Rain and Officialdom

Geordie wrote an email and I'm adding it here, with a few editorial changes.

After our visit to the doctors yesterday afternoon at 5 pm we had a wonderful rain storm, very heavy. Much like the monsoon rains I remember from 1959. It was over after an hour. It sounded wonderful on the roof of the room and Geordie sat out on the bench for most of it, until he started to get wet. The rain really cooled the day down, so it was actually quite wonderful but I'm glad we weren't caught in it, we might have drowned it was so hard. We then walked out for food. No mud after rains as every street is sand.

Today we went to the Immigration Service Office here. I had talked to the woman twice last week so we were ready. She was very nice and so helpful. She has many Filipino friends in Vancouver and Alberta. P 4,300 each later and we had our 1 month extension which gives us 2 days more than we need. We are relieved to now be legal for the whole trip. The office was in the front lobby of a hotel on the main street and was quite busy. There were 3 French guys, a man from South Africa and then a couple more came in, all while we were getting our extensions done.

We tried getting more money from ATM's today. P 4000 limit per transaction (Cdn $95 and BMO charges $5 per international transaction). Geordie did 3 transactions. Pricey. Then there are the bank and exchange charges that we do not understand. Must buy BMO stock. We will be paying for our hotel with our credit card, but for that they will charge us 6.5% more. I think that's considered non-kosher by the resorts but their margins are pretty small, so I imagine that absorbing the costs would be costly for them when they are not in a very great financial position to begin with.

So now to lunch. It's always challenging since there are tons of places, but they are all pretty generic. We haven't yet fallen in love with filipino food - their breakfast meals all seem to end in ..silog - tapsilog, cornsilog, lapsilog, etc. I think the first is chewy beef, the second canned corn beef, and the third fish - all served with a mound of rice and a fried egg. Our place does belgian waffles so that's what I've been having, and the place next door has really, really good coffee so I'm happy.