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Published: November 30th -0001
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The night buses from Banaue to Manila appealed to neither of us, so we took the daytime option of going to San Jose then changing there. The ticketing system here is interesting - the basic ticket consists of several columns containing the digits 0-9, with groups of columns variously indicating the embarkation point, destination, bus number, and price. The conductor, using a punch that's generally kept in a hip-mounted holster, then punches out holes in the appropriate boxes depending on the details of your journey. Amusingly, there's also a box containing "Thank you", which gets punched too.
The journey took us down from the mountains and into the hot lowlands again, though the AC on the bus to Manila was cold enough to mean that my glasses steamed up when we got out at our destination. Signs of interest along the way included one in a small town for Marvin Martin the Municipal Mayor, as well as one at the beginning of any expressway forbidding "dilapidated vehicles and smoke belchers". I also noticed many shops whose signs advertised every single service they offered, e.g. a mobile phone repair place would list "Earpiece broken", "Mouthpiece broken", "Antenna broken", "Recharging", "Interference", etc.
We stopped at a roadhouse for a toilet break just as the daily rains began. The ferocity of the downpour not only kept several of us confined to the toilet building until the torrent had abated somewhat, but the accompanying winds were so strong that they were whipping my stream all over the place as I stood at the urinal.
Our bus took us to Pasay terminal on the south side of Manila, meaning we saw a good chunk of the city as we drove through. It seemed to be a big, untidy, traffic-clogged sprawl, full of malls and with no obvious character. This certainly seemed to tally with everything we'd read about it. Manila taxi drivers also lived up to their hype - of the 4 taxis we hailed in our short stay, only 1 agreed to use the meter. The others either wanted a fixed price or a supplement to the metered fare. The irritating thing is that with the city so spread out, and public transport so apparently chaotic, taxis are the only sensible way to get around from a convenience point of view.
Accommodation in Manila was even more overpriced than our previous
places had been, but at least this time we had no complaints about the room itself. A nearby shopping mall provided a supermarket selling Milanos, though the mall as a whole contained no directory - despite being enormous - so you had to tour it on foot just to see what shops were in there.
We managed a small amount of sightseeing, taking in Intramuros, the old walled part of the city containing the cathedral and several buildings from the era of Spanish rule, as well as Rizal Park, a rare piece of urban greenery dedicated to national hero Jose Rizal, who campaigned against colonialism.
Manila's nightlife is often touted as some of Asia's best, especially in the area called Malate, but our brief visit there revealed only go go bars, karaoke joints populated by loud but tone-deaf singers, and a few restaurants with sound systems that would have been more at home in a nightclub. I visited an Internet cafe containing 2 Western guys (browsing the International Sex Guide) and a local call-girl, whose attempts at looking sexy were scuppered by her donning a pair of matronly glasses and pecking short-sightedly at the keyboard with one finger.
There was a great bit of English in the local press, describing the exit of the Philippines' basketball team from the Olympic qualifying tournament. In their words - "San Miguel-Pilipinas' quest for an Olympic appearance has been shipwrecked, its journey waylaid and left in ruins Monday by fast, heavy-set, three-point shooting behemoths from Jordan."
We decided to spend the rest of our visa period relaxing on Malapascua Island, which necessitated a flight to Cebu City. Cebu Pacific offered the best price, but their website wouldn't accept UK or US credit cards, and their offices had permanent queues outside. We were reduced to having to visit a travel agent, who not only was unable to offer a fare as low as the website had, but slapped on a PHP300 service charge too. However we made the purchase, and began looking forward to some island relaxation.
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