Temple visit

 So we wanted to go the Temple and sadly there is not a Temple in Darwin. Currently in Australia there are 5 Temples in: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.  Now believe it or not, we discovered it was cheaper to fly outside of Auz than to any those previously mentioned cities.  Qantas airlines - you bandits!
A little Australian trivia: what does QANTAS stand for?
Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services -- founded in 1920. The oldest continuously operated airline in the world and the second oldest in the world overall. Nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo".
Anyway, back to our dilemma. After a bit of research, we packed, grabbed our passports and boarded a plane in Darwin at 3 AM for 4 days in Manilla Philippines! 
Manila has a total population of 1,652,171 according to the 2010 census.^[2] Manila is the second most populous city in the Philippines, behind its neighbor, Quezon City. The populace inhabit an area of only 38.55 square kilometers, making Manila the most densely populated city in the world.
The earliest written account of the city is the 10th-century Laguna Copperplate Inscription which describes a context of an Indianised kingdom maintaining diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Medang. The city was invaded by Brunei's Sultan Bolkiah and was already Islamized by the 15th century when the Spanish explorers first arrived. Manila eventually became the center of Spanish activity in the Far East and one end of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade route linking Latin America and Asia. The city would eventually be given the moniker of the "Pearl of the Orient," as a result of its central location in the vital Pacific sea trade routes. Several Chinese insurrections, local revolts, a British Occupation and a Sepoy mutiny also occurred shortly thereafter. Manila also saw the rise of the Philippine Revolution which was followed by the arrival of the Americans who made contributions to the city's urban planning and development only to have most of those improvements lost in the devastation of World War II. Since then the city has been rebuilt.
(thank you again, Wikipedia)
I have never been in the Orient and was pleasantly surprised to find almost everyone spoke English in this HUGE city. Thank you American occupation!  
Now before we get started, you might be wondering, what about the Woodward travel curse?  Is it still around? Does it follow them aboard?  Silly questions!!!  We managed to arrive just as the edge of  Typhoon Helen was hitting Manilla.  So it was raining, of course!  Our first purchase might have been umbrellas.  Pretty sure. 
Our first day we took a city tour which included: The American Cemetery, which has 17,000 graves; the largest in the Pacific for US personal killed in World War 2. I think it might be the largest outside the United States.

Fort Sanitago, the oldest fortification in Manilla built in 1571. 

Church of Saint Agustin completed in 1607. 

and of course we went to  the beautiful Temple in nearby Quezon City; which was a 45 minute drive from our hotel in Makati. After our session, we realized we were somewhat stranded.  A member was very kind to give us a ride to a nearby Mall where we could more easily catch a taxi.  Several lessons learned.  

The weather was not cooperating (what else is new?!) so we spent an afternoon souvenir shopping in the 2nd biggest Mall, Glorietta; it was HUGE!!!!  5 different buildings!

remember we bought Roy a swimsuit last month? I just couldn't pass up this picture! 

One of the unique things about Manilla are the Jeepneys.  They are used as mini buses and all are decorated differently; it was very fun to see the variety and creativity. 

Everyone we met during our stay in the Philippines were very friendly and helpful.  It is a poor country; the average weekly wage is $US10. To us, prices seemed very reasonable on most things; gasoline was very expensive though: $US6/gallon. A yummy Filipino dinner was $US27.  Love those little spring rolls! My catfish dinner was the whole fish!  About 10" long with little slashes along the side - very tasty!  
There had been horrible flooding before we got there, although we didn't see it, but we were not near the river either.  We saw some
overcrowding and glimpses of poverty; enough to know that we need to start contributing to the Humanitarian Fund.  We are so blessed.
Of course we found McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway and even a Dairy Queen!  
Security was very tight around the nice motels and big Malls; guards with machine guns and bomb sniffing dogs. 
Traffic was a nightmare! Twice as many cars as the roads were designed for and if that weren't bad enough, add a zillion small motorbikes zipping around and between the cars. Lines on the road don't mean much to the drivers but amazingly nobody gets upset.  It's just a part of life there.
Something that boggled my mind: we took a taxi to a Post Office for some international postcard stamps.  I was very nervous when I only paid  ~US$.14/stamp but our kids got the cards.  Then it occurred to me that in this overcrowded city with all the haphazard housing so how to assign addresses? I very much doubt mail is delivered house to house.  Businesses maybe.  We privileged Americans take so much for granted:  mail delivery to our individual houses just for a start.