HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

Yesterday was my mum's 46th birthday and instead of staying at home and just breaking out of our shell to eat out for lunch and dinner, we woke up bright and early and after a hearty breakfast, we made our way to Tagaytay! The traffic was ugh-ful at its best but we made it to Sonya's Garden in one piece hehe. 

Sonya's Garden was, for a lack of a better word, very green considering it IS a garden. We were ushered to the Morning Glory hall thingy wherein the buffet was located. All I can say about the food is that it was DIVINE. From the bread that was given to the super kick ass salad ingredients that were served to our table to the main course of very healthy pasta and salmon belly and shitake mushrooms huhu to the dessert combo which was mini turons and sweet potatoes in sugar glaze and even to the tarragon tea they served after our meal!!!!

Sweet potatoes!

Salad with the secret dressing 

Tarragon tea so herby so natural

Chocolate cake they served after our meal hihi

The birthday gal

After stuffing ourselves silly, we explored the venue and took lots of photos hehe.

This statue of a horse was outside some sort of museum slash store since the furnitures inside were for sale

 We met a very very cute and very very fat dog near the exit hihi. It was just lounging near a bench that I sat on when I noticed something very black by my feet and instead of growling at me or anything it just stood up, sauntered quietly and nuzzled my leg huhu it was so adorable and so fitting since my mum is such a huge dog lover!

After Sonya's Garden, we had nothing better to do and instead of going straight to the tallest ferris wheel in the Sky Ranch, we decided to go pay the Guiness Book of World Record title-holder, the Puzzle Mansion a quick visit.

Since the Puzzle Mansion was located way below the road, they had a jeep service thing if you're wary of going down the steep road like we were hehe 

IT WAS SO FUN RIDING THE JEEP!!! It was wobbly and the air was so cool hehehe it felt like a very mild rollercoaster :D

THERE WERE SO MANY PUZZLES!! The owner had cartoon character puzzles, Renaissance painting puzzles, P-Noy puzzles, vintage Coke ad puzzles, animal puzzles, a Vampire Diaries puzzle and so much more hehe! 

Her biggest with 18, 000 pieces if I recall correctly? She has another one in the works with a whopping 32, 000 pieces!

Such a cool 3D puzzle of a wolf woof woof

~feel

The hardest puzzle in the world! Lookit all the black parts woo, the guy said that she spent more or less 300 hours working on this beaut!

The souvenir shop upstairs overflowing with...puzzles

Downstairs, they had a ton of herbs and plants for sale as well! They also had a wishing well that I enjoyed using hehe.

We stopped by this market that we always go to whenever we'd be in Tagaytay and my sister and I fell asleep....we woke up and saw the Philippines' tallest ferris wheel in the Sky Ranch!

There was a horse riding thingamajig!

There were lots of...performers too! I added a new entry to my bucket list hehe which is to dress up like one of them in public and just do my thang hihi

The birthday girl was so reluctant to get in the cab!! I just pretended to have my big girl pants on but once the ferris wheel started moving on, I'll admit we all got a bit sweaty-palmed and nervous. It really was so high!

Kunwari di kinakabahan hahahahaa

Pops trying to look all nonchalant

Look at dat gripppppppp

 I so wanted to get on the Super Viking ride which resembles the Anchors Away one from Enchanted Kingdom but no one wanted to go with me since they're adamant it would just ruin their mood what with the dizziness and all. And after watching the ride and hearing the screams, my desire to get on the ride dwindled a bit and so in exchange for not getting on the Super Viking and after making a promise to get on a ride like that one with my friends in the fyucha, we bought tickets to get on the uber kid friendly Nessie Coaster.

SO HARDCORE HAHAHAHA

The view from the Nessie Coaster

The Nessie Coaster runs 3 times and I felt so bad ass while riding it since 1) it still is a rollercoaster no matter how tiny it is and 2) I had my hands up and did not feel scared at all huhuhu what an achievement. I seriously had fun while riding the mini rollercoaster!

After all the hubbub, we went to Nuvali to buy my mum's running shoes and to have dinner there. While walking around, we saw a guy wearing a car costume! He turned out to be Japanese and he was apparently one of the many people in car costumes advertising the F1 toy car racing they were to have later on that night over at a restaurant called Ryuma.

We walked walked walked around, my mum tried on shoes and finally settled on one pair that she deemed very nice and suited her feet very well hehe. It was night time already and we were all quite hungry but Santi's caught my eye and I just had to go inside! It was like being in heaven or close to it. There were so many healthy food inside and the amount of cheese inside was just amazing hihi. My sister bought caviar just for fun and just to try it HAHA after that, we were looking for a nice restaurant that could not be found in Manila (hipsters) but found none so we went over to another building and got a bit lost hehe.

We entered the building and upon looking up, we were met by a weird sight. The second floor looked like a children's party threw up all over it but at the same time it had touches of Japanese stuff like zen things and samurai costumes on display! So we went up and to our right was the Ryuma Restaurant wherein the racing event was to be held, over on the left side were the Ryuma Grocery and Ryuma Baby Shop and at the back was the Ryuma Grill. EVERYTHING WAS NAMED RYUMA HAHA! It felt like we stepped into the Twilight zone. 

The place was so........ODD. It seemed that they believed in the saying 'the more the merrier' because seriously there was a lot going on decoration wise! So we satisfied our hunger and our craving for trying out new things by settling down and ordering at Ryuma. When we got there, a very Hawaiian looking quartet was on stage and was really killing it; they were so good! I took a video of them but their song ended all too quickly and they disappeared. After placing our orders, I went out and explored the other Ryuma establishments. 

I must say, they were all very quirky. The grocery had a ton of Filipino products considering it was a Japanese grocery..and it was so deserted it could pass for a store during a zombie apocalypse. But the one thing that caught my eye was the liquor they had for sale that contained pieces of gold!! As in gold the expensive gold gold with the karats and all! I left the place and went to check out the baby shop. It was creepy to say the least. The lighting was dim and there were a ton of baby clothes and weird pants with lots of jewels and sequins on them. 

Lovely lovely people

RACE TRACK HAHAHAHAHA

I went back to the restaurant and got uber giddy since the quartet that I fangirl-ed a bit over was apparently roaming around per table and stopped by ours! I had them sing Pusong Bato HEHEHE and Happy Birthday for my mum and All My Life since it's my parents' theme song and for the last one I asked them sing something upbeat and something that had a kickass blending, and they did and they chose Waka Waka huhu. THEY WERE SO GOOD!!! I really enjoyed watching and listening to them and if I could, I would've had them sing for me forever hehehe.

So our food came and we ate when a waitress stopped by our table and asked us if we'd like to join the race car event. Since we had nothing better to do and we were curious, my parents signed me up HAHAHA. 

A guy who had big boobs and was donning a wig went up on stage and suddenly the people were dancing hahahaha it was so funny!! After their performance, the contestants were announced and I thought I'd be playing against these guys who looked to be a bout 14 or so BUT NO I was playing against little girls HUHU HAHAHA. I HAVE NEVER FELT SO BIG IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!! 

I was just laughing and having such a blast throughout the entire race HAHA all I had to do was push the forward button and my car was moving all by itself already no need for the left and right buttons!

ANDDDD I WON 3RD PLACE!! HAHAHA they even had these podium thingies for our photo op!!! It was just such a surreal experience I couldn't stop laughing!! 

I brought home a medal with a car on it, an invitation to the grand championship to be held on April 21, a remote-controlled toy car... and a printed out picture of me and the other girlies onstage and it was even placed on this folder thingy with a plastic cover!!! Talk about effort!

April 13 was a very very very random day filled with a ton of new unforgettable memories! It was the perfect celebration for my mum's day. It's perfectness matched mum's perfectness hehe. I cannot ask for a more loving, more beautiful and more supportive mother hehe love you mum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 p="">

Down below is the collection of videos we shot over the course of our adventure hehehehe enjoy!!!