Advertisement
Published: December 28th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Jeepney Load
Don't have a pic of the trikes loaded up yet - but Jeepneys work in the same fashion Christmas Day – the drive to Guinobatan, Bicol. It would be trite to say that the driving in Manila/Philippines is chaotic – and not really news to anyone I suspect, but there seems to be some sort of order in all this chaos. The tooting of horns and flashing of lights actually appears to be a form of communication here, rather than just another way of flipping the bird to another driver or expressing disgust. I'm actually surprise at the lack of evidence of accidents here. You simply don't see too many cars with dings or scrapes and there are time when cars pass each other in opposing directions with millimetres either side clearance. Lane discipline is also out the window and yet no-one seems to get upset when someone 'looks like' they're pushing in.
Road markings are similar to that in Oz, but from what I observed – the meanings are somewhat different. Dotted line up the centre to split the road in driving direction. Single dotted line on your side of the dotted line seems to mean – do not cross unless you need to get around a slower moving vehicle. Double solid line with dotted line
Local Chippy
This place sells hand made furniture - on the left: raw materials, on the right the finished product up the centre seems to mean do not cross under any conditions. . . . . .unless of course you want/need to.
We departed Taal at about 10:15am and drove the 470 km to Guinobatan in 10hrs 30min. Except for a short stretch of toll-way road, the bulk of the drive was on the equivalent to C designated roads in Oz. The difference being that all along the way there's townships/villages with homes and retail outlets on the road with very little space (about that of a standard footpath I guess) between the building and edge of the road. In this space you have pedestrians going about their business and children as young as 2-3 yo playing and yet where the road was clear – we'd be scooting along at up to 80 kph (a speed we very seldom exceeded). You'd even see a fully laden bus ahead doing similar speeds.
A final observation is on the Tricycles – a feature of the roads as ubiquitous as the Jeepney. These things might look small and piddling . . . . but the truth is – they are ( I saw a full bus going up a hill overtake
Traffic control
On the way to Bicol there's a road called zig zag road. This is akin to the road from Boronia to Olinda up the hill or the road into Lorne from Anglesea. Every corner has a guy/woman/child waving a flag/rag to show it's all clear around the bend. At night they carry lanterns/torches - all for alms they might rcve from passing motorists one of these things that only had it's driver on board and yet I saw one of these things with 9 people on board. Four people in the passenger car (big enough to fit two Aussies tops), two behind the driver on the bike, one child between his arms in front, one on the baggage rack behind the passengers and one on the roof of the passenger cart.
Oooooo oooo – one more thing – the buses that run from Manila to Bicol are not like the bone rattlers that took u s from the airport to Boracay back in 2000, these are modern sophisticated liners – air con et al – some even offer WIFI on board. If you want to see the local colour – forget the plane – take one of these buses.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.126s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 9; qc: 60; dbt: 0.064s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
David Macqueen
non-member comment
Hi from back at work
I am really enjoying your trip John. Your good at this! David