Travel Dust

Since I just had a fair share of Mount Pinatubo posts, this one can cap it off. Or not.

The Mount Pinatubo trip would always be known to me as the 4 Guys with 3 giant siopaos (Hokkien for steamed buns). Technically, there were 3 guys and 1 girl lady (me). But, according to many, I eat like a guy so that makes it 4 guys. Now you will ask what is a giant siopao? It’s my term for the super extra large siopao sold only at two shops in Binondo. It’s prolly 8 inches in diameter. For a steamed bun, that’s huge! That’s like a personal pan pizza! On a hike on a hot day for four people who barely had breakfast, 3 giant siopaos are not enough.

Why did we only have 3 siopaos? Well, the day before our trip I bought 4 pieces of the siopao I’ve been raving about (recently discovered it then). The guy at the store asked me, “Frozen or steamed?” I said frozen because it’ll get soggy if it’s going to be consumed the next day. On the day of our trip, I think I woke up late…Ok, I woke up late and started steaming the buns in the rice cooker. Since they were huge I only got to fit 1 bun at a time. I also have a vague memory of attempting to steam a bun using our stove. Since they told me they were picking me up at 4am, I remember trying to rush the buns and squeezed two buns in the rice cooker. Fortunately, the boys guys were late. Over an hour late. But not late enough since I only got to fully steam 3 buns. The other bun was prolly around 80% frozen. I was thinking of whether to bring it or not. Obviously, I left it behind.

We were also supposed to stop at a Jollibee to buy our lunch but when we were at the gas station on the freeway (FREEWAY aka NLEX lol!), the Jollibee was either still closed or someone suggested to buy later - or both? Point is, we forgot to buy our lunch. So we just had 3 giant siopaos or 6 half siopaos and a bar or two of chocolate…for the whole day! But someone ate a whole siopao. While on the boat, he was like:

Daryl, is there still siopao? Can I have the other half? Is anyone else going to eat the siopao?

God, we were hungry. And burnt. I don’t know how we managed to hike up and down that volcano and even swim in it with just that amount of food, but we did. I even remember thinking when I was in the small boat as we were being paddled to the other side of the crater that I should’ve brought the other siopao. It would’ve thawed and cooked in the heat. I would’ve prolly ate it even if it wasn’t steamed. But too late for that.

Since we were already hungry bears we fought it out and ate dinner along the freeway on our way home, which was about an hour or more from Mount Pinatubo. Fast food never tasted so good to me at that point. haha.

edit: Maybe it’s better to call this trip 4 Hungry Hikers?