Travel and Ice-cream Therapy

We had a lovely time in Manila! I thought I'd share a few pictures of the big city... the skyline is really beautiful if you can ignore the ever-present smog!

Jeepneys are a common and easy form of transportation in Manila. Most are colorfully painted, so this one would be considered somewhat "dull". The jeepneys run certain routes, some of them less than 14 km from one end to the other-- but 14 km can take a very long time in rush hour!

This is the view from the top of our guesthouse... people, people, and more people everywhere! Someone told us that Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and that might be true. We haven't checked that out, though, so it may not be accurate. At any rate, Asia certainly is different than Latin America in terms of population!

We arrived home happily on Thursday and Garry spent Friday morning in the air. The next few days will be busy with flights, then he needs to go back to Manila for meetings in the middle of the week. Never a dull moment:).

While in Manila we did a lot of relaxing and were hoping that Garry would feel himself again by the time we got home. That was not to be. He came home still exhausted and we wondered why. We know that malaria is hard on the system, but this had been weeks already! Then one of our friends mentioned that a doctor told her that malaria sometimes uses up all your stored sugar and you need to replace it. In fact, the doctor recommended up to a quart of ice-cream or two a day! Sounds like a strange remedy to me, but we've been pretty desperate. So, yesterday Garry started his therapy with a banana split, followed several hours later by a small cone. Several more bowls of ice-cream later, he seems to be feeling much better! Maybe one of you knows something that would explain this... it sounds crazy to all of us who have been trying to cut down on fat and sugar for years-- but it seems to be working!