March 21st 2015 Davao city Day 4- SM Mall

Goats with long beards.

SM Mall in Davao City.

The Breast feeding station with a chair inside SM Mall.

Went to Figaros inside SM Mall. I saw Americano and Brewed Coffee listed and I asked the guy what the difference was and he said the Brewed coffee was much stronger so I said I would definitely take the Brewed Coffee for 114 pesos ($3 cdn). It was worth it.

As I am walking back I see a pigs head on the counter behind the glass.

Another fine establishment along the river bank.

Sometimes I wonder why they even build this when it is obvious they don't have the material to build anything worthwhile. He probably said "Honey, today is the day I put that new living room addition that I promised you onto the house".

 It is funny when I walk down the street and see 5 exact businesses right beside each other selling the exact same thing! I will see Pomelas stacked up in all 5 stores. Wouldn't it make sense to put your business somewhere else where there are not a lot of Pomela stores? Also where I go to get that delicious drink (Bukos) that I like is also an ice cream cone place beside it which I have seen all over the Philippines where the women constantly ring the bell to get peoples attention which I find a tad annoying but even then right beside the ice cream stall is the delicious drink stall and there are always customers lined up for drinks and not many if any for the ice cream which is cheap ice cream for 9 pesos for a little swirl on a cone. I felt like telling the ice cream girl "Can't you see that you are in the wrong business?".

This morning I decided to walk to SM Mall which is 4-5 kms south from where I am and a nice little walk. My Lonely Planet guidebooks have only little maps of the downtown areas of every city with arrows showing how many kms something is in a certain direction on the map. As I am walking I see a fat white guy walking the opposite direction and I ask him how to get to SM Mall and I can tell it is another German guy and he tells me to go down the road and take a left onto Ecoland road and keep going down there so I walk another kilometer and see where the road splits and Ecoland goes left so I take it and am walking probably another 5 kms down it and know that SM mall will not be down here because it is residential poor neighborhoods and finally I asked someone and they tell me I have to go back so I get a tricycle for 10 pesos to drive me to SM Mall. I realize the instructions the German guy gave me were wrong (although he seemed completely sincere when he gave them to me) and I was wondering maybe this was a funny little german joke that only he would get. If I just stayed on the same road a few more kms I would have come to the SM Mall. As I walked through these poor neighborhoods I could see kids and the young girls would always smile and wave at me and say Hello when I walked by and some of the young boys would say "Hey Joe!" and I would say Hi back and then they would say "Give me your money!" which many of these Philippine kids say to white folks walking by. 



It is nice to escape the heat in the nice Air conditioned SM Malls. I walked around a bit and saw a coffee shop called Figaros and got a Brewed Coffee for 114 pesos and it was worth it.