be able to just guess what the wifi password is.  It is almost always alpha numeric and a dozen character long or something.  Crazy.




*These are just my observations and opinions based on my experience and no way saying my words are gospel.

A trick in the book that worked

I was talking to my new friend Becky, my room mate in my hostel in Tulum about how great it is here in Mexico.  I cannot describe the feeling I have when I am here.  I remember arriving in Cancun from Austin and I was just smiling at the fact that I am in Mexico; 2 weeks in and it still makes me smile for no reason at all.

We've all heard of tourist scams from everywhere and I have always been vigilant about this.  I have friend who has been scammed before and I guess you could say I know one when I see one.  So today in Merida, I have been here for exactly 5 hours now and I just got scammed.  I am happy to report though, that I have survived to tell the tale.

I arrived and was mesmerized by Yucatan.  The city of Merida was alot prettier than what I expected it to be.  It is colorful and it's like a movie set.  It is how I imagined a Mexican town would look like, low Spanish colonial style buildings, churches, and parks.

I took a walk and stood at a corner taking photos, looking very much like a tourist, and was just taking Merida in when a man came to me (when the story starts with "when a man came to me..." it's kind of a sign the story isn't gonna be good) and gave me a brochure of the schedule of events for the Mayan Festival.

I knew in me that I had to be careful but I also gave goodness of nature a chance and so I started talking to the guy who gave me so much information.  He was being really nice to me and I thought to myself, he's a bit too nice but take advantage of whatever info he could give me.  So I asked him if he wanted to have coffee so he can give me advice on how I should go about my travel from Yucatan to Chiapas.  We were sitting in the restaurant and he was writing down tips and giving me recommendations of things to do and where to go.

I was suspicious of the guy so I tried and took a photo of him with my camera just to see how he would react.  I thought, if he reacted negatively towards me taking a photo of him then he probably is up to no good.  He even thanked me and asked me to tag him on facebook and asked me to add him on FB! Hey we even took a photo together!

He also started talking about Dengue fever which I am not a stranger to.  He told me that there is a strain of dengue in Mexico right now that is really bad that there's this natural fiber that helps ward off the mosquitoes.   I thought, this would make sense since Citronella is a plant and it could possibly be a similar kind of plant that would shoo away mosquitoes.  He said I should get a shawl and a hammock of a material called Sishal.  He admitted that it is a little bit expensive but I have to think that it was a small amount of money instead of getting sick.  I guess this is the trick in the book that actually worked on me, since I was a sick-y kid.  I have had dengue 3x in my life and I guess I didn't wanna be sick in Mexico without my family and gullibe-y agreed to go to the store and buy those 2 things.

Long story short, it was a 20 minute sales talk about hammocks and shawls and Sishal fabric and they wanted to get MXP 1400 out of the 2 things.  I said this is too much and finally got them down to MXP 1000.  I thought to myself, if these fibers would keep me from getting dengue, I thought, hey, PHP3300 isn't too much money.  So after the purchase, I really didn't feel that bad but I kept thinking about it as I walked to the bus station to get my tickets for tomorrow.

Luckily, there is a tourist information booth over there and I was just asking about the routes of the bus and stuff like that and while carrying the heavy hammock, I asked if she's heard of Sishal fabric.  She told me that there is no such thing as Sishal fabric and when she saw my hammock she said it was just ordinary cotton.  My mind just went blank for 2 seconds and I said, I want to return this, what should I do?

She asked me to go to the Municipio de Gobierno and go to the Tourist Information Office and they will ask a tourist police to come with me to the place and TRY to get my money back.  It took about 15 minutes of waiting until the police came and we started walking to the place again.  The people who worked at the store was definitely a bit surprised that I came back with a police.  I think there was a little bit of an effort to deny that I actually bought my stuff there because they asked me for a receipt (which I stupidly did not ask for; I just wanted to get the purchase done with).  I said, I do not want trouble, I just want my money back; then I remembered that I gave them a signed 20 Philippine Peso for their collection on their glass cases and showed it to the police.  At that time, one of the staff or owner just took 1000 peso out of the box and gave it back to me.  Whew!

If am really lucky that I got my money back with no trouble at all plus the Yucatan Tourist Office were really helpful. I would probably have gone back to the place and nicely ask them back for a refund and make up some lame story that I lost my money blah blah I am so glad that I didn't have to do this; I guess what they did to me was technically not illegal.  They did give me products and didn't just take my money.  I would have probably let it go if it were really a real fabric that'd protect me from mosquitoes, but I guess oh well.  Lesson learned!

My Standard Self Introduction

I did not have any luck requesting for couches in Chicago; it was a blessing in disguise because I got to book a really really nice hostel in Wicker Park.  When you stay in hostels or i guess meeting new people when traveling in general, its an inevitable fact that you will be introducing yourself over and over again.

I get a knack when people try to guess where I am from.  When people hear me talk, they couldn't quite figure out where I'm from.  I've been told a few times that I sound like I'm from Latin America, twice as Californian; and was onced stopped to be interviewed at the grocery store and asked if i were Hawaiian.

People can tell I am Chinese.  My looks sometimes work against me because people just assume I don't speak English and don't bother starting a conversation with me.  But when they do talk to me, I tell them "I am Chinese born and raised in the Philippines!"

There are a lot of perks being a Filipino-Chinese.  On our Chinese side, we tend to do well in business and learned how to speak Chinese.  Then on our Filipino side, we grew up with the Filipino culture which taught us how to be hospitable, how to have fun, overall Filipino niceness and kindness, but most of all, learning how to speak fluent English.  Although sometimes it is tough because we are always never Chinese enough nor Filipino enough.

On the other hand, you speak to a person who has never met a Filipino (which is odd, everyone would at least know 1 Filipino, we're everywhere! haha) or does not know anything about the Philippines, they are surprised that we speak good English; then I'd say "English is an official language together with Filipino.  Our news, newspaper, radio, school, textbooks are all in English, even movies don't have subtitles."

So they then ask me how many languages I speak so I explain 5, I learn 4 languages at the same time when I was younger then learned Korean when I was an exchange student in the University.

If the person I talk to is even more interested, here comes my geeky tour guide side and start talking about the history of the Philippines! haha  I really enjoy it! "333 years under the Spanish, 2 years under the British in between, the Americans came shortly after we won our independence from Spain, then Japanese came in for 3 years, then Americans came back which in total spent 48 years in our country.  Or in short, 300 years in the convent and 50 years in hollywood!  I could go on and on and on...

This is also where I explain that the Filipino language has 20,000 borrowed words and they would be so surprised when I tell them that we tell time of day, days of the week, month of the year and so many daily nouns  in Spanish!  Even our greeting is derrived from Spanish!

It's really cool that I get to introduce myself, my heritage, and my country (This is especially effective for me to personally promote the Philippine tourism which I am passionate about) over and over again.  I haven't grown tired of it yet!  I actually enjoy it.  It makes me realize how proud I am to be both Chinese and Filipino.

My Doppelganger

It was my first long haul flight, how I wished that I would be seated beside someone cool; if not cool, at least tolerable, not a crying baby, nor a chatty grandparent, nor someone who has bad breath.

On the plane, i was seated beside 2 Chinese people, a guy on my left with his dad and a girl on my right.  I've watched a few movies and was kind of getting bored with no one to talk to.  The first meal  was being served, I overeard the girl beside me spoke with the attendant in English (even though she was watching Chinese movie on her screen) so I initiated a conversation.

I found out that she is a Chinese Language teacher from Beijing, she is the only child and is married with no kids yet.  She used to be a Chinese teacher in Arkansas for 3 years and is now heading to New York to study for a year.  I also told her basic stuff about me, my family, and what I do.  Told her about my trip around the US and Mexico.

Naturally, as Asians, we tend to talk about our age.  She told me she is 30 years old.  I said, me too! and she asked, when is your birthday? and I said in June; and she's like me too! June when?  I said, 15! she said No way! I'm 16th!  Then also found out that we both booked the Super Shuttle to get from the airport to go to our hostels.  The connection began so we started showing each other photos of our family.  She then showed me some of her photos on her ipad and saw this photo of her:

I was like, that looks like me!  What the?!  That's me!  I guess we both didn't realize we looked alike because the light was dim.  I showed her photos of my sister Girlie, and she said she feels like she looks like her too! hahaha

Anyway, we spent the rest of the time chatting and talking about China and other things.  We promised to keep in touch and meet up in New York after she finds for an apartment to stay.  So a day before I left for DC, I met up with her.  Here is our photo:

Maybe you don't agree we look alike, but I KNOW people will say we could be sisters!  She also told me that something happened on the plane that I didn't pay attention to: When we were about to land and the flight attendant was giving us US Customs Card, the girl told us that we only need 1 card per family and so she gave me one and moved on to the next passenger! haha  She had to call the attendant back to give her a card. LOL.  Then at the Super Shuttle counter, we each gave our vouchers to the lady on the desk, and she was confused and said, oh you guys have 2 copies? and I was like, yeah, we're not related! haha  she thought we were sisters too.  We jokingly talk about that we might have the same ancestors from China; but this was not very feasible for she is from the North (Beijing) and my family is from the South (Fujian)! haha

We just constantly amaze one another with the stuff we find out about each other.  When we met the other day, we found out that we were actually at the same place at the same time.  We just didn't meet.  We were both at the Financial District trying to see what celebration is going on near the World Trade Center.  We each showed our photos and we even took the same photo of the singing choir group.  Funny.

When we were about to say goodbye after spending an afternoon together, we said goodbye hoping to see each other again in this lifetime.  There was this undeniable connection between the two of us, we both felt it.  She even told me that if I ever get into whatever kind of trouble in the US that I can call her and she will do everything she can to help me.  You only say that kind of thing when you mean it.

It is stories like this that is worth sharing.  Amazing.

Extreme Filipino Hospitality

I have always heard of and talked about Filipino Hospitality.  Boasted about how extremely hospitable Filipino people are; I was speaking in the host point-of-view.  It was not until I got to New York and met up with my Filipino friends that I have come to realize how hospitality can be taken to a whole new level.

Since I got here, I have met up with my friends Jackson and Joy (my high school friends), AJ and Nina (from college), and Anne (whom I've met here via G).

Anne, is a successful Filipina woman who lives in a posh apartment in Manhattan and works as a producer in Bloomberg.  Yeah!  Her life is divine!  I have met her only through G, who came here to visit her.  The other night, I went to her  house to hang out and drank wine which ended at around 3 in the morning.  I fell asleep on her floor while chatting with the girls.  When I woke up in the middle of the night to go pee, she immediately offered me everything that I could ever need to be more comfortable in her house; sleepwear, pajama, shorts, slippers, tshirt... She made me feel so at home for my impromptu sleepover!

me, G, Anne

Then there is my high school friend, Jackson and his wife Joy, who has been nothing but supportive of my visit to NY.  Weeks before I was coming, Joy would send me photos of their new baby Gavin saying "See you soon, Auntie!" or the constant exchange of messages with Jackson to help me out with tips on places to go and food to eat.  They just had a baby 2 months ago and they traveled all the way to Brooklyn with Joy's parents just to welcome me to New York!  I felt so guilty making them come all the way down just to see me even though Joy's parents were tired from walking the whole morning; plus the stress of traveling with a new born baby (first time on the subway too)!  It's so crazy.  We went to the Brooklyn Smorgasburg Food Flea Market and even paid for my food and drinks!  Not just that, I realized that I left a bag with them and Jackson brought it back to me today (but told me yesterday if it were anything important, he would bring it to me right away)!  He also invited me to come see a baseball game at the Citifield Stadium in Queens to watch the Mets game then fed me burger!

Jackson, me, Joy, and Joy's dad who is visiting

Then of course, there is AJ and Nina.  AJ was my blockmate in University and Nina was his girlfriend (now wife).  AJ usually works late and does not use as much facebook, so I have been keeping in touch with Nina this whole time.  Since the day I have arrived, there is not a day that Nina failed to ask me how my day went, and what I did that day.  They've asked me to keep my Sunday and Monday free so that I can spend time with them during their off days.

So far, I was driven everywhere by their beautiful new car; they have driven me to restaurants, malls, even outlets in Long Island!  Nina remembered everything that I told her about what I wanted to eat or things I wanted to do, and places I wanted to go.  Yes, everything.

There is a funny story that happened when we had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.  I was so alert from the beginning of dinner that I wanted to pay because of all this overwhelming hospitality they have been showing me.  So when the bill arrived, AJ and I both hurriedly grabbed the bill from the waitress' hand, but I won. haha.  Then the arguing started:  No, no, Cands, let me pay! /  Noooo.. I'll pay! |  Give me the bill, Cands!  |  No! |  Give it! | No! | Give it! our voices got so loud that Nina asked us to stop haha, she said people were staring at us lol. It felt like we were on a game show called "I'll pay for dinner!"  Eventually, after much debate, AJ finally gave in and allowed me to foot the bill.  I told him that I have already given my credit card to the waitress even before they served the food (which wasn't true, haha).  AJ even resorted to some name-calling because he lost the game! lol.

If all of that wasn't not enough, they are helping me fill up my balikbayan box with the stuff I bought from the outlets!  AND!!!! they washed my clothes for me since I've already been here for a week now; I gave them stinky clothes and they gave it back to me clean and folded!!!! (they insisted! I promise, ma!) gosh...

me, Nina and AJ at the All American Drive-In!

What I found really amazing is that my friends all said they felt embarrassed if they didn't do something for me!  They have this sense of responsibility that you have to have fun in their turf.  Despite the fact that I feel like I am the one that is taking up so much of their time and wanting to do the stuff that they have already done; as if their time wasn't enough gift for me, they will want to pay for my food too!

I tell you Filipinos set such high standard in hospitality, you'll be spoiled.  No one compares!  Tell me about your extreme Filipino hospitality experience.