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Published: July 24th 2006
Wednesday July 12th
My plane was leaving at 10:40 so I didn't have to wake up early. But I guess you get used to getting up early so by 7:30 I was up. I took my time to pack, chatted with the owner's daughter and bought a cool bracelet. She mentioned that she was jealous of us because we can travel. She'd like to travel but even if they work hard they can never get enough money to travel overseas. There's not much you can answer to that.
I said goodbye and went in the street looking for a tricycle. I bargained the price down to 10P for the airport and we got there in 10 minutes. I had heard the security was extremely bad at domestic airports (as in the security guard didn't really care whether you passed your luggage through the x-ray thing) but the security didn't seem too bad. I checked in but when I was about to enter the waiting area I was told that since I am a foreigner I need to pay a airport fee. The woman who took my money was nice enough to tell me I was handsome, at least. It makes being ripped off feel better.
I was a bit early so I read and drank mango juice while waiting for my plane to arrive. About 45 minutes after I got there the group of japanese people I had met on the boat in Sabang showed up, they were on the same plane as me. We talked a little bit and it turns out they're all studying in the same field as me (biochemistry) in Japan. After talking a bit I went back to the book (the language barrier was fairly high). We got a message that the plane was late and that it would get there at 10:54 instead of 10:10 like it should've and that boarding would start at 11:10 and the plane would depart at 11:20. I laughed at the 10 minutes to board everyone and take-off joke and continued to read my book while cursing the company.
The plane arrived around the time it was supposed to but of course we started boarding later and it took way more than 10 minutes to board and take-off. Nevertheless everything went well from this point. I had a window seat near the front and had a great view of all the islands around Puerto which was really nice. The airline has a few "contests" where the flight attendants ask people to show her an object (like a driving license) and the first one who does win something. Everyone seemed to loved it but since I had no carry-on luggage except for my book so I couldn't compete much. When we got close to Manila I realized why the plane had been late, there was a small typhoon right above the city and it was raining quite hard. We landed with no major problems, I grabbed my checked-in bag and waited for 30 minutes in the taxi line (that's right, this is the only place in town where you actually have to wait for taxi, probably because the airport has a service that gives you the plaque number of the taxi that takes you so the drivers can't scam you because they know they'll be reported to the police).
The taxi driver actually started the meter without me asking. He didn't speak much at the beginning but at some point on Roxas boulevard we passed by a gorgeous girl and my eyes looked her way for a few moments. The taxi driver took note of that and said "you like girls?" to which I replied "uh, yeah". I could see excitement in his eyes as he was looking at me through the mirror. He replied "I can get you a girl, 1000 Pesos". Uh oh. I said I wasn't interested and after repeating my answer a few times he got the point. But he was not the kind of man that give easily on making money "on the side". A bit after that girl conversation was over he took a bunch of bananas he had in between his legs and asked if I liked bananas. 50 Pesos! I tried hard not to laugh but to no avail. I said I'd think about it. He probably thought I was a though customer. I paid him (for the ride) once we got to the Pension and I wished him good luck.
The Pension is the usual oasis. I checked in to a bed in the dorm I always used. It's funny there are people that have been there for the 21 days I've been in the Philippines. They see me come and leave and we talk a little bit but I still have no idea what they do there. Some are westerners and some are filipinos. They often do nothing during the day except read in the bed. A bit wierd but none of my business. I had promised I'd go to that thai restaurant in Robinson's place to say hi to Joyce, the waitress I met when I went there with Stan, who told me she was working there all the time. I went there and had a delicious Pad Thai but Joyce was nowhere to be found. On the way back to the hostel I checked my emails at an internet cafe.
When I got back I called Richard (whom I met in El Nido) as he had told me we'd go out in my last night in Manila. I eventually managed to get to him and he said he'd pick me up near Diamond Hotel very close to where I stay. Traffic was slow and he was coming from the other side of town so it took a bit more than an hour but he eventually found me.
Richard is a funny and friend guy and it was nice to see him again. He wanted to show me the other side of Manila as I had only seen Malate and Ermite, the place with the budget hotels. We first drove to close to where he live, Quezon City to eat a "little" bit. We drove around the main streets and Richard gave me a history of the neighbourhood. We stopped at the place called Trellis and had a really delicious meal: rice, a kind of fried noodle called pancit, mango salad with bagoong (salted shrimp), fried squid and sisig (sizzling pork face and ears) accompanied of course by good San Miguel beer. It was one of the best meal I've had in the Philippines and despite the fact that eating pork ear and skin sounds gross it was very tasty.
We were exiting the restaurant just as the it had a power breakdown. Talk about timing. Richard said he lived very close so we could pass by to see his house (but couldn't stop because his son wouldn't want to let him leave if he saw him pass by). Richard is an MBA professor at an university and Karen (his wife) is an accountant in a big company so they are fairly wealthy. They live in a gated community that looked a lot like the neighbourhood where my parents live.
We drove to Makati next, the main business district of Manila and the place to go for nightlife with middle/upper class filipinos. We went at Greenbelt 3 in Makati which is a part of a huge mall. As I mentioned a few times before filipinos love mall. I thought going out in a mall would be wierd but it is actually pretty nice. It feels like a pedestrian alley filled with bars and terrasses. There are several bars there and you can see that the crowd is definately more "high class". We went to a place called Absinth that plays hip hop and had a few beers there. The vibe in the place was fun and laid-back. We had some really interesting discussions on the Philippines, what it means to be a filipino when the country is a big melting pot of culture and 1/8 of the population live oversea and life in the Philippines for foreigner. I remarked that being white in the Philippines marks you as "special". Richard had a flight to take at 5:30AM so we called it a night a bit early (about 12:30) and he drove me back to the pension. I had a great time and I was really happy to have seen another side of the Philippines.
The Philippines do have a bad reputation. Most of the time when I tell people I've been to the Philippines they ask if it is safe and look at me as if I was telling them I had decided to backpack in Mogadishu. It is true that there are dangerous area, close to Indonesia, but saying that the Philippines is too dangerous is like saying you shouldn't walk in a park in Montreal because you might get attacked by a grizzly bear. Just do your homework and you'll be fine.
Even though the place is not dangerous it did take me a few days to get used to it, especially the poverty in Manila. But this is mostly because this was my first travel in a "Third World" country. The same scams and poverty that annoyed me at the beginning could've happened in Bangkok or anywhere else.
Once you get used to it, you realize that filipinos are really nice people and that the country is safe. I walked around in Malate and Ermita at 2AM and never felt threatened once. I travelled on a very tight budget and I do realize I lost a good amount of time in transport and if I had spent a bit more money for internal flights I could've seen more. But I'm totally happy with the way I travelled since I really felt like I saw the country more by spending hours in a bus looking outside the window, sitting next to a guy with a gamecock in his hand than if I had taken planes all the time. It is truly a great country to travel, whether you just want to laze on the beach or trek,whether you have a high budget or low budget.
I'm definately putting the Philippines in my "I'll go back there someday" list.
Thursday July 13
My flight to Macau left at 15:55 from Clark airport but since it is 2 hours away from Manila it doesn't leave much room to do anything for the day. I went on the net for a while after I woke up and then I packed my stuff and went into a taxi to the bus station. The driver was friendly and he laughed when I mentioned my experience with the taxi driver yesterday. He said "Life is very hard for us taxi driver, that's why we have to sell girls and bananas. You should give me 30P more than the meter to help me". I laughed it off but in the end I did give him the 30P more (it rounded up at 100P) because he was a funny bloke. I bought my ticket for the 11:00 bus and boarded the bus. For some reason this company seem to be the only one in the Philippines that has assigned seats and they assigned me to a aisle seat next to another guy. Since the bus was fairly empty I just took the seat behind but then some annoying woman entered and said: "This is my seat, get out or I'll get the driver". I guess it's a proof that you shouldn't generalize, while most filipinos are really nice some can be really annoying. I told her to calm down and moved to the seat behind. A few minutes after she moved to another seat. I felt like going up and telling her that this seat was mine and she should move or I'd go get the driver but I'm an overly nice canadian so I didn't.
The bus took about 2 and a half hours to get to the airport and I directly went to the check in. I had a bad surprise. Since I had a problem buying the ticket the other day and had to take care of it at the airport, they didn't have a confirmation of my ticket for the return flight and my name wasn't on the list. I explained them the whole situation, showed them the receipt I had but for some reason the guy I dealt with at the Macau airport didn't put my confirmation in the system. For about 2 hours I dealt with the check-in women and at the end they just made me sign something that if they couldn't get a confirmation I'd have to pay it again. I was seriously pissed off by this point.
This was the worst 2 hours I spent on that trip and I just felt like punching someone at the end. I understand that the way I bought my ticket was non-standard because of the problem I had with my credit card (and I didn't have any other problem with my card with my domestic flights or the other times I got the card in the Philippines, I'm still not sure what happened with Tiger Airways) but I paid my ticket at the airport from the Tiger Airways booth and the guy told me to just show the receipt at the counter in Manila and that it would be no problem. That's exactly what I did and they treated me like a thief. There was also an American man who had changed his flight date on the internet a few days before but he had the same trouble as me: total bureaucratic nightmare. His change didn't work for some unknown reason and he wasn't on the list either. He had to talk with them for more than an hour and in the end he had to go back to Manila and come back for the flight tomorrow, which he had initially bought. I learned valuable lessons today, there's a reason why budget airlines are cheap and one of them is that they treat customers like shit. So if you buy a ticket with one of them, make sure you won't have to deal with their customer service because it will end up costing you more than a normal airline.
In the end I went through check-in, paid the airport fee (which of course is not mentioned anywhere), passed through immigration and go to the waiting room as boarding was starting. I hadn't eaten anything for the whole day by that point (it was 15:00) so I was starving. I bought some cheap sandwhich and boarded. I spent the whole flight just being pissed off. It's sad that I left the Philippines on such a bad note as I really loved the country. I was not too happy to arrive in Macau either as it is a fairly boring place if you don't like casinos. I walked really fast out of the airport to get in the first spots at immigration (I'm starting to get smart about borders). I was out of the immigration/luggage really fast and went to the tourist office to ask which bus I should take to go to a international youth hostel on the Island. She said that you need to book in advance at this place and their office hours were over. That meant I had to go to the same budget place I had been with Richard when I first came in Macau. Needless to say I was less than thrilled to be there as it was too expensive for what it was and dirty.
I changed some money, hopped on the public bus and got off after 20 minutes and made my way to the hostel without looking at the map. I mumbled bad thoughts in my head about everyone and everything by that point. I checked in at the hostel for 70MOP and went to eat to a McDonald. I walked around town for 1 hour looking for an internet cafe but there was none to be found. The one in the Lonely Planet had closed. I came back to the hostel and finished my book. I went to sleep hoping real hard that I could forget the day and that my border crossing into China would be better.
My book (Stillwell and America experience in China 1911-1945 by Barbara Tuchman) was really amazing. It is a 600 pages book detailing the US-China relations throught that period and it won a Pulitzer in 1972. I really like reading history books and this was one of the best I've read in a long time. It might look amazing to say, but after reading this book I can totally understand why chinese still like Mao and that they always say 70%!g(MISSING)ood, 30%!b(MISSING)ad. Anything was better than the Kumointang. If you're skeptical about this claim, read the book. I don't think one can understand China without a good knowledge of its history from at least the first opium war, or at least from 1911.
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Silvia
non-member comment
You're right.
Yeah, at that time, Chinese peaple chose Mao. but now, nobody know if we will choose Communist Party again. but every Chinese peaple wish to see China became better and better.