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The day started at around 7:30am where we assembled at Ricci's townhouse at Green Meadows where he fed us breakfast before we took off (Thanks Ricci!). The party consisted of ChitoF, Keith, Allan, Carlo, Ricci and myself. JR came by briefly to ... come to think of it, I don't know why he dropped by, when he had no intention of joining the trip, but nonetheless, thanks for joining us for breakfast JR!

We, except for JR, all piled into Keith's Starex van and drove off towards Manila. This place is on Tomas Mapua St. in Tayuman, Manila. On a 500 meter portion of that street, both sides are lined with tire and wheel shops most of which also carry used wheels from who-knows-where. But sometimes you can find wheels there that are inherently good, albeit some of them are looking rather tired, but with a little elbow grease can look absolutely fantastic.

In this trip, Keith was looking for some OEM Miata wheels - which he found! By far one of the best sets we've come up with of the original banana style '89-'93 Miata wheels. This set was in very good, original, un-refinished condition with center caps that were still looking good.

We saw several sets of Speedline wheels of the star design, however none of them fit the Miata bolt pattern. A set of oh-so-beautiful Cromodora wheels (very strange configuration 14x6, 22 offset, 5 holes). One, sole, lonesome 15in, Speedline for Nardi wheel meant for a BMW 5 hole configuration. When I saw this wheel, I was half wishing that there be reasons not to buy them, either it was an incomplete set or they did not fit a Miata, because if per chance it did fit the Miata bolt pattern, and they were complete, I would have been almost under an obligation to buy them because they were so beautiful - fortunately they were incomplete and they don't fit the Miata (I was just tagging along on this trip). A set of modular OZ wheels for a 4x4. A set of original 17in BMW M-Sport wheels that Ricci's considering to acquire. A set of 15in BBS modular wheels that Carlo was about to buy, but when we took his Toyota Crown there later in the day, we learned after test fitting one wheel that there wasn't enough backspace in the offset to clear the suspension arms.

Our merry group of 5 went up and down that street looking into every store, and checked every nook and cranny of those stores to see if they had any rare and interesting wheels, carrying on like this for a couple of hours. At lunch we decided to head to Binondo.

There at Ongpin, we went through the streets and ogled at the various wares and fruits of the vendors who lined the sidewalks, while walking and taking pictures on our way to our destination restaurant. Looking and feeling like tourists though we were still very much within our own country.