The Philippines Baby

We have arrive - yet with a few humps and bumps...

When we arrived at the airport in Saigon-Vietnam at 12pm ready to start our Philippino experience we encountered our first set-back... Our one-way ticket to Manila was not accepted and they made us decide on a return flight right there & then.. How are we supposed to know where we want to go in 3 weeks time? They also found it most normal to just swipe the credit card and pay - whats the problem?? You dont need to pay it right? So a flight to Jakarta-Indonesia it was...
Rush-rush to catch our flight to find it delayed by 1h... OK..

Then we arrived at 6am in Manila - the city still going strong in its night life - hushing around with our backpacks to find all hotels fully booked, way over-prized, still closed or just way too dodgy... So at 9am we had enough and the over-prized option it was :-S

The next 3 days consisted of running from place to place trying to organise everything that had gone wrong.. Ticket changing, Visa application for indonesia, finding better accomodation, ... but most of all - avoiding the blistering heat!!!!

BUT there are some positive points: Starbucks coffee, great shopping malls and taxi's with aircon always ready to pick you up! And the long wait at the ariport got us talking to Nina - a Philippino girl - with whom we met up several times in Manila and she showed us great places to eat, introduced us to lots of local snacks and got us singing Karaokee together with her other Philippino friend - Meg.

We also met lots of other people during our 'admin' stay in Manila: Peter from Portland-USA: he sang songs for us and played on his guitar, Roebin from Mindanao who bought us lots of drinks (coke that is! ;-)), and Bjorn from Sweden who has never left Manila in the 11 years that he has lived in the Philippines....
AN INTERESTING PLACE TO SAY THE LEAST!

So on Wednesday we finally made our way out of Manila to explore the country! We took a night bus to Banaue - a tiny village in the mountains with rice terraces as far as you can see. These terraces were built 3000 years ago and they are still standing and looking as beautiful as ever! We spent 3 days there hiking through the mountains, eating in rural villages, experiencing a local wedding, and learning about Philippino habits. Our tour guide Johnson spoke great English for a change and was a pleasure to have around.

Now we are back in Manila once again to pick up our 2 month visa for Indonesia (which will be our last stop before returning home..) and on Tuesday morning we are flying to the south of the Luzon island where we will hike up Mt Mayon - a semi-active Volcano and swim with the Whalesharks which are there during the month of April. Can't wait!

SOME INTERESTING POINTS ABOUT THE PHILIPPINES/PHILIPPINOS
- They don't eat with chopsticks
- They are on average 10kg heavier than the normal Asian population
- They are very open-minded and the conservative "hello" in the previous countries has become "hello
Madam, I love you!!!"
- Western breakfast is strangely enough even less easily available than on the mainland.. Rice with egg and
sweet pork or marinated beef is the staple breakfast... but with coffee of course - its morning!
- local transport is done by Jeepney (limousine size jeep) or tricycle (motorbike with seat next to it)
- He-she's are as common as in Thailand
- MEN do all the cleaning at the hotels and most of the service in restaurants - not sure where the women
are...
- Security is HIGH in Manila - security guards literally in front of EVERY shop or building. The bigger the
building the more impressive the 'armed' security. - they do kindly ask you to 'dispose your fire arms before
entering the building'... right
- They still stare at us like we come from a different planet!

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