My company NextVIEW Sdn Bhd organized 4th ASEAN Rubber Conference (ARC) at Crowne Plaza Galleria Manila from 5th to 7th June 2008. It was the second time I involved in this conference for the conference registration. I would like to congratulate my colleagues for their hard work in making the conference success. We won the challenge once again this year. Cheers!
On 4th June 2008, I took Air Asia flight at 7.20am together with my another 7 colleagues to Manila. The flight took about 4 hours to reach Clark Airport. From Clark Airport, we took cab (Toyota Innova) for another 2 hours to reach our conference venue at Manila. The journey cost 2970 Peso, which was about RM237.60. It was a long and tiring journey!
Once we reached Crowne Plaza Galleria Manila, we took a short snap at the Business Centre which was temporary used as our conference secretariat room while waiting for the rest of my colleagues arrived. Crowne Plaza Galleria Manila is a Five Stars hotel. It was my first time to stay in a Five Stars hotel. I really appreciated the chance that my company gave me. :-P
The day before our event was a very busy day. We had to stay late night to setup the conference venue. My registration team members helped me on checking the participant name tags and the gala dinner invitation cards to make sure they were prepared correctly. I needed to make sure my registration system had zero error to be used for the 3 days conference registration. We were tension because we worried if any minor mistake happened which could affect the conference process. Anyway, we finally made it a successful event. Cheers for all! (Please visit our event website to view the photos taken during the event: http://www.aseanrubberconference.com/2008/photo_gallery.php)
After finishing the event, we were invited by our Co-Organizer chairman's assistant for a dinner. We called him Dandy. He is a very nice 'father' to us. He brought us to one of their famous shopping mall known as Greenhills Mall (http://www.greenhills.com.ph/) for dinner. The restaurant that we went was Gerry's Grill (http://www.gerrysgrill.com/ph/main.php?go=branch&show=greenhills). As being told by my colleague, Philippines has no halal food. Pork is their favorite dish and mango shake is their well-known drink. After the dinner, Dandy brought us to the only donuts shop in Manila called Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. He asked us to choose our favorite donuts to bring back to the hotel. What a kind man!
On sunday which was our last day in Manila, my company arranged a city tour for us to travel around the Manila city as our flight to back to Kuala Lumpur was at night. The city tour was arranged by our event's Official Tour Partner, Happy Travel & Tours Corporation. I couldn't remember much the places that we had been brought around during the city tour. :p I could only remember that we dropped by Mananzan Handicrafts shop in front of Fort Santiago to buy some handicrafts and souvenirs. Then we dropped by Tutuban Mall which is a bargain shopping centre. On the way to Tutuban Mall, we passed thru the China Town and the tour guide told us that most of the chinese in China Town doesn't have a home. They sleep at the roadside anywhere. What a bad life to them? After that we were dropped by at Greenhills Mall to have our lunch and some shopping at the bargain baazar in the mall which is known as V-mall. Honestly, we found that the prices of the handicrafts and souvenirs selling in V-mall are much cheaper than Mananzan Handicrafts shop.
After finishing shopping at Greenhills Mall, we took cab to go back to our hotel. Due to our checkout time was extended to 5pm, we had additional time to shop at the Robinson's Galleria next to my hotel. There, we found their local famous pearl products (necklace, earrings, etc) which are cheap and nice. We bought our dinner at Jollibee, the most famous fast food restaurant in Philippines. I bought 5 chicken burgers and 5 sausage burgers, it cost Php400 (which is about RM32) with a free beef burger and a free ice-cream. Cheap, isn't it? :p
We departed to the Manila International Airport from our hotel at 5pm with 3 free hotel van transfers as we had 18 persons of us. We took Cebu Pacific airlines at 8.55pm to go back to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed for an hour. OMG! We reached KL after 1am and I reached home after 2am. The next day I took leave to rest at home.
