After another sumptuous breakfast at the Cafe Ilang-Ilang, the newlyweds-to-be had to go run a plethora of errands, including his first confession in ~25 years. Apparently the Hail Mary-to-sin exchange rate is also way lower here in the Philippines - he got something like five Hail Marys, five Our Fathers, etc. So Stefan, Mrs. Dave and I thought we'd hit up the local golf course, the Intramuros Club. Technically, it's not intra (inside) any muros (walls) - it runs around the outside - but it's in that area. Our cabbie dropped us off, and the soaking began.
First, he offered to wait for us at the rate of P230 an hour (about $4.50, which is cheap, but the round-trip would have cost P170). Then they foisted some caddies upon us (P250 each). Then club rental. And balls. And tees. And greens fees. And maintenance fees. By the time the cash register stopped ringing, we'd been tuned up for P4720 (about $100)! But hey, we were going to have a morning of entertainment, right. We got up to the starter's box, and our caddies disappeared for some reason. Then the starter pointed to the dress code sign we'd missed before - Stefan didn't have a collared shirt. Of course they offered to sell him one, but the whole experience was just too bizarre and irritating, and we decided to cut our losses, get our money back, and hit the driving range instead.
Perhaps it was just this driving range, but one peculiarity was far too interesting not to mention. That is, other than the solid dirt platforms from which to drive. And the fact that the range was only ~175 yards long, necessitating a hundred-foot-high netting around the entire area. Or the fact that just off to the right of the driving range was the red tiled roof of the shrine to the national hero we had visited yesterday. Or even the fact that the netting had fallen halfway down, meaning everything that we sliced had a very real possibility of clonking some poor shrine visitor on the head.
No, it was that in our P85 fee per bucket (of 80 balls!) was included a "tee girl" fee. The tee girls basically sat next to the divider between tee areas, and teed up the balls before we hit them. Or at least, they were supposed to. But Stefan hadn't been golfing for about three years, and he was so fearful of rocketing a ball shooting off the poor girl's kneecaps that he pleaded with her to get out of the way lest he incapacitate her permanently. We did observe the tee girls on other tees - they would scoop together a small pile of dirt, place the ball on top, and then pick up the ball along with a small cylinder of packed earth beneath it, and set it out in the driving area. Lather, rinse, and repeat. 80 times. Kinda made my blister seem insignificant by comparison.
Since the driving range experience had lasted somewhat shorter than a round of 18 holes might have, but since it left us both with wrenched backs and sore shoulders (wimps, I know, but we were wayyyyy out of practice and probably could have just handled a bucket between the two of us), and since we had a few hours to kill, back we went to the spa in Quezon City. The bride and groom would be meeting us there since they had missed out on the previous day's festivities and didn't want to be left out completely. The groom was sporting a freshly-shaved head and the bride had just had her nails done at the salon next door, so it was really an afternoon of comfort and pampering for all of us. Stefan was interested in getting the full-body treatment but after hearing our rave reviews of the "foot reflex", he opted for that instead and was not disappointed. Mrs. Dave splurged on a foot reflex AND a facial at the same time and we left feeling refreshed and ready to...go to the rehearsal dinner. After what MAY have been 15 minutes of "rehearsal" in the ballroom's lobby - the church wasn't available to us, so we couldn't really rehearse much other than to line up - the 20 of us traipsed over to the Harbor View for the dinner itself.
Our table for 20 was out on the jetty that juts into Manila Bay - nothing like an open-air dinner on December 29th! And there we were, 20 of Victor & Imelda's closest friends and family, just enjoying life halfway around the world (well, halfway for a few of us, anyway). We got to see more fireworks - in an odd twist, Thursday's participants were the South Africa and the US! - while dining on local delicacies. The highlight of the menu - well, other than the ridiculous assortment of cakes for dessert - was the lapu-lapu, or grouper. If you could get past the fact that it was served with head and tail still attached, the meat itself was delicious - very tender with a pineapple glaze. One of the cousins informed me that lapu-lapu was actually named after the tribal chief who refused to subjugate himself to Magellan when the explorer landed in the Philippines in the late 1500s, and whose men were responsible for killing him. Sort of the first national hero, in a way.
Dinner wrapped up around 11 and we waddled our way back to the hotel, fat and happy and ready for a good night's sleep in preparation for the wedding festivities.
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