Day 29, part II
278 signing back on. You know, I wouldn’t have included this travel day on here, but it was actually quite eventful as far as full travel days go. We departed our now infamous stay at the villa in Lucca early in the morning via several trains, headed to the Milan Malpensa Airport, and saying goodbye to our wonderful time in Europe! Our next stop - and the first stop of the Asia stretch of tour - would take place in Manila, Philippines, and we had a Turkish Airlines flight with a layover in Istanbul to get there. The layover was supposed to take place around midnight to 4 AM local time, but alas, as Dins tours usually go, we were faced with some sort of maintenance-related delay, and this layover quickly became a midnight to 6 AM layover. So we set out on an approximately 6-hour, delirious late-night stretch in the Istanbul Airport, which for those who don’t know - myself included until I walked into the place - is one of the world’s fanciest airports. There quite literally was an entire shopping mall of fancy clothing stores that were all open the entire night, and what’s more, the airport was alive and packed with people drinking coffee and shopping even during the midnight to 6 AM interval we attended. I was absolutely flabbergasted. Kavi and I considered booking ourselves into “sleeping rooms” to get a nap, but we quickly realized that this consisted not of the small room we first saw, but the sea of dystopian individual pods laid out on the floor behind it. Absolutely not. No way. I reconciled my differences with the sleeping pods by drinking coffee and going out to explore the airport. I purchased a burger from Shake Shack that cost approximately 25 euros. I can’t say it was worth it, but it was…well, it was an experience. Anyway, 6 hours in the airport blew by. It was so massive with so much to see that we filled the entire time easily by exploring. If we ever need another layover between continents, I know where I’m booking. (This or Doha, where Sean went on an individual layover as he headed to the Philippines early to see family and reported a similar phenomenon.) Some of the group opted to get some sleep in across the chairs at the gate instead during this time, which objectively was probably the right call. Anyway, by this point it was July 1, and we set out on our flight to Manila.
Day 30
Ok, I don’t have all that much to say, but in my defense most of this day was spent on the plane. I watched Moneyball twice and also didn’t eat any food because of my allergies. When we arrived in Manila, we were given a lovely welcome by Sean’s family and we tried Filipino Denny’s in the airport. We headed to our accommodations at the Seda BGC. As it turned out, we were given a VIP treatment, getting huge rooms with kitchens, living rooms, and even our own washing machines and dryers. It’s a shame that we didn’t have more time to spend relaxing in the room during our time here, but the comfort was much appreciated after a long two days of travel from Italy.
Day 31
Our morning began swiftly with an 11:00 AM performance at Makati Med, the most major hospital in Manila. It was a privilege to get to perform there, and the hospital staff gave us a lovely welcome. As we were warming up, a curious thing happened: a young fan named Niko approached us to take a photo. We were honored to do so, but when we returned from warm-ups to sing the actual performance, we were blown away by what was a HUGE turnout. The entire lobby was packed full with people, most of whom were recording parts or seemingly all of our set. Needless to say, we had a blast performing and chatting with everyone as we signed CDs afterwards; what we didn’t realize was that this would be the trend that would continue for the next several weeks. More on that later. We ate a delicious lunch at a restaurant in the city - the first foray into Filipino cuisine for many of us - and me personally, I did not die due to my nut and sesame allergies, which is in itself a win. That evening, we performed as part of a private event at the Executive House of the University of the Philippines. The President of the university invited a couple of local a cappella groups to perform, both of whom were absolutely incredible, and we had the great opportunity to chat over dinner and even sing together a bit to wrap up the evening. We returned to the hotel exhausted and went straight to bed. This was a great first adventure in the Philippines, but we were bracing ourselves for our next gig, which would take place at 4:30 AM the next day. Between this and the travel the day before, well, a lot of coffee was needed for this stretch.
Day 32
I groaned when I woke up to my 3:45 AM alarm to put on classic Dins semiformal (we were specifically asked not to wear black and white for this gig due to the reflective nature of the clothing), but it was well worth it. At a prompt 4:30 AM, two vans from GMA, a Filipino national news network, arrived to pick us up and bring us to their studio. We would be performing for a nationally broadcast morning show called Unang Hirit. Despite the early morning, this gig was a highlight of tour. It was incredibly cool to experience being in the studio and filming the show, the hosts and crew were nothing but lovely and friendly and genuinely interested in what we do, and the performance was fun and lively. We sang a brief snippet of Fly as a “teaser” before our full segment, then returned after commercials to sing Copacabana (of course) and talk with the hosts. It was an amazing morning, and thankfully, we returned to the home of Sean’s grandmother afterwards to catch a quick nap before the rest of the day’s activities. By the time we got there and had some breakfast, we only had around 15 minutes to nap. Kavi, Elio and I attempted. Only Elio succeeded. At this point, I think that the Dins had collectively lost all concept of time zones and circadian rhythm, and we had proved that you can be a functioning human being on inanely low hours of sleep if you just reeaaaally put your mind to it (and have literally no other choice). For lunch, we met with Sean’s entire extended family, who booked out a local restaurant for all of them to come eat with us and hear us sing. We enjoyed singing a casual set for them in exchange for their extreme kindness and hospitality, but the highlight of the meal came when myself, Kavi, Shannon and Kieran took a pass at balut - a Filipino delicacy that consists of, for lack of better words, a, uh, fertilized egg. I’ll spare you the details, but the entire family had to count down from 20 in unison in order to get us to finally put it in our mouths after a long time considering. Kieran and I finished ours. In terms of taste, it’s really not that bad, but I do not think I could ever do it again. Everyone was rather amused at having gotten to experience this. It will live on in this year’s lore forever, no doubt. We stopped briefly at a Filipino mall, then headed to our evening gig at at ball presented by the Harvard Business School Club of the Philippines. We fit right in at this fancy event with our tails and enjoyed an excellent dinner backstage when we weren’t singing. We bid our farewell to an excellent stop in the Philippines - the first in Dins history - and we can’t wait to return on the next tour!
Signing off,
Ben #278
