Manila, Philippines

After a few weeks of hasty planning, Christine and I headed to Incheon airport for our summer holidays in the Philippines with much excitement. I managed to pack my backpack with only 9.5kgs of luggage which was a good start. In the check-in queue we met a girl, Anne, who also works in South Korea who was going via Manila to Aus, with a 9-hour layover. The 3 of us stuck together and once in Manila Anne decided to come with us to our hostel, Happy Coconuts, to try and catch a few hours sleep. The flight with Philippines Air was only about 4 hours and extremely pleasant. The staff on the flight were amazing and the food was delicious! An especially nice change as it wasn’t very “Korean”.

Stepping out of the airport in Manila at midnight, the hot, humid air was very welcome after the freezing flight and my camera lens instantly fogged up. There was a line of yellow airport taxis waiting for us and everything was very nicely organised. The first thing I noticed was that everyone spoke English and almost everything was written in English too. We hopped into the taxi driven by a very friendly guy called Robin and he took us right to the door of Happy Coconuts which Christine had found on the internet. Once there the door was opened by a young friendly Filipino guy who showed us to our rooms and offered us a welcome drink of beer or water. Anne and I chose some of the local beer and the 3 of us sat up chatting for a while before retreating to our delightfully air-conditioned rooms where they don’t give blankets, only a sheet to sleep under (no need for any more!).

The hostel was very pleasant, clean and everything we needed, for only PHP600 pppn. The next morning we allowed ourselves a lie in as we had a full day and another night in Manila, before we headed to Palawan island on Monday morning. We wanted to do some sightseeing but also have a look at some of the shops and in the end, because of the heavy rain and not quite knowing where we were, we ended up whiling away the hours in the Mall of Asia, the 3^rd largest mall in Asia. Again, it was really nice for me to wander around a place surrounded by English products and English-speaking people. It was also interesting to see the weird and wonderful Filipino things all over the place such as the fast food stand that sold deep fried day-old chicks.

Getting to the Mall of Asia was an adventure as we had to catch three jeepneys to get there. The original jeepneys were made from jeeps that were left behind by the Americans after WWII. Nowadays they are locally manufactured but in the same design. They are all brightly coloured and each one is uniquely designed according to its owner. They remind me of the TV program “Pimp your ride” – these are definitely, 100% pimped out! You climb in the back and there are two long benches extending from front to back which face each other so you sit facing the other people. To get in you climb in the back and bend over double to walk to a free spot on the bench. We asked the drivers and the people in the back to help us get where we were going and they were all very obliging. We expected to get ripped off because we didn’t know what we were doing but they charged us only the standard rate of PHP8 each for one trip. I love the Lonely Planet description of the jeepneys: “Splashed with colour, laden with religious icons and festooned with sanguine scribblings, the jeepney flaunts the fact that, at heart, it’s a dilapidated, smoke-belching pile of scrap metal”.

We found our way back to Happy Coconuts that night by catching a minivan and then a tricycle home. The tricycles are also lots of fun – see my photos! There is a fruit and veg stand across from the hostel so Christine bought some mangos and we had poptarts (we found them in the Mall – yum!) and mangos for dinner. The mangos in the Philippines are supposed to be the sweetest in the world and they were absolutely amazing – sweet, soft and juicy. We chatted to the other people at the hostel, one of which was there researching for the new edition of Lonely Planet and headed off to bed as we had an early start in the morning. Destination: Palawan!