Shopping At Greenbelt And Glorietta In Ayala Center

I shopped at Robinsons Place Manila near the hotel where I stayed on my first day in Manila City. That, to me, was a pretty average shopping mall. I was eager to visit other malls in Manila and discover the reason behind Filipinos' obsession with shopping malls!

After I left the Manila American Cemetery And Memorial in Fort Bonifacio, I asked my taxi driver to drive me to Alaya Center in Makati City.



Ayala Center is a commercial complex operated by Ayala Land Incorporated located in the central business district of Makati in Metro Manila. It houses several shopping malls, hotels and high class apartments.

You might want to have a look at the map of Ayala Center HERE.

My main aim was without question, to visit all those shopping malls there! First I visited Greenbelt.



This very famous shopping mall is actually made of up five different buildings which are all connected to each other. They are named Greenbelt 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5!

Below is a picture of Greenbelt 5.



I saw a giant watch outside Greenbelt 5. Nice!



By the way, each time I enter a shopping mall here, I had to go through security checks. It was rather tiring. I actually lost count the number of times my backpack was being opened and checked that day! Probably a dozen times?

Being a first timer to Greenbelt, I was a little lost and had to rely on the signboard for directions. At times, I was not sure whether I was in Greenbelt 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5!



I think this fountain of water is in Greenbelt 3.



And this big open space below is in front of Greenbelt 3.



I snapped this photo of a relaxing looking restaurant. Not sure which Greenbelt Mall this is!



I can tell you that Greenbelt 4 (if not mistaken) has some of the world's high-end boutiques like Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo, Burberry, Prada, Bulgari and Gucci. None of which I even thought of buying! Haha!

The rest of the Greenbelt buildings feature the normal international brands you can most likely find in most established shopping malls. Brands like Topshop, Calvin Klein, Levi's, Diesel, Marks & Spencer and so forth.

Opposite Greenbelt, I could see a high class apartment building called The Residences.



This building has 3 towers. Must be for the rich and wealthy!



After completing my tour of Greenbelt, I crossed the bridge to go to another mall opposite the road. This mall is called The Landmark.



I took this photo of Makati Avenue road as I walked on the bridge.



From this angle, you can see The Link building (in green) and behind it, the Makati Shangri-la Hotel.



The Landmark was a pretty average shopping mall to me. Not as high class as Greenbelt and definitely more friendly to your pocket.

Opposite The Landmark is The Link (aka Anson's Building). I am not sure what is in this building though, as I did not check it out.



Instead, I continued walking further up the road. On the right side is Glorietta Malls, owned by the same company that owns Greenbelt.



Just like Greenbelt, Glorietta is made up of 5 buildings namely Glorietta 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. All the five buildings are connected to each other.

The photo below shows Glorietta 4.



I could not remember which Glorietta building I saw this on the wall. It was quite interesting!



It was already past 2pm and I was starting to get hungry. I decided to look for a place to eat. I saw this restaurant called Spaghetti Factory in Glorietta 5 and decided to go there for lunch.



I had this delicious creme of pumpkin (119 peso/RM8.30)



And this Spaghetti Bolognaise (179 peso/RM12.50) which was just OK to me.



The restaurant was located on the 2nd floor I think, and I was sitting at the balcony. So I took a picture of Glorietta Park below and the Glorietta 4 building opposite.



I was really full after that lunch but I knew all the walking and shopping in the next few hours would definitely help with the digestion!

I bought a few T-shirts and souvenirs at Glorietta. After that, I proceeded to SM Mall which is located opposite Glorietta 1.



SM which stands for ShoeMart, is part of the SM chain of malls owned by Chinese Filipino Henry Sy, who also owns Banco de Oro (BDO), one of the largest banks in the Philippines.

This SM Makati branch contains a SM Supermarket, SM Food Court, Toy Kingdom, Ace Hardware, Watsons, and restaurants.

Opposite SM Makati is another mall called Square Park but I did not enter it. That's simply too many shopping malls in one day for me!

Oh, I saw Dusit Thani Hotel opposite Square Park! I still remember how much I love staying in Dusit Thani Bangkok! I wonder if this Dusit Thani in Makati is just as good!



I had enough of shopping and wanted to see the rest of the area before it gets dark. I knew I would not be returning to Makati in the remaining days of my Manila trip, so I had better explore whatever there is left to explore!

Walking along the busy main road Ayala Avenue, I saw the Manila Peninsula Hotel.



It was across Ayala Avenue on the other side, just directly opposite Makati Shangri-la. What a nice building! I love it! I hope to stay there one day! Haha!



Walking further along Ayala Avenue, I soon reached the Philippine Stock Exchange Building. It was on the other side of Ayala Avenue and I had to cross over using the underground tunnel.



I also visited the Ayala Triangle Park nearby. It was nice to walk in this park - a good place to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.



This is a very impressive structure next to the Philippines Stock Exchange building.



I wanted to take more photos of this area but was forbidden to do so by a security guard there. He told me that it was not proper to take photos of the citizens of the country. I was like, what? OK, if you say so. Whatever!



I was so tired after all the walking and shopping I wanted to head back to my hotel straight away. Unfortunately, it was peak hour period and all the roads were jammed up. Even the queues at the taxi stand were long enough to discourage me from queuing up!

I ended up walking back to Greenbelt and stayed there until late. By the time I managed to get a taxi and reach my hotel, it was already 10pm. Sleeping early was important as I would be leaving for Taal Volcano the very next morning.

Shopping At Robinsons Place Manila

Manila, the capital of Philippines, is a City of Malls.

That's right! If you are in the mood to shop till you drop, Manila IS the place to be.

If you think the shopping haven is Hong Kong or Bangkok or even KL, you ain't seen nothing yet!

This must be one of the most amazing revelations I had visiting Manila last January. Just for the record, Manila is home to three of the world's ten largest malls! OK, you can say it aloud now....

Oh! My! God!!!

Oh my God indeed. Who would have thought? I wonder how come I did not know about this? What had the Philippines' Department of Tourism been doing all this while? Talking about Philippines' tourism industry, I really have some issues I would like to speak up. But let's leave that for another post, shall we?


Some of the malls I visited in Manila

With a shopping mall at almost every corner of the city, Manila is definitely a shopping paradise. Whether you are looking for bargains or high end big name brands, Manila has it all. Just like the shopping malls in Malaysia, the malls in Manila are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

And one thing I noticed was Filipinos just like to hang out at shopping malls! The malls were usually packed on weekday nights and weekends. Indeed, shopping malls are like second homes to most Filipinos! Truth be told, a lot of Malaysians also like to hang out at shopping malls so both our cultures are not that different really! Haha.

On my first day in Manila City, I visited a shopping mall which was very close to Lotus Garden Hotel where I stayed. The mall I am talking about is Robinsons Place Manila.


Photo courtesy of mardsea

Located between Padre Faura Street and Pedro Gill Street, and fronting Adriatico Street, Robinsons Place Manila was originally built in the 1980's but was later redeveloped into a 7-level shopping complex complete with internationally known shops, dining outlets, entertainment facilities and service centres.



If you had read my previous posts, you would know that I did not sleep well the night before I left for Manila. And after traveling for more than 3 hours by plane and close to 2 hours from Clark Airport to Manila by bus, I was dead tired!

In fact, I was so tired and sleepy that right after checking into my hotel, I went to bed and slept! Well, the sleep did me a lot of good for when I woke up almost two hours later at 4.30pm, I was refreshed and all ready to explore the city!

Since it was already evening, I decided to visit a famous landmark nearest to my hotel. That famous landmark happened to be Robinsons Place Manila.



When I entered the shopping mall, I was quite surprised to see a security guard at the entrance checking on every visitor's bag. I was carrying a backpack and I was asked to open it for inspection.

I found out later that every single entrance into the mall was manned by a security guard. In fact, entering and exiting the mall was done through two separate doors next to each other. You cannot use the entrance door to exit the mall and vice versa.

It was days later before I discovered that in fact, every single mall in Manila follows this security system! Wow! Security guards must be in high demand in Manila! Imagine the number of guards needed to man every single entrance and exit points!

Although the security was good and made me feel a bit safer, I also felt quite hassled having to go through the checks each time I enter a mall!


Fountain at Robinsons Place

So how did I find Robinsons Place? Honestly, it was just like any other average mall to me. Oh, it has Robinsons Department Store and Robinsons Supermarket as the main anchors but you can also find other famous shops like Toys R Us, Top Man, The Body Shop, Hush Puppies to name a few - just like in any other shopping malls.



I noticed they have Fitness First gym there too. I could have gone in and do some workout as I am a Fitness First member, but really, there are much better things to do during travel than working out, right?

I was on the upper floors looking down when I caught sight of this stall below.



Now what do you think they were cooking? What kind of food was the man in yellow shirt preparing? I wanted to go down to take a closer look and perhaps buy one to taste when I got distracted by other things and forgot all about it!

If you are a Filipino reading this, can you please tell me what is that food this stall is selling? Thank you!

There is one thing I found in most of the shopping malls in Manila that I can never find in Malaysia, and that is Bingo gaming outlets!



I was quite surprised to see this outlet called Bingo Palace. It was like a hall where everyone was playing the Bingo game! I guess Filipinos must like playing Bingo very much as most of the shopping malls in Manila have these outlets! If you like Bingo, then I can safely say that Manila is your kind of city!



Of course like any other large shopping complexes, Robinsons Place also has an indoor theme park, a bowling centre and State-of-the-art cinemas.



I don't really like shopping actually, but it was interesting to see how the shopping malls in Manila look like. I ended up buying a couple of T shirts and that's about it.

If you are the type of person who really love shopping and can buy anything from the lowest to the high-end luxury brand like Louis Vuitton, then perhaps the shopping malls in the Makati District of Manila will suit you more. Believe it or not, I ended spending almost a whole day there, losing myself in the maze of multiple shopping malls which were all connected to each other!

That would of course, be another story in a future post!

Coming Up Next : My Very First Jollibee Burger!

Showroom Shopping and Hopping

A couple of rainy days in NYC forced me to stick with inside activities, but I can’t complain when visiting Zang Toi’s and Brioni’s showrooms were involved.

Brioni's showroom

Zang’s Fall 2010 Collection is exquisite and he was more than happy to serve Wendy Brandes and me tea and let us “go to town” trying on all kinds of amazing dresses. We were seriously like kids in a candy store – a very sophisticated and expensive candy store.

a look from Zang's fall 2010 collection

Jewelry diva WendyB had to see Zang for a fitting on a sexy little chartreuse number with black sequins and tassels. After the adjustments were made, we started pulling pieces off the racks and squeezing ourselves into the built-in corset gowns. Toi’s dresses are so feminine and flattering; they make you feel instantly gorgeous.

suede skirt with latticework overlay - I decided to forgo the fox!

Toi has such a great eye for how to make pretty clothes. He knows exactly how to make his clients (whatever size) look good. One of my favorite pieces in the collection was a black and iris color, simple sheath dress that has the most beautiful shape. The fabric is actually made with a gradual transition in color from black to iris, thus creating a wide stripe effect. Toi cleverly and strategically placed the wide black band across the midsection. Thoughtful design ideas like this separate Zang Toi from others.

a look from Zang Toi's fall 2010 collection

Toi repeated the concept of the band across the waist in an iris color silk floor length gown with tiny black sequins and round beads applied to the center portion of the dress. Stunning. Zang certainly is the king of evening glamour and his gowns are favorites on the red carpet, but the brilliant designer can also do ready-to-wear as good as anyone. His luxurious ¾ sleeve peacoat and cute little black mini with his elaborate embroidered logo give Michael Kors something to worry about.

model from Zang Toi's fall 2010 collection (left) and glamorous WendyB in the same piece (right)

The following day, Wendy and I headed to Rockefeller Center to meet with Heather Shimokawa and Kristin Isham at Brioni. Again, I found myself drooling, wanting, longing. I have always loved the sexy sophistication that Brioni oozes and being able to go through each piece in the collection was heaven.

Kristin (Director of Sales) and Heather (Director of P.R.)

me in a tight fitting Brioni sample

Brioni has a reputation for quality, both in fabric and make. Seeing the clothes up close, being able to examine every stitch and every detail was really a treat. Obviously, Brioni makes a perfectly tailored jacket, but their body conscious dresses are flying off the racks – like the sleek, pencil skirty tank dress in black leather. So sexy it’s a crime. As a designer myself, I can’t help but notice the little details like the leather covered shoulder pads perfectly placed and neatly hidden below the wide shoulder straps of the tank dress.

Brioni leather dress

The luxurious fabrics and the attention to detail really make Brioni special. Pick stitching accents the complex seaming of a dress, deconstructed jackets never look messy, raw edges still look clean with very narrow rows of double stitching along the edges, linings have “Brioni” in jacquard across the back, mink fully lines an anorak, sweater yarns are so light and soft that you’d want to sleep in them and double-faced cashmere provides its own lining with the contrasting color on the back of the goods.

Brioni jacquard lined jacket (top) and double-faced wool unlined jacket (bottom)

Heather was so incredibly sweet (and she made me a dee-lish espresso). She walked us through the line and let us try on the showroom samples and snap pictures like two spoiled brats. She didn’t even mind when I pretended to be an elephant with their 6 ft. long, grey suede “scrunch gloves!” Yes, on top of all the beautiful clothes, Brioni has some insane (in a good way) gloves that would make any outfit look incredible. I tried on several pairs including the Mongolian fur gloves and the ultra long gloves that are meant to be scrunched up the entire arm. They may not be the quickest or easiest accessory to put on, but they look amazing!!

Brioni Mongolian fur gloves (left) and grey suede "scrunch" gloves (right)

 

What a great couple of days in NYC. What an incredible city in which I live!!