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Published: March 16th 2008
The last time I was in Manila was March 1999. Now, nine years on, I'm back. Last time, as only a two-week holidayer, I had no errands to run apart from finding food and accommodation and making my way to the limited tourist sights around the city. My impression of Manila wasn't exactly good, but it wasn't exactly bad either. This time, however, we had two major errands to run and we quickly realized just how difficult it is to get
anything done in the Philippines.
Our
first errand was to make a phone call to our bank in the US to report the ATM fiasco at the airport. It turned out that $250 was taken out of our account, but the money was never dispensed to us. In any other country we've been to (including messed up countries such as Egypt and India), we were able to make an international call from a call center relatively easily. However, in the Philippines, it is virtually impossible. There are no phone centers, so using a public pay phone is the only option. We spent ages running here, there, and everywhere around the modern air-conditioned shopping center in search of a phone
card. When we finally found one, we realized that the largest card they sell would only work for about four minutes to the US before cutting out. That's not even enough to get through Bank of America's touch-tone menu! Still, we decided to buy it anyway and use it to simply call our branch bank and leave an after-hours message. We tried dialing the access number on the back of the phone card and of course it didn't work. When the woman who sold it to us couldn't get it to work either, she returned our money and we resorted to Plan B. This was to hoard all of our coins and use them to call the next night. Sounds simple, but the problem in the Philippines as in most developing countries is that small change is like the perfect man: extremely difficult to come by, but if you do, you never let it go!
All of the next day, every time we paid for something we had to nudge each other to remind ourselves not to hand over any coins, instead paying with "big money". Every single time we were asked, "You have small money?" and every single
time we had to feign searching in our pockets and purses and finding none (whilst hoping that my bag didn't make a tell tale "clink" noise from all the coins stashed in the inside pocket!) We'd wait sheepishly while the shop owners ran to all of the neighboring businesses in search of the elusive change we needed.
It worked! By the end of the day we were armed with a huge collection of 10, 5, and 1 peso coins. As the nice air-conditioned shopping mall closed at 10pm, international time change dictated that we had to use a pay phone on the street outside the 7-11 convenience store. So, at 11:15pm, Scott and I both stood around the most modern-looking pay phone that we could find in our dodgy little neighborhood, trying to avoid the interested stares of the men as they entered the many strip clubs, and the homeless families as they placed blankets on the pavement, ready to hunker down for the night. Of course, the phone was out of order, so we were forced to scoot along 10 feet to the other phone, which looked like it had been installed in the 1960s. Amazingly, it worked. Unfortunately, it was a coin monster, chewing through our quickly diminishing pile of coins mercilessly. After negotiating through the many menus and voice prompts, Scott finally got to speak to someone. Cutting through the niceties, he got right to the point: how could be get back the $250 that the airport ATM had "stolen"? By this time, however, we'd chewed through all of the 10 peso coins and were down to the 5s and 1s. After a few more minutes to clarify our claim, we were down to only 1 peso coins. For every 1 peso coin that I shoved into the phone, it was using 2 pesos of credit. Very quickly, the phone counted down 3, 2, 1 and we were cut off!
As we were due to head to the remote north the next day we decided to give up, collect coins for the next three days, and try again in three days when we are back in Manila. But for now, it's case closed - goodbye $250!
That brings me to our
second errand : applying for a tourist visa at the Indian embassy. Nothing to do with India is ever easy, so we should have known that the Indian embassy in the Philippines would be a total disaster!
After closing the door on several taxi drivers who refused to use the meter and instead quoted exhorbitant prices, we finally found one willing to play fair. We crawled off through the traffic-choked streets of Manila and soon had five street children pressing their faces against the taxi window, imploring us for some money. I thought back to the rich local family we'd sat next to in Pizza Hut, their young children stuffing themselves with fattening western food to their heart's content, and thought how cruel the inequalities in the world are. Still, something stopped us giving them money. Part of it was that the lights were about to change and part of it was the notion that if you give money to kids, it will only encourage more parents to send their kids out to beg. As I was pondering all of this, the lights changed to green and our taxi whisked away (crawled away?) in the general direction of the Indian embassy, leaving the street kids to dash through the maze of honking taxis, motor-tricycles, and jeepneys to the roadside to await the next red light.
As we drew close to the Indian embassy, we were pulled ove by a security guard for what we thought was going to be a routine inspection. He asked our names and studied our I.D. and then said that we were not on his list. What list?! He explained that the embassy is located in an exclusive village of the rich and famous, and only those with security clearance can enter. We were told to call the Indian embassy in advance of our visit so that we could get our name on the list. The problem was that it was approaching 11:20 and we knew that the embassy closed at 12:00 for applications. With no cell phone, we didn't have time for all of the red tape. Again, we resorted to Plan B. This, we decided on the spot, was to have the taxi driver drop us around the corner and then walk into the village through another entrance. At first it seemed to work. We just casually strolled by the guards and no-one stopped us! However, when we were three buildings away from the embassy, a police pulled up on a motorbike and told us we couldn't enter without an invite, and we had to leave. We explained our predicament and stood firm, and in the end he gave in and called the embassy for us himself and then sent us on our way 15 minutes later. Yeah! Following the numbers, we knew the Indian embassy would be the next building, but it wasn't. Suddenly, the house numbers went haywire. They were all over the place in no real order. It was like Bali all over again!!! Luckily, we spotted an Indian head wobbling outside a gate, looking for us and we knew we were in the right location.
Entering the waiting room, we took a number: we were 258. They were currently serving number 36 and closed in just 15 minutes!!! We managed to get a form and filled it out while we waited. Amazingly, they skipped through all the numbers as no-one had most of them, so when it was our turn, we leapt up not to get missed! We were almost there! Or not... It turned out that they will only issue 3 month visas, and the date started immediately, meaning it would run out too early, even though they routinely issue 6-month visas elsewhere. Aaaargh!!! Thank Goodness we don't have a ticket yet as the result is that we will be spending 10 useless days in Bangkok in order to apply for our visa in a country where things actually work!!!
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Van
non-member comment
Enjoy the Philippines!
Hello Sharon, thanks for sharing your accounts so far of the Philippines. I travel to the Philippines at least twice a year from NYC, and so was delighted to read about someone else's perspective. I hope you will have an opportunity to visit Boracay (have you been there?) or Cebu, both among my favorites places in the Philippines. But there are so many others great places to visit outside of Manila which, as you noted, could indeed be a lot of "madness". Good luck and enjoy your stay there!! Van