Ketchup Is More Than Just A Condiment

cant wait to start eatin'! BTW, wear something warm when dining at night. Place can get quite chilly

Perhaps the best ideas are the simplest ones. What used to be a plain old  boring lot that would house an occasional restaurant of sorts is now a fully operational 5 restaurant food community.

the food map to this wonderful food place

Located at Romulo Drive, Barangay Lualhati (right across Wright Park-the horseback riding place), this place is open Mondays-Sundays, from 10 am to 10 pm.

Ketchup consists of five locally owned food establishments that offer Indo-Malay, Filipino, Thai, Asian-Fusion and American cuisine.

checking out the food at Rumah Sate

The fun part is that in this community, you can order food from any of the other establishments even if you're inside another.

The outdoor dining concept may get chilly on the cold months, but the nice ambiance and resonably priced fab food makes up for the cold.

grilled meat from El Rancho, fried rice from Happy Tummy as well their Crispy Catsifh and Mango Salad made us all smile :P

Located between these restaurants is a central open space for small casual events, outdoor parties and mini-concerts, that gives you that spacious appeal even though there are now a lot of patrons to the place.

the spicy squid was wonderful too (rectangle plate)

 Opened in March of this year, this foodie place is one of the popular places to eat with friends or family.

spicy hot kebabs from Rumah Sate! Ala carte or by the stick..it's all good

Our faves include the Thai Fried Rice and the Crabmeat Rice at Happy Tummy (150 PHP an good for 4 healthy eaters).

crabmeat rice

thai fried rice

 Then there are those real spicy kebabs, prawns and laksa from Rumah Sate:

gotta use the dip or the prawns can be a bit bland

authentic flavors. try the laksa

And some other stuff like seafood lomi (one huge bowl can feed six as a side dish) for 150:

thick, rich and sea food laden, this lomi is the bomb!

We've also tried the grilled dishes at El Rancho. Hopefully, we could try Canto's and Green Pepper's offerings the next time we drop by the place.

tender, juicy and spicy. looved the crispy anchovies too

A great place to be at, no complaints about the food and well the crowd is pretty decent. You gotta love Ketchup!

the laid back, casual ambiance makes it perfect for famil night

 From TMW, may all your wanderings be better than ours!

very satisfied customers

Before You Head On Out For An Overseas Trip: The Bank Thing

it's only fun when you have access to your money :p

For us, traveling out of the country is always a new experience whether we've been in that country before or not.

As with all the travel tips, one must have cash on hand (of the country's currency), maybe a change of clothes in your hand carry just in case your luggage is delayed, or worst, lost or misplaced, and activating your phone's roaming features is always a good idea, just in case you encounter an emergency.

More often than not, we don't bring foreign currency, and just retain whatever Philippine Pesos we have in our pockets.

We've always had great faith in the banking system, and we feel that we get better rates when we just withdraw cash from an ATM, using our Philippine bank cards. I mean sure, you get charged around 150-200 pesos for every transaction, but the way we see it, you can withdraw all the cash you'd need on that trip and just budget from there to avoid more bank charges.

Unfortunately for us, on a second trip to Macau and nth trip to Hongkong, this didn't work. We tried desperately to withdraw from an X amount of ATMs in and out of the Hotel. We got Zip. Nada. Nothing.

It was a good thing that the trusty old credit card was available for most of our needs. We had our pesos converted to the local currency (Phil's cash for Patacas and mine for HK $). It was sort of a nightmare when you were budgeting your cash just in case something comes up (an extra cab ride, establishments that only take cash, etc.).

Not having cash in a foreign land is just too uncomfortable and well, a tad scary. And that fact that our last oversea trip a few months back (around April), happened without a hitch, as opposed to this September trip of ours, was quite baffling.

Upon returning to the Philippines, I called our bank and found out the reason for this bank mishap. Apparently, the Central Bank of the Philippines has issued an order for all banks to require registration of accounts that have access to international banking. Our initial access was stripped without our knowledge (our banks didn't even inform us, even when we were applying for our Chinese Visas and getting bank certificates and other requirements from them).

I had our accounts activated for international transactions immediately so as not to repeat what had happened to us in the Macau-Hongkong trip.

Thought you guys should know, if you haven't been informed of this yet.

From TMW, may all your wanderings be better than ours!