Welcome to the Philippines!

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Our arrival in the Philippines was preceeded by two sleep-deprived nights: the first on an overnight bus from Laos to Thailand, and the following night on the 1am flight leaving Bangkok. We still couldn't quite jolt ourselves awake when our little plane hit the tarmac of Manila airport with a decided thud. We made our way to passport control, where I was convinced that a staff member pushing an empty wheelchair was bringing it my way, concerned about my haphazard stagger from sleep-deprivation - no suck luck!

Emerging into the arrivals hall, we spotted several banks, all of them boarded up and closed. It was 6am admittedly, but there again, this is an international airport afterall! Not to worry. We headed towards a little cluster of three ATMs. One had a hastily written "out of order" sign, so then there were two. We chose the one with the quite respectable maximum withdrawal limit of $250 equivalent and proceeded to try to get the cash. It worked right up until the last minute, when it got stuck on the "please wait" screen for several scary minutes before spitting back our card, minus the cash. Upon being told that the banks didn't open until 9am, a three-hour wait, we begrudgingly decided to use the third ATM. We'd been hoping to avoid it as it only gives the equivalent of $100, meaning we have to pay a huge percentage in banking fees. Still, what choice did we have? When we tried to get it to work, however, you guessed it - no money left!

So, there we were, sitting in the terminal surrounded by banks and ATMs, with no access to money and therefore food and water, for our first few hours in the country! Actually, we got lucky as it happened, as someone showed up and filled the third ATM with money at 7:30pm, meaning we could get out enough to keep us going until we found another ATM (HSBC we had read) with a higher maximum withdrawal allowance. The only problem was that, when we finally found it, Scott's card was refused. Checking good-old online banking later, we discovered that it is because the airport machine that hadn't worked actually registered us as having taken out over $250 - the cheek of it! To top off the day, we decided to make a quick call to our bank to see if they could refund us the money, and it proved impossible. For some reason, there seems to be no way to make a phone call to the US (or anywhere outside of the Philippines unless you have your own cell phone - crazy!!! ) We'll work on it again tomorrow - the saga continues...

(Hope this is somewhat coherent. I still haven't had any sleep since all this happened as it's only 9pm on our first day - what a long day! Time for bed soon - praying for no cockroaches!!!)

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Photos

Grumpy!
OK, it's staged, but you get the picture!

Comments

[Marco]

7,100 islands
So, where to in the Philippines? El Nido? Palawan? Siquijor? Camiguin? Siargao? Batanes? Bohol? All of the above? Maybe?

[Born to travel]

Suggestions...
Not entirely sure yet...do you have any suggestions? We are looking for beautiful white sand beaches, good diving and snorkelling, and reasonable room rates (i.e. not fancy resort packages)... Sipalay, Malapascua, and Moalboal are top of our list so far...