Wednesday, January 18, 2012

What To Do Around Malate

Travelers to the Philippines invariably have to spend a night or two in Manila on their way to and from the outer islands, the tourist destinations and the eco-adventure destinations within the archipelago. Most globe trekkers and lonely planetoids spend this layover time in Malate.

Malate is a bayside district of Manila with a reputation of being a Bohemian enclave. In the 60’s at Los Indios Bravos, a café-cum-art gallery-cum-music venue, poets, painters, film people, musicians, writers and moonlight philosophers would gather regularly. Los Indios, located at the heart of Malate, was where the avant-garde set of Manila would hang out. Nearly half a century later, Malate is still the place where the fringe and artsy milieu like to congregate. One finds budget-friendly hostels and B&B’s in Malate; everything worth seeing or doing here is within walking distance from the accommodations.


The bayside promenade called Baywalk stretches from Rizal Park to the north all the way to the Cultural Center/Folk Arts Complex. This is a great spot to catch the world-famous Manila Bay sunset. Grabbing a bite to eat and/or a cold San Miguel beer is no problem in Malate-cruising along Adriatico, Nakpil, Mabini or Remedios Streets, one finds an array of bars, bistros, clubs, al fresco eateries & rectos. 

In the mood for Korean, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Continental, American, Filipino and, yes, even Cuban fare? You will find it within a 4-square block area within the heart of Malate at the streets mentioned above. Of note, on the corner of Remedios and Adriatico, is Café Havana, a cigar bar bistro with excellent Cuban fusion cuisine and live Latin music – oh, and a cigar bar with, yes, real Cohibas and other fine cigars from Cuba. And they serve the best mojitos in town.


Across the street is Bistro Adriatico, with its elegant 19th-century ambience and its fine Filipino/Spanish/European cuisine, and a creamy, thick old-style hot chocolate to die for. Around the corner on Mabini St., is the Hobbit House – a live music bar that has dwarfs for servers, a rather endearing touch. The Hobbit has live blues, rock or folk music, depending on the day of the week. Beware the karaoke bars and Top 40 clubs that have started to proliferate in Malate, unless of course you’re into that sort of thing.


A Malate institution is the Penguin Café and Gallery. Although it has changed its name a few times over the decades, people will always call it Penguin. On any given night, one may find an eclectic mix of Manila’s artists, intelligentsia, filmmakers, culture vultures, neo-tribal’s and whatnot hanging out and slamming down Penguin’s notorious lambanog(coconut liquor)/Red Horse(strong beer) concoction. There is always live music at least a few nights a week – jazz, world, blues, tribal, fusion etc. – and there are always interesting photographs or works of art on exhibit. While the ultra-cool Malate hangs of the 90’s – Blue Café, Iguana, Caribana, Insomnia et al – are now a fond hazy memory, Penguin continues to survive well into the new millennium against the odds.


It is a Malate tradition (on weekends anyway, but sometimes weekdays too) to party till the sun comes up. One can witness al fresco tables full of raucous revelers at 7 am, all ready for breakfast. And sometimes, some of them head half-a-block towards the sea, right to the 400-year-old church, Our Lady of Remedies, before plunging into bed.

9 comments:

divyapriya said...

Excellent blog for the people who needs information about this course.
IELTS Coaching in Chennai
Best IELTS Coaching in Chennai
Best Spoken English Class in Chennai
french classes
pearson vue
German Classes in Chennai
IELTS Coaching in OMR
IELTS Coaching in Porur

cynthiawilliams said...

Great collection and thanks for sharing this info with us. Waiting for more like this.
Cloud Training in Chennai
Cloud Computing Courses in Chennai
AWS Training in Chennai
AWS Certification in Chennai
DevOps Training in Chennai
Machine Learning Training in Chennai
Machine Learning course in Chennai
AWS Training in Chennai
AWS Training center in Chennai

markson said...

These conventional betting machines make up about 70% of a gambling club's salary. When you consolidate the intrigue of the customary space machine with the advancement of electronic games, video poker is the thing that you will get. machine learning course in pune

Jackie Co Kad said...

Great Article
IEEE Projects on Cloud Computing
Final Year Projects for CSE


JavaScript Training in Chennai
JavaScript Training in Chennai

sindhuvarun said...

Learned a lot of new things in this post. This post gives a piece of excellent information.
Spoken English Classes in Bangalore
Spoken English Classes in Chennai
Spoken English Classes in BTM
Spoken English Classes in Marathahalli
Spoken English Classes near Marathahalli
Spoken English Marathahalli
DevOps Training in Bangalore
PHP Training in Bangalore
Data Science Courses in Bangalore
English Speaking Course in Bangalore

chandhran said...

I am very impressed to see this blog thanks for giving this very useful information.
uft vs selenium
best technology to learn for freshers
scope of web development
scope of hadoop
devops interview questions and answers

Back linker said...

iDealshare VideoGo Crack is a multi-purpose, multimedia file format converter. With this app, you can convert video and audio easily. iDealshare VideoGo 7 Crack

Hi Every One said...

You broke a promise & made me realize. It was all just a lie. Trusting u again is my decision, Proving me wrong is your choice. Quotes On Love Failure

hubert said...

AnyDesk make possible to use screen in full mod.
https://thepcsoft.com/anydesk-crack-latest/