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Pat and I are the kind of people who get a huge kick out of eating at hole-in-the-wall carinderias and hanging out at Starbucks without purchasing a single coffee bean. To celebrate our two-year anniversary, we decided to take a break from our simple lifestyle and go all-out on a buffet dinner at the Paseo Uno restaurant in the Mandarin Hotel.

Despite the fact that we were eating at a fancy-schmancy place, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to act like bored, snobby socialites. Then again, just because poeple are in someplace new, that doesn’t mean they can’t act as themselves. So although we were more or less messing around with each other like we normally do, we had to restrain ourselves from cracking jokes at the expense of the foreigners eating at the restaurant. They probably have all the money in the world to sue our asses if we offend them.

The food was just as fantastic as we remembered it. However, the second highlight of the evening (the first is being with Pat, of course) was not the food (orgasmic as it was), but seeing a mama-san in action at the lobby of the hotel. For those who don’t know, a mama-san is a female pimp. I think. Anyway, the mama-san we saw was this plump, middle-aged woman dressed really casually. We figured that she was one because every time we went out to go to the bathroom, she’d be talking to different girls who looked like they were prostitutes. Once, we rode with the mama-san and two prostitutes in the elevator, and we overheard the mama-san interviewing the girls, asking for their names and so on. We couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation because the restroom was on the second floor and they were going to the 17th–which is where the hotel rooms are.

In spite of the fact that I despise whores and women who sleep around, they really, really fascinate me. Prostitutes, especially. I was half-tempted to strike up a conversation with the mama-san, but I’m not the kind of person who can chat up random strangers. So I didn’t. I really want to learn the workings of the sex trade industry in the Philippines though, just out of sheer curiousity. Perhaps I’ll do a qualitative study on that someday.

We planned on eating at the buffet until it closed at 11 but by 9 we were so full, we didn’t even have any room left for coffee. Paseo Uno was starting to empty out; the diners were leaving, and even mama-san was nowhere to be found. Full from hotel food and defeated by the buffet, we decided it was time to head home. So the night was definitely over, but I think Pat and I still have a long way to go.

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