Fish Market Easily Raises the Bar for the Trip

Lots of pictures to share from today. We had an extremely busy day and it's only 4pm too! According to my fitbit, we've walked 9 miles so far since this morning and I've also been logging my water intake and I've had 2.5 liters of water to drink so far since it's about 92 degrees outside.

Ok so last night was really rough, I only got about 2 1/2 hrs of sleep due to jet lag and our air conditioning unit kept making loud noises every other second. So I was wide awake from 2am until I decided to get up around 6am. The hostel provided breakfast at 7 which was great and they suggested a few places to check out.

We started with a farmers market that was about a 10 minute walk from where we were staying, nothing really notable about it, a lot of halal meat, veggies, and some seafood. I felt guilty walking out empty handed so I bought a green tea popsicle.

After that we headed to the Dampa fish market. 

We got there around 9:30 and it was kind of empty after wandering around a bit so we decided to check out the Mall of Asia (MOA) which was about a mile down the road. Nothing really too special about this mall either, apparently it's the 11th largest shopping mall in the world whereas the Mall of America is ranked 20th at the moment.

Around lunchtime we decided to go back to Dampa and things got really crazy. The moment one person figured out we were looking at seafood to buy EVERYONE came at us basically like sharks.
Two guys put their arms around Alex and led him to their booth.

How this fish market works is that you pick whatever you want to buy, you MUST barter otherwise they take you for a chump, and then you choose a restaurant to cook your freshly bought seafood in any way you want it.
Alex shopped for crabs and I wanted prawns. After a while of bartering I got 1/2 kilo of prawns (11 ct.) for $4.50 and Alex got a large crab for $8. Believe me, this stuff was very fresh. I was able to snap a picture of some clams that were squirting water out of their box.

Trying to find a restaurant was as stressful as buying the seafood. One "lady" asked if we're looking for a restaurant...or a man...or a boy so that was awkward and we laughed it off. Eventually we chose the restaurant that didn't try to convince us with a 10% discount or a "lifetime guarantee, free meal if we don't enjoy it" special. We chose the right restaurant.

Alex had his crab fried with salt and pepper

I chose two methods of cooking my prawns, steamed with garlic and fried with salt and pepper.

After everything was gone, I didn't feel satisfied and I was worried we wouldn't have a chance to come back here again so I went back to the market and picked up 1kg of mussels for $1.75 and had them cooked in black bean sauce and baked with garlic and cheese.

The mussels in black bean sauce were easily the best, extremely fresh and the sauce was delicious. With the cost of seafood and paying the restaurant to cook the dishes, I think the total came out to be less than $20 for the both of us which really isn't bad.

If anyone makes it out to Manila, I would HIGHLY recommend going to the fish market and going through the crazy experience of bartering for fish and then getting yanked into people's restaurants.