Filipinos seem to love their Fast Food

I have never seen so many fast food outlets in one single place in my entire life. Megamall, one of many shopping centres, boasts a huge array of fast food outlets. Yes it certainly lives up to its name - it is massive - yet it can’t be more than about 2 ½ times the size of Chadstone shopping centre, and it definitely has more than 2½ times as many fast food outlets.

The following is but a small sample of what I saw at Megamall, and by no means extensive: McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Donut King, Krispy Kreme, Mrs Fields, Wendys, Jollibee, Greenwich, Gonuts Donuts, BreadTalk. I can’t keep going because I don’t even remember the names of half the stores.

Do humour me and allow me add to the picture being painted:

• A number of stores had more than one outlet – I saw two outlets for McDonalds, KFC, Krispy Kreme, Pizza Hut, Donut King, a store that sells Brownies… and three Jollibees!! Jollibee seems to be the premier fast food joint in Manila, as opposed to the traditional McDonalds in most countries.
  

• Not only were there multiple stores for many fast food outlets, the stores themselves boasted a floor space of double, sometimes triple that of the average clothing store. And they were always filled with people.

• It seemed to me that 50% of Megamall's occupancy was food stores, of which 50% or more were fast food.
  

• There was a vast array of non-franchise fast food stores too, including at least half a dozen different donut stores, multiple bakeries (Asian bakeries often stock a lot of sweet breads and are more like fast food than what you might find at a bakery in Australia), brownie shops, ice cream vendours, bubble milk tea, “fruit juice” stores, fried chicken, all-you-can-eat buffets, Mexican food, pizza stores… the list just goes on.

• Even James thought there was a huge amount of fast food on offer - if that isn't telling you something, then I don't know what will!
  

• There seemed to be deep fried versions of just about any food you could possibly name.

The thingis - they're all so little.... where does all that food go?