Kowloon Walking Tour

I've been to Hong Kong several times this year. So many times in fact that I was able to apply for, and get, the Frequent Visitors Card. This Card allows me to bypass the long immigration line ups. A nice card to have even though it's sort of irrelevant when you consider I still need to wait a long time for my luggage to come off the plane. Oh well, at least it's a card I can brag about! Speaking of cards, when I emptied out my wallet before we left Canada and started cancelling unnecessary department store credit cards and various annoying store points cards I made the decision never to have a fat wallet filled with useless cards ever again. It was nice at first walking around with a nice skinny wallet but once the bank accounts were opened, the credit cards were applied for and the shopping started I notice that like Canada, the Philippines loves getting you to sign up for points cards. Sadly now my wallet is fat again (and no, it's not fat on money). But I'm totally getting off topic here, back to my Hong Kong blog:

Since I've been to Hong Kong several times I've been slowly seeing all the museums, landmarks, temples, and sites that Hong Kong is famous for. Beyond the tourist stuff there's obviously the social activities like restaurants, clubs and bars. Seeing as I'm 36 the club hopping evenings are becoming less and less as the years pass by. But bars are always there to help fill my belly with satisfying beer (interestingly enough, the beer of Hong Kong is San Miguel. I get the impression that Hong Kong people don't even classify it as a beer from the Philippines although that's where it originated from. I guess it being a 'Hong Kong beer' is partly correct since there's a San Miguel Brewery in Hong Kong. But I still classify San Miguel as a Philippines beer so while in HK I won't drink it [the market is saturated with the stuff in the Philippines after all]).

Wow, I got off topic again ... damn conversations about beer ... where was I? Oh yeah, touring Hong Kong .

Since I've seen most of the museums and sites in Hong Kong already I decided I wanted to try one of the walking tours the Lonely Planet guide recommended. Obviously I brought along my lovely and talented counterpart Aimee on my quest for Hong Kong knowledge and experiences. We decided on the Kowloon walking tour.

We awoke in the morning to see the sun slowly creeping its way down one of the many Legoland-like apartments building complexes in Hong Kong. I say 'Legoland' because they remind me of the Lego buildings I used to build as a kid: tall, skinny, and blocky. Sadly my Legoland buildings would always fall down but thankfully the Hong Kong Legoland buildings remain standing.

The first stop of our walking tour was at the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden.

It's less 'garden' and more 'market'. It's estentially a market where you can buy birds and various bird supplies. In most cases people have opened entire shops dedicated to selling birdwares (new word, like it?) but I noticed a few old guys standing around trying to sell off one tiny bird in a cage. The picture below shows the types of cages being offered in the bird garden.

Bird supplies include thousands of live crickets hanging out in cages and see-through cloth bags. I suppose you could buy the crickets as either bird food or a pet for your kid. Hmm, not a bad idea ... pet crickets ... I can come out with a line of cricket outfits. But doing that might cause the spiders to get jealous... moving on.

The bird garden is basically one long corridor that has an entrance at the front of the corridor and an exit at the back. There are bird stalls on both sides. It's an interesting place with many things to see. Following the corridor to the back immediately brings you to...

...Flower Market Road.

Flower Market Road is exactly that; a road with flower shops on it. Lots of them. Probably over 50 shops.

After looking at thousands of brightly coloured flowers we came across a shop that sold unique plants. I took a picture of this plant because it demonstrates how wonderful evolution is. A plant that comes with it's own beer cup (several of them); what an excellent invention!
After finishing off at the flower markets our travels took us passed several clothing markets selling questionable 'legitimate' name brand products. Eventually we reached the Goldfish Market. The Goldfish Market isn't one market but a street lined with pet stores mostly selling goldfish. The fish are displayed in small individual plastic bags.

To buy a fish it's easy as grabbing the bag you want, paying , and walking away with your new found friend.

After the Goldfish Market our walking tour brought us down various Kowloon city streets. It was nice seeing areas of the city I wouldn't normally see without a guide book to guide my way. The rest of the walking tour included stops at temples and markets selling jade but unfortunately the tail end of the Kowloon Walking Tour included a walk through the area's night market. A night market 5 blocks long and since we were taking the tour during the day, no stalls at the night market were open. The only thing left to do after completing our 2 hour walking tour (the guide said 2 hours but for some odd reason it took us 3) was to eat lunch!

Nothing like a nice big slab of tripe (or other by-product) after a morning's walk!

Just kidding, for lunch we ate in an area called Kunttsford Terrace. It has lots of cool and trendy places. We decided on Thai food and it was delicious.

Going back to my "Greenland" blog: we did the walking tour the day after my Greenland food experience and I was really in the mood for REAL vegetarian. We decided on a vegetarian restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet guide but once you arrived at the address, it didn't exist. Aimee said with a laugh, "Maybe God is trying to tell you something". I responded, "Tell me what? To stop trusting the Lonely Planet or stop being a vegetarian?" God never replied to my question...

Lost in Translation

During a trip to Hong Kong this week Aimee and I saw an interesting restaurant we decided to check out. As you can tell from this photo the several green happy dancing pixes really entice you to walk up and take a closer look. The green roof, colourful mushrooms, trees and various planets really make make you feel you're going to a place close to nature. I peaked in the window and saw the walls were decorated with more green happy dancing pixies playing and having a jolly good old time with various happy dancing forest creatures.

The restaurant is called 'Greenland'. Everything about this place was screaming 'healthy food' or even 'vegetarian' to me, but I wanted to take a look at the menu before we decided this was a place for the nature-minded-healthy-food-eating-vegetarian-types (like myself).

Oh, what is this? The picture below proves my suspicion! The sign out front of the restaurant proudly announces it's a vegetarian restaurant. Sure there's some confusing Chinese characters under the English but that one English word 'vegetarian' is all I needed. I was hooked so we went in.

On the way in we noticed it was a 'Taiwanese Vegetarian' restaurant. Even better! My experience with Taiwanese Vegetarian food is they're masterful at producing convincing fake meat dishes. The taste, look, and texture all points you to believe it's real meat when it's actually just tofu and other ingredients.

We go in, sit down, and look at the menu. The menu sitting on the table is all in Chinese. Lots of words I don't understand and colourful pictures. A waitress hands me an English menu but the English one oddly isn't the same size as the Chinese one. It's missing complete sections and has less pictures. The descriptions for the food is lacking in the English one as well so Aimee and I just decide to order off the Chinese one by pointing at the pictures. We order fake grilled BBQ beef on a stick, fake soy chicken, and fake ginger beef. The first dish, the grilled BBQ beef on a stick arrives and we dig in. Wow, what flavour. I haven't eaten beef for years but what I can remember, the taste, texture and look is almost exactly like the real thing. The next dish arrives: soy chicken. On inspecting the fake chicken I notice it has bones in it. Okay, a little odd but I've heard of Taiwanese Vegetarian places that actually go through the effort of adding fake chicken bones to the dish to give it that extra presentation. I bite into the 'chicken'. Hmmm, now I'm getting a little confused. Do fake chicken bones have bone marrow inside? We decide, okay, this is silly, let's ask to be certain this is fake meat. We call the waitress over and say, "is this real meat or fake meat?". The waitress doesn't understand the question and calls someone over who understand English better. So we ask waitress #2. She doesn't understand and calls over a waiter. We ask the waiter. He doesn't understand the question so Aimee decides to ask them in Mandarin (since her Cantonese skills are limited). In Mandarin she asks, "is this meat or vegetable?". They look at us perplexed, then stare at us like we're morons and say, "meat of course!" (I guess it was a silly way to phrase the question considering meat looks a lot different than say, a carrot). Finally it sinks in and I realize I've been chowing down on meat. The third dish arrives, the ginger beef. Once again, it's real meat. What kind of vegetarian restaurant is this? On closer inspection of the menu we discover there is one page dedicated to vegetarian food. A page that was missing from the menus we were given. A page of food that accounts for only 5% of the total food options in the restaurant. What the...? Why in the world would anyone call a restaurant 'Greenland', decorate the place with happy green forest loving pixies and scenes from nature and slap a sign out front that reads 'Vegetarian' when you really don't serve enough vegetarian dishes to claim to be vegetarian?

For revenge I want to open a restaurant next door called 'CarnivoreLand', decorate it with pictures of happy dancing beef eating cowboys, place a sign out front that reads, "Meat", but only serve vegetarian items inside.

You lied to me happy dancing green pixie. I'll never trust you again!

Civet Coffee

Here in the Philippines you can find a rare coffee blend called Civet Coffee. Here's a picture of the Palm Civet who makes the coffee:

You may ask, "how does this odd little creature make coffee?" Well, he doesn't actually brew the coffee, he just sort of ... well ... alters the coffee bean. He does this by ... er ... eating the bean and ... uhm ... okay, I'll just write what's written on the package:

Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet. The civets eat the berries but the beans inside pass through their system undigested.

Apparently these palm civets and their heightened sense of smell can detect the best of the coffee berry crop. They only eat the best so they only ... well ... poop out the best! Once the animal's droppings are found they are washed, dried, and roasted to capture the complex flavours given to the bean during it's Palm Civet ordeal.

There's some debate whether the beans are regurgitated instead of defecated. Either way, vomit or poop, it's a different coffee making process.

The Palm Civet, and this coffee making process, takes place outside the Philippines as well. You can find them in the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi and in the Indonesian Archipelago. The biggest consumers of this coffee are Americans and the Japanese. Civet Coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound. I found a local coffee shop called Bo's Coffee selling a 50g jar of Civet Coffee for 500 pesos. A real bargain when you consider how much it's sold for outside the country. I bought 3 jars. So for Christmas, 3 friends and/or family will find weasel poop coffee in their stocking!

Balikbayan

Balikbayan is a term you will hear quite frequently here in the Philippines. Balikbayan, the word, refers to 'Philippine nationals who are permanently residing abroad including their spouses and children, regardless of nationality or country of birth who are returning back to the Philippines'. Or at least, that's how one website defines it. No matter the definition, the meaning is the same: Filipinos living outside the Philippines who are returning home.

Balik = to go back
Bayan = native country

If I was to personally write a definition for the word balikbayan it would be: 'Filipino people and their constant need to import and export STUFF to their family and friends.' You can't truly appreciate their love for STUFF until you share an airplane with a group of Filipinos. A good example is the last time I took Philippine Airlines and we landed here in the Philippines it took me almost an hour to find and collect my luggage because of the STUFF Filipinos were bringing into the country. Traveling Philippines Airlines is pretty much the same as being a passenger on a FedEx airplane: hardly any luggages, all boxes. Boxes filled with STUFF. I heard once this STUFF is pretty much all food. Filipinos love their food.

These boxes bring me back to the word balikbayan. Written on the side of these boxes is 'Balikbayan'. In this case, Balikbayan refers to "take home box" (literally returnee's box). When you think about all the cultures in the world, think about how many really need to name a box "take home box". How many would ever consider naming a box anything besides 'box'? I think 'Balikbayan' came to be because it was necessary to call these boxes something other than 'box' when the boxes started outnumbering the luggages. The boxes became special; almost like a member of the family.

When Aimee and I moved here we shipped off several large boxes of our belongings. These boxes, as well, were labeled Balikbayan.

I did some early Christmas shopping recently at a store called Balikbayan Handicrafts. There's that word again! The word, in this case, refers to handicrafts made by Filipinos out of material found in the Philippines. What's amusing about the word this time though is the main customers at Balikbayan Handicrafts aren't Filipinos; they're tourists. So although 'Balikbayan' is a Filipino word, tourists too can take part in this constant need for STUFF. I know I did (but the question remains, am I still a tourist or a Filipino?).


At Balikbayan Handicrafts you can purchase this big guy for only 250,000 pesos (6000 CAD)! Shipping is extra. If you do decide to get him shipped I can guarentee the word 'Balikbayan' will be printed on the box! And what a huge Balikbayan Box it will be!

Lips

Filipinos have the justifiable reputation as being one of the most hospitable people in the world. I've read somewhere that they are especially preoccupied with the notion of pride and self-esteem and that public confrontation, criticism or arguments can lead of uncomfortable situations; therefore they're avoided when possible (I was in a small car accident here once and was shocked when both drivers got out of their cars and smiled and laughed at the situation. No road rage here!) Strong or fixed eye contact between males is considered aggressive and it is impolite to point. It's the pointing part that confused me at first. I'm not talking about pointing at other people, I'm talking about pointing in general. They don't seem to do it. So imagine a situation when you ask a Filipino for directions but they won't use a finger to point you in the direction you need to go. A pointed finger seems to be the most efficient way to give directions; a finger can pin-point you in the correct direction. Without the finger pointing, what do Filipinos do? When giving directions and they need to express "over there" in body language they raise their arm up from their side and wave the hand in the general direction you need to go. The trouble I found with this is it's such a big wave at times that it could translate into several directions at once. When I first arrived here I found myself being lost constantly when following this broad "wave direction thing". It wasn't until I discovered how Filipinos pin-point directions that everything started to make sense. Filipinos point using their lips. Yes, their lips. They press their lips together to the point where it's almost a kiss and use these pressed lips to convey direction. While you're reading this you might want to try this yourself. It's actually a very effective way to show direction. The hand waving helps show you the general direction you need to go. Then you look at the eyes and see where they're looking. Finally, to get the exact direction you need to go following the lips.

The lips will never lead you astray.

Private Questions

In Canada when you go into a store the cashier will never ask you the following questions:

Are you married?
Are you single?
Where do you live?
How much did you pay for this house?
Where do you work and how much do you get paid?
Do you have children?
No children? Why not? Don't you like children?
How old are you?

Or questions a random acquaintance would consider rude to ask in Canada:

Have you gained weight? You look a little fat.
Why don't you have any kids yet, what's the problem? Do you hate kids or something?

Over here the line between what a Canadian considers rude is quite different than what a Filipino considers rude. It's perfectly acceptable to ask these questions here. Having these questions asked is commonplace so don't feel it's rude; be honoured that a complete stranger is taking an interest in you!

Yesterday I had almost all of these questions asked while I was paying for something in a store. While the cashier was ringing in my purchases she went through the questions like they were a check list.

You married?
What do you do here?
Do you work? You must be paid well.
Do you have children? No? Not interested in children?
Is your wife a Filipino? I bet she's beautiful.
Where do you live?

When I first arrived here 3 months ago I would have looked at the cashier perplexed and somewhat insulted that she was asking me questions I consider personal. Now, well now, things are different. I'm so used to complete strangers being interested in my life that I answer the questions as quickly as they ask them.

You married? -
Yes
What do you do here? -
I live here, I'm a resident
Do you work? You must be paid well. -
I work occasionally, the pay is good
Do you have children? No? Not interested in children? -
No children yet, yes I like children
Is your wife a Filipino? I bet she's beautiful. -
Yes she's Filipino, yes she's beautiful
Where do you live? -
In Quezon City

I'm amazing how within 3 months time I've become a question answering robot. No thoughts anymore about why the questions are asked or whether I consider the questions rude or not; I just answer. Does this mean I'm one step closer to becoming Filipino?

Communication

The longer I stay here the more I understand the system of communication here. When I say 'communication' I'm not referring to just day to day communication in english or tagalog, I'm referring to how people get ahold of each other here to communicate. Obviously phones and email exist here but these forms of communication aren't always reliable. I've had a few instances in the past where I needed to make an appointment for something. Armed with a business card with a telephone number, a cellphone number, and an email address I started my long annoying battle of attempting to make an appointment with the dentist. First attempt: telephone. After calling, getting a busy signal and then recalling a few hundred times within several hours I thought, "this is stupid" and decided to move onto the next form of communication: cellular phone. This time I either received a busy signal or endless ringing. No one ever picked up. And when the ringing actually stopped and a voice came on the line it was a recorded message from the cell phone company informing me that, "the voice mail service is currently out of order". From what I understand, the 'voice mail service' has been 'out of order' for three years now. I think it's time the phone company admits defeat and records a message that says, 'the voice mail service doesn't exist'. So, the second attempt, the cellphone, was also a losing battle. I decided not to attempt the email option because I've had nothing but nonexistent success with that in the past (for example, I've written emails to festivals asking where I can buy tickets and I never received a response. Why even offer your email address to sell tickets if you're not going to reply?). So here I was, half a day wasted trying to make a dentist appointment with no success. I told Aimee about my frustration and she suggested I send them a text message and make the appointment that way. I thought to myself, "you can do that?". Text messaging in Canada is pretty much a social friend to friend type thing, not a customer to business type of thing. So I figure, why not, I'll give it a try. 30 seconds later I receive a text back that reads, "ok sir ur dent app is 2pm on nov 12". Success! Since this text messaging revelation, I've been asking businesses for their cellphone numbers rather than their land line numbers. That way I'm always guaranteed a stress free text messaging experience! Since this time all appointments have been done via text messaging: my cat's vet appointments are one example. Another is spa appointments. Every week Aimee receives a text from a spa company saying such things as, "good evening, would you like a nice relaxing massage?". Why yes text message, I would!

The ease of text messaging does have some negative sides though. Over here, text messages are becoming a bit like spam emails. On a daily basis I receive several text messages informing me I'm a winner of something or other. I'm happy that the world of text messages hasn't developed into porn related nonsense like email spam. Thankfully I receive less text messages than spam emails. I don't know if I could handle the 'beep beep beep' of my cellphone several hundred times a day!

A Day Touring Metro Manila

One of the advantages of living in a new country is the daily act of playing tourist. And today was no exception. Today my cousin Richie was nice enough to show me some sights around the Manila area.

Our day started off at the Museum of the Filipino People. The museum houses artifacts from different regions of the Philippines. It's a good museum; nicely laid out with lots of great information about the Philippines and its people. But I'm only going to post three pictures from it. Three pictures ... of me. Because really, that's why you're all here!

Here's me in front of a bahay kubo (Filipino hut). This style of home is still used in various areas of the Philippines. The huts are built on stilts because the people who live in them tend to be fisherman therefore the villages are close to the beaches and water. A few years back while touring the Philippines we came across one of these villages. These people lived in the huts and survived by living off the land (and water). No electricity. We ended up having lunch on their beach and they were generous enough to give us some clams from their most recent catch.

Nothing really historic about this picture. It's me and a souped up jeep that includes a powerful stereo sound system and three TVs to watch your DVDs on. We can call it a technological art project. What I like about this photo is the guy in the background. Why is he posing in my picture? And why does he look so confused?

This photo is pretty self explanitory. Me and a rickshaw. But if you want, you can write your own caption in the comments section on this blog!

Outside the door of the Museum of the Filipino People there's a huge park called Rizal Park. Rizal (to totally summerize Filipino history) is the Philippines' greatest national hero. This park is huge. The park area we were in, contains the Department of Tourism Building and National Museum (Museum of the Filipino People).

Directly in front of the Department of Tourism Building is a giant statue of Lapu-Lapu. Lapu-Lapu was the Philippines first freedom fighter, he killed Ferdinand Magellan in Cebu (see my Cebu blog for more info). The death of Magellan sent the Spanish home for quite some time. Needless to say Lapu Lapu deservedly became a national hero.

Beside the Lapu Lapu statue is a giant relief map of the Philippines.

This map, which I found was pretty impressive, has one negative aspect. It's so huge you can't see it! As you can tell from this photo you're pretty much looking at each side straight on. It's impossible to see anything in the center since it gets blocked from the the parts of the map on the outside. My cousin tells me there used to be a walkway above the map so you could see the whole thing. It's gone now and with it any hope of seeing the whole map at once. If you look on the top right hand side of the photo you can see the Lapu Lapu statue in the distance.

After Rizal Park we visited the Chinese Cemetary in Manila. Members of the Filipino-Chinese community have mausoleums up to 3 stories high, complete with amenities like living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens.

Last stop, San Agustin Church. San Agustín Church, built between 1587 and 1606, is one of the oldest churches in the Philippines, and the only building left intact after the destruction of Intramuros during the Battle of Manila (1945). The present structure is actually the third to stand on the site and has survived seven major earthquakes, as well as the wars in Manila. The church remains under the care of the Augustinians who founded it.

The San Agustín Church lies inside the walled city of Intramuros located in the capital city Manila, Philippines. It is the first European stone church to be built in the Philippines designed in Spanish architectural structure.

Interior of San Agustin.

Attached to the church there's a great museum that takes you through the history of the church and monastery. It's a great trip back in time. You can almost hear the sounds of monks shuffling passed you!

A Day in the Graveyard

November 1st is All Saints Day here in the Philippines. On All Saints Day it's traditional to visit the cemeteries and pay homage to the dearly departed. The usually solemn cemetery takes on a party atmosphere, with much merry-making rather than a solemn celebration. We visited the mausoleums of Aimee's Grandparents.

The mausoleum was fitted with tents and chairs to make it more comfortable for us to spend the day there. All Saints Day is a perfect opportunity for families to get together, have a reunion, relax, and talk about the past.

We even found time to...

...fly a kite.

A Chinese custom is to burn money. Not real money, but fake money. I've heard people call it 'paper money', 'heaven money' or even 'hell money'. It's estenially money the departed can spend in the afterlife. Here you see some of the family's drivers burning the money.

It's hard to tell from this photo but these people have created a picnic area around their dearly departed's gravestone. Tents are set up, chairs are brought in, blankets are used, people even start cooking food in the graveyard. I was shocked when I saw bubble tea stands, pizza stands and other food kiosk stands setup around the graveyard. While we were eating our lunch at the mausoleum, various musicians walked up, sat down and started singing pop songs. They would play, finish the song, wait for a donation then leave. The one thing that surprised me the most was when a salesman for the graveyard came up and tried to sell the family more plots of land for the future dearly departed. I thought this was in bad taste but everyone else thought it was a normal occurrance for the day. ...Things are different here. :)

Hallowe'en and the Manananggal

I experienced my first Hallowe'en in the Philippines! And boy, do Filipinos really like exploring the gruesome side of the holiday. I'm discovering that Filipinos are a superstitious bunch. They have many different types of supernatural creatures in their folklore. The main term for the supernatural here is Aswang.

An Aswang (or Asuwang) is a ghoul in Filipino folklore. The myth of the Aswang is popular in the Western Visayan regions such as Capiz, Iloilo and Antique. The trademark or major feature of Aswangs which distinguish them from other Filipino mythological creatures is their propensity to replace stolen cadavers with the trunk of a banana tree carved in the cadaver's likeness. They are also said to like to eat small children. Their favorite body parts are the liver and heart. Aswang, at times, is also a generic term applied to all types of mythological creatures, ghosts, manananggals (see photo below), witches, shapeshifters, lycanths and monsters. Aswang is often interchanged with manananggal, but they are different. There are also characteristics and features that the Aswang also varies from Filipino to Filipino.They usually live near the mountains and they never go in to cities.

I get a sense that some Filipinos really believe in this stuff; more so than Canadians believe in the supernatural. Maybe that's why the Hallowe'en displays are so gruesome - if you believe a gruesome creature walks the streets (or flies the skies) on a daily basis why not put one of your lawn during Hallowe'en right? Here are a few photos I took of the Hallowe'en displays in the village:

Nothing odd about this Hallowe'en display: graveyards are done in Canada too! But it gets little weirder as I walk around the village.

Black ghosts and black pumpkins? A fire all ready for a witch burning? I wonder if that witch in the background is the one about to get toasted?

This witch was down the street from the witch burning house. Pretty spooky face if you ask me!

This poor guy lost most of his body to an unfortunate electricity accident!

This is a manananggal. Manananggals are a type of Filipino vampire. And yes, they live among us! There's apparently one flying around the skies of Quezon City, the city I live in. Manananggals walk around like regular people. They can be male or female. What makes them different from other vampires is they can separate their top half of their body from the bottom half. The top half sprouts bat-like wings allowing it to fly around. So while the top half (waist up) is flying around attacking and killing victims the bottom half just stands there. Rumour has it the only way to kill a manananggal is to approach the defenceless bottom half and rub garlic and salt over the areas where the top half and bottom half join. By doing this the two parts cannot rejoin and the manananggal dies. Maybe I should start walking around with garlic and salt in my pocket in case I come across a half body standing on a street corner.

Manananggal and her bloody alien friend.

I assume this is a manananggal ghost skeleton since it has no bottom half?

I have no idea who these guys are suppose to be. The poor guy in the front had an unfortunate accident with an ax.

Coffins.


Another coffin.

Not all of the displays were horror-based. There's nothing scary about this little guy.

Now I know needles are scary to some people but are they Hallowe'en scary? I suppose they would be if they were as large as this one. This needle is larger than most children.

When Aimee and I went out and bought candy for the kids we grabbed whatever the grocery store was selling. When we came back we were told not only did we not buy enough, but we bought the expensive candy imported from other countries. So we sent the maids out to buy locally made candy and enough to feed the usual number of kids that come to the door. They arrived back home with about 800 pieces of candy for the kids. Add this to the 200 Aimee and I bought and it sounded like A LOT of candy. This candy lasted us only 30 minutes and there were hundreds of other kids still trick or treating. Sorry kids, the candy is all gone!

Superboy (my nephew) is inspecting the Hallowe'en decorations to ensure they meet his strict requirements for Hallowe'en fun!

Here you see Superboy and Pikachu (my niece) about to go out Trick or Treating.

Fresh from the M&M Factory, this little M&M (my niece) is wishing you a Happy Pinoy Hallowe'en 2007!