Philippines Leg

Day 1 – The curious incident of.. the missing taxi driver, the unwanted ticked and overpriced cab: welcome to Manilla!

Once again we were up with the larks for an early ride to the airport to catch our flight to Manila via Bangkok. We scurried down the stairs and through the reception area in the darkness, taking care not to wake the security fella stretched out on a sofa with a blanket over him.

No cab but we were a bit early so we went outside and drank our iced coffees purchased the night before and got talking to an American passer-by who was suffering with Jet lag. The Lady boy who propositioned Glenn also sped past on a bike, seems her luck didn’t improve much after she left him, she was still alone and on the lookout.

Time ticked on and we were getting worried about the taxi, there was nothing for it, we would have to wake up the guy on the sofa. Glenn crept in and gently woke him only to discover HE was the bloody cab driver!.

Arriving in Bangkok with plenty of time to spare, we headed for the transfer counter. Luckily our bags were checked through all the way to Manila from Laos so it was only a matter of picking up our boarding cards. As we were so early our counter wasn’t opened and we was informed to come back around 2hrs prior to our flight so off we went in search of food and caught up on the blog etc.

Back at the transfer desk, we were (not) greeted by a very grumpy Philippines airline rep. When she asked for our return flight details (for visa’s you sometimes need to show your return ticket out of the country before the visa expires) we produced our ‘Around the World Ticket’ which whilst it doesn’t show an exit from the Philippines, shows our schedule and our intent of moving on. We were advised to do this by our agent and it had worked in previous countries.

This is where we got the ‘computer says no’ moment!, she was adamant it was not acceptable, we were adamant it was! After some time squabbling, getting her to ring her superiors etc we finally admitted defeat and retreated to find an internet connection where we could purchase the cheapest ticket to anywhere we could find (we would not be using it)  so she would let us on the plane!.

We had 40 minutes to get it done which sounds realistic but finding an internet area in Bangkok airport which has several floors, each the size of a football field, getting onto a connection, finding flights and then working your way through booking details umpteen times only to have something fail and have to start all over again meant that we had just 10 minutes remaining until the flight closed. Ordinarily we would have let the flight go and hung around in Bangkok and sorted something out but we were meeting Daryll in the morning and had onward flights booked to El Nido! HELP!

Which is what I said breathlessly when we ran back to the happy cow at the transfer desk, trying to convince her that we had to purchase a ticket directly from her. She rolled her eyes, yawned and asked where we wanted the return flight to go to, ANYWHERE we said, What date? ANY BLOODY DATE, just the cheapest, we weren’t going to use the damn things!. Nope she wanted specifics, OKAY THEN MALASIA BETWEEN THESE DATES, where in Malaysia, she sighed!. At this point, I couldn’t tell you what the capital of England was let alone anywhere in Malaysia, okay back to Bangkok then, get us a ticket back to here!. Tap tap tap, a couple of phone calls and precious minutes ticking by she finally put down the phone and informed us the price of the ticket was £200 each!!. Okay what about a different date, or to Kuala Lumpur (now remembering the capital of Malaysia) too late, you will miss your flight she smiled. Okay I said, lets do it (trying to ignore Glenns yelp and loud thump as he hit the floor as he saw his painstaking budgeting for the past weeks go completely down the toilet!) I handed her my credit card.

“Cash only” she said, Uh?. “I don’t have a machine, you need to pay in cash”, No time to argue, Glenn sped off to navigate the football fields and find an ATM. At this point she asked me if we had our baggage details (remembering that our baggage had been routed all the way through to Manila) worried she was going to offload our baggage I lied and said Glenn had them with him. Glenn returned panting only to explain that he couldn’t get Thai Baht out of the machine, we needed our passport (which she had) so we could go to a money exchange desk. My turn to run the gauntlet of the airport where I found an exchange, negotiated myself to the front of the queue and begged the lady to be quick, she was and I was back at the transfer desk holding bundles of cash in each hand within a few minutes! Sticking the money down her bra she informed us  “You’ve got 5 minutes to get to the gate which is 15 minutes away so you better go now, the boarding card for the onward flight will be printed and waiting for you there”.

Panting, red faced and slightly delirious we made it to the gate to find there was a problem printing the boarding card for the onward flight. The whole flight was now being kept waiting so we had to go along with taking a photo of the screen and hoping for the best when we reached Manila Immigration!. Here is where Glenn noticed there was about £40 difference between what she stuck down her bra and the printed price of the ticket!. We complained, they smiled and shrugged, we got on the plane! At least we made it!

 

Arriving at Manila we WERE NOT ASKED TO SHOW A RETURN TICKET and sailed through imigration. I had done some research on taxi’s and was advised to take a yellow cab from arrivals as they were cheaper. First though we wanted to pick up a sim card and a kind security guard helped us sort this out at which time he advised us not to use the yellow taxi’s, it was a myth, the standard white taxi’s in departures were fine. We then thought we would try to find out which terminal we were flying from the following morning, we were pointed to an info desk where we discovered that it was a private charter and not in the airport and was given the details of the hanger for the following morning. I asked again about the yellow cabs and received a confused look and was pointed in the direction of the white cabs once more.

Getting to the white cab rank we were told it would be the equivalent of about £15 to get to our hotel which was only around 10 mins away. We knew we were being had but were exhausted, we just wanted to get to our hotel and lick our wounds so jumped in (later discovering we were right, yellow cab would have cost around £2!,).

We drove through a very salubrious part of town and pulled up at what looked like a run down apartment block which was to be our home for the night. It’s worth mentioning here that Daryll had suggested the hotel and I had booked it. Later, reading reviews he decided to book elsewhere but it was too late for us as we were inside the cancellation zone. The room we had booked was a family room. Pretty run down but had two separate bedrooms and a kitchenette of just cupboards, no kettle, cups etc. Glenn suggested heading out to get a well earnt beer but as I stepped out onto the balcony to see that we were basically right on top of what I could only describe as a Rio Favela, I suggested that given the luck we had that day, it might be an idea to stay in and have an early night!, we did! What a day!