Typed up at: Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Roldan’s
Beach Resort on Camiguin Island Posted from: Legaspi Tourist Inn in
Legaspi
Our first
experience in Manila was to stand in the biggest immigration line yet.
But everybody was polite, gave each other enough personal space, and
things ran very smoothly although it took a while. Despite all that we
still had to wait for our luggage, but not too long. Leaving the airport
they checked that the tags we had actually matched the bags we picked
up. Another first. I don’t know if that’s indicative of crime or
paranoia.
We’d
organized somebody to pick us up from the airport, but being on an early
flight meant that person hadn’t arrived yet. But the friendly people at
the hotel lounge got us a car to the Cherry Blossom hotel like we asked
them to. There we checked into a largish clean room with good AC.
Somehow we managed to go through this whole song and dance without
realizing that we had checked into the wrong hotel. We don’t know where
we came up with the name, but our booking was in fact at a different
hotel. We didn’t discover that until the next day, when they e-mailed
Danielle to tell us we were no-shows and they charged our credit card
for a night’s stay.
But it wasn’t
that big a deal overall. We were happy where we were, in a neighborhood
close to the water and the old town. We didn’t see any sights, but we
did seem to have something to do every day. The first day we went to the
immigration bureau to extend our visas. Everybody gets a 3-week visa at
the airport and we wanted to stay longer than that. After a bit of
bureaucracy, some waiting, and some money we were allowed to stay for an
additional 5 weeks.
The next day
we went to the Philippine Airlines (PAL) ticketing office to get our
money back. In order to be allowed into the country we had to show proof
of onward travel so at the Hong Kong airport we’d bought some fully
refundable return tickets to Hong Kong. After taking a number and
waiting about 20 minutes, we were told that they could not refund our
money because then we wouldn’t have an onward ticket anymore.
Our other
major event was to meet up with our friends Bill and Faith from
Carpinteria. They were the reason that we’d come to the Philippines (as
opposed to Thailand or Cambodia) and it was nice to hang out with them.
They took us to eat some Filipino food which wasn’t that good. We’d
previously had some good Filipino food, but most of the places in our
neighborhood were Korean or Chinese so that’s what we’d been eating. At
a Japanese restaurant we had the best salmon sushi either of us had ever
had. In general the seafood here seemed quite good.
The main
places we spent time in Manila were the many giant malls. They’re air
conditioned and have every kind of store in them, including super
markets and nice restaurants. There’s always some kind of event going
on, although usually they’re just sales events. We wandered into a
cosplay convention which was fun to see, as well as a percussion group
concert.
We pretty
much limited wandering around outside to whatever was necessary. The
streets were all paved, and fairly clean. Begging is fairly common but
not as pervasive as in Delhi. A few families clearly lived and slept on
the street, but it seemed like most people had some kind of permanent
shelter that was nicer than the tents we saw everywhere in Delhi. The
local trade involved selling watches, Viagra, and changing money.
Surprisingly nobody was trying to get us to go into their tourist
office.
Halfway
through our stay we moved to Friendly’s hostel. It had a nice (but not
air conditioned) rooftop terrace. Our room bordered the common area
though. The first night this was fine, but the second night some people
came home and had a loud conversation between 2 and 3 am. Otherwise it
had everything a backpacker might want. The next day it was time for us
to leave on a brief trip to Tagaytay.
