Leo's Leisure park

(Okay I should've blogged about this is 4 months ago but it's only until recently that I got the pictures from Marc. I was determined to blog about this though so here it is, 4 months late...)

Last July 22, I went to Leo’s Leisure Park with about half a dozen ex-colleagues. It is in not-too-far-away Angeles, Pampanga (about hmm 2 hours from Makati) and it in fact would’ve been a lot easier to find if it weren’t for the near-obscure kilometer signs on the road (we should’ve turned left after KM79 along Macarthur highway but none of us in the car saw the sign so we ended up taking a long detour).

Meann learned about this place from some TV show that she couldn’t recall. Leo’s Leisure Park was okay, but if you do decide to go here, make sure you have great company and you bring a lot of stuff to entertain yourselves with because at night, there’s really nothing to do except sing in the Karaoke bar (which unfortunately we didn’t do =)).

We got there around lunchtime and had a pretty good meal before heading out to the pool. We decided to play a couple of games with a kiddie beach ball that we “borrowed” from one of the families who were there with us. I say “borrowed” because it was just lying around the pool and no one really got it from us when we were using it. Initially, we split in two – the 30-and-up group consisting of me, Daniel, and Lucasz and the 20-somethings with Meann, Marc, Tin, and JB. The object of the first game was to keep the ball in your team for as long as you can (if the other team manages to get a hand on the ball, they gain possession).

The oldies dominated this game so we decided to change games and switch up teams. I was now teamed up with Daniel, Meann, and Tin while Lucasz, JB, and Marc were grouped together. The object of the new game was to get the ball to the goal (teams had goals on opposite sides of the pool) but there’s a catch: the person holding the ball cannot move from his or her place – they have to pass the ball to a teammate within 5 seconds of getting the ball. My team won decisively, but I have to say it was incredibly tiring! Still, it was loads of fun. We then ended up “winding down” by playing volleyball and trying to keep the ball in the air as long as we possibly could.

We decided to have dinner outside the premises. We spotted a Chinese restaurant along the road on our way to Leo’s, and I suggested that we could have our dinner there so we did. I can’t recall the name of the place, but the price was decent and the food was good. Suffice it to say, we all stuffed ourselves, which isn’t surprising considering all the energy we spent earlier that day.

After dinner, we walked over to the café right next to the resto. It was called Mom and Tina’s bakery café. It had a really nice warm country kitchen feel to it, from the selection of food to the décor. I had brewed coffee (2 cups actually) and a Mango walnut torte, which is essentially mango refrigerator cake (or mango icebox), and it was really good!
The food was so delicious and the ambience so inviting that we ended up having lunch there the next day (or breakfast – we got up close to noon and so it was our first meal of the ay). And everyone seemed pleased with the food they ordered. I ordered Shepherd’s pie (pictured below), and when Meann and Daniel had a taste of it, they liked it so much they decided to order one for themselves and share it. The bread that came with it was really good too. Meann asked them if they had another branch, and to my surprise they said they had a branch somewhere in Libis. So all I need to do is find it and then I can bring my friends there.

Anyway, going back to the Leisure Park experience, the night was spent playing Taboo and 1-2-3-pass. Seems that with this set of people, I am the Taboo king – during Richie’s despedida, I didn’t lose any game of Taboo and here I had the least number of losses of anyone (I lost just once; teams were constantly shuffled to make sure things were more or less even). 1-2-3-pass was a lot of fun too (as it always is).

All in all a great weekend. Would I recommend Leo’s Leisure Park? Probably not – I would suggest other places to go for the same price, unless I guess you want something different. However, they are still in the process of developing it so maybe a year or so from now it’ll be a much cooler place to hang out in.

I would, however, really recommend Mom and Tina’s bakery café. They really do have a wide selection of good food, and the ambience really makes you want to chill there. If I find out where it is in the Libis area, maybe I will blog about it again.