Manila - Philippines
12th June 2007
Leaving Korea was almost one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do, saying goodbye to my amazing teachers, friends, beautiful Kids and of course my lovely boyfriend.
My flight wasn't until 10.20 but I was being very organised and actually arrived at the airport at 7.15 so had hours to wait before I could even meet Kat and Jenna, when we eventually met, checked in, we said our goodbyes to Kat and off we went to departure lounge. We flew with Qantas and the flight was luxury, we even had steak for lunch, after a stop off in Hong Kong we boarded back on the plane and got served yet another meal and then after a nice sleep arrived in Bangkok. We had about 9 hours to wait until our connecting flight and there was no where to go near the airport so we just wondered up and down, trying out different uncomfortable chairs, stopping for drinks, trying to read our books or using the computers (where we had to stand and they were the slowest crappiest things that I have ever used) Eventually at 1 am in the morning we were able to check in, we were so excited. It took forever though, the ques were horrendous. The most fun was listening to an English man (from Somerset) talking to his son, and we could actually understand. I felt like I was ear wigging, but it was hard not to as I have been in a country for ten months where people are talking all around me and I have no idea what they are saying. Also listening to a child and actually finding out the sort of things they talk about. I always used to wonder what my kids in Korea would natter to each other about! This flight was with cebu pacific, and certainly nothing like our last flights, my seat was broken and we even had to pay for a glass of water. Nevertheless, I slept most of the way and we were in the Philippines in no time.
13th June 2007
It was 6am here when we arrived in the Philippines, and already as hot as hell, nothing was open yet in the airport, but we got our baggage no problems and managed to get a taxi to our accommodation in Sampaloc (Manila). It was so strange to look out of the window and be able to read all the signs. It is very much how I imagined it would be, old ill-maintained buildings everywhere, with peeling posters and chipped paint, there was rubbish everywhere and homeless people all the way down the street. The people here also seem much more different, all scantily clad, and women with baggy t.shirts, no blouses, no makeup and no heels (unheard of in Korea) That made me feel a little more comfortable with my make up fee face, in my shorts and sweaty t.shirt! When we eventually found our place the "windsor Inn" It is an extremely badly converted mansion. As I walked past open doors seeing naked people sprawled everywhere, I was surprised to find an extremely small room, with ONE equally small bed, with no glass in the widows. The bathroom was also interesting, with only cold water, no toilet seat or toilet paper and a bucket to wash with(shared with 7 people)! Oh well we can't complain for less than two quid a night and it is reasonably clean and the staff seem nice! Once we had got into our room I decided to have a wonder around the place, A couple of rooms away I found another room which was a bit larger than ours and only had one small window so was much darker, all we wanted to do was sleep so we went down to see if we could swap, which we did. We had a quick wash and then went to bed for a few hours, in our boiling hot room with an extremely noisy fan.
When we got up it was about 3 in the afternoon, we went down stairs and caught a taxi to the tourism office, so we could get more of an idea of what we could do for the next 6 days. When we got there we realised that the taxi driver totally ripped us off, charging us 2.50 pesos instead of what is should be, only 80 pesos...first learning experience! The lady in the tourism building was very helpful and told us some interesting places we should go, what to watch out for, how much to pay for things and how to catch the Jeepney's (a battered bus thing) Through her we then organised ourselves a trip for the next day to go on a trek to some volcanoes. We then found our way to a nearby mall, where we could change our flight for the following Monday to Negros (the island where Jenna's cousin lives) We had to wait for about 3 hours in the queue, but got it changed no problems. We then wandered around the mall and found a nice little place to eat, for only about 1 pound 20 each, It was nice, apart from the unwelcome guests of cockroaches! We struggled to get back, we couldn't find a place to catch the Jeepney's and all the taxis we full, but eventually a nice old man helped us out and we got a taxi back to our place. This time the price was what it should have been.
Summery of my first day is that I have never sweated so much in my life, honestly I feel I could almost die, seriously. It is not just the heat, it is the smog and pollution and the incredible number of people. Last week the temperature was 39 degrees, thankfully today it was 34, but still far to hot for me. Manila is very poor and NO tourists anywhere, lots of beggars and EVERYONE stares at you and tries to get money off you, however it had been so interesting, they speak a combination of Spanish, English and Korean and call that Filipino, it is very, very weird to hear conversations where you can pick out different words from three languages!
14th June 2007
Jenna and I got up early today, It was so hot in our room, even at 6am I was dripping with sweat, I walked outside for some air, but the Inn is right behind a busy gas station and on the corner of an incredibly busy cross roads so it was actually hotter out there. I was pleased to have my wash in cold water and we set off at 7.30.
It took about two hours to get to the country, we shared a bag of Cheetos for breakfast (very sensible). When we arrived we had to catch a boat across a large lake to reach the base of the Volcano we were to Hike. Our boat man told us that often the fish all die in the lake because of the sulphur release from the volcano. When we got off the boat, there were lots of little girls trying to sell us bottles of water and hats for our Hike and there was also the option to take a horse up too, we declined and went on our way. By this time it was only about 10 o'clock in the morning but it was still incredibly hot and humid, it was nice to not have all the smog and fumes from the road but, this was replaced by the thick dust from all the horses scrambling up the volcano. After a lot of sweating and some damn hard work we stopped for a break. Jenna almost passed out, and felt really sick and faint. I think that it was a bad idea to climb like this with nothing but a few Cheetos in our stomachs. Thankfully a lady approached us selling cold cokes, from this we gained the energy to reach the top. It was wee worth it when we did, it was absolutely beautiful. We could see two huge lakes either side of the volcano and the third 'lake' was inside the volcano. You could actually see the water bubbling and steaming from where we were, we were told that it was extremely hot and sulphuric and that no plants or animals could possibly live there. We were also told that its last eruption was in 1911 and that it killed thousands of people from all of the surrounding villages. The trek down was much easier, despite the sun being higher in the sky and far more people on horses all around. I couldn't believe how many Koreans there were, all covered up as usual. Apparently, the majority of the Philippines tourists are Korean....we can't get away! ha ha.
We got taken back across the lake the other side and enjoyed a delicious meal of spicy chicken, fresh fish and a liver and vegetable stir fry. We sat four hours in the shade enjoying the beautiful surroundings and breathing in all the fresh air. We then had the opportunity to have a wash, I was absolutely filthy, my legs looked like they were covered in black fir with all the dust stuck to them and when I blew my nose, my tissue was literally filthy. Just as we jumped in to the van to get home the heavens opened, and it absolutely chucked it down. The road turned into a river and vehicles wer slipping about all over the place, at some points, the wheels were half covered with water. I couldn't quite believe my eyes. Thankfully it stopped before we had to get out.
Before going out for dinner we decided to have a walk around our area. We went down an interesting street called Lechon road, where there was nothing but pigs on spits everywhere. Apparently that was their speciality. We wanted to try some but we were still full from lunch so we will definitely come back. It was hilarious to see men on bikes dragging huge pigs, on sticks behind them, as they drove through the streets. Although I was slightly off put by seeing all the pig heads, reminded me or something like lord of the flies. We continued on, running across all the bust streets until we found some residential area which looked pretty much like the slums. Children would run up to us wanting to touch our white skin and asking for money, man would holler and women would just stair, but the atmosphere was actually OK. We saw a huge group of people playing bingo in the street, but I was disturbed by all the poor animals in cages, stray dogs and cats and decided to head home when we witnessed to man organising a cock (chicken) fight! We came back to had wash some of our filthy clothes and then headed out to a place that Jenna had found on the Internet called the "Hobbit House" which is a bar run entirely buy dwarfs. There were 14 of them working there in total, they were so friendly, and one named Edward, sat and chatted to us for most of the evening. There were two bands that played and they were fantastic too, Jenna fell in love with the lead singer of one of the band, too bad his girlfriend was also in the band :( We had a lovely time in there, the atmosphere was great and we enjoyed many cans of 'Hite', a beer we drunk in Korea. As we were ready to leave we met two Irish men and their Filipino girlfriends and they invited us to come and have another drink with them. They were all pretty drunk but I felt immediately safer being with men and locals in this crazy city. Once the riverside bar closed, we looked to move on, just as one of the blokes realised that his two thousand pound phone had just been nicked, we tried to gt it back but realised it had well gone. From this moment on i will keep everything in my padlocked bag! We all hopped into their drivers car in search of another bar. Jenna was desperate for the toiled do on the way we had to stop off at a casino, where we were searched before we could enter. I wasn't allowed to enter in my flip flops, so had to wait by the entrance whereby, about a hundred me approached me asking "How much?" Assuming that I was a prostitute. I was pleased to see Jenna again and get back in the car. We drove around for ages but all the decent looking bars looked closed so we decided to go and have a drink and the blokes hotel bar. They were clearly very successful business men. They were both middle aged, overweight and extremely unattractive jet their Filipino girlfriends were 20 something, slip beautiful girls. How does this happen, I guess they enjoyed being smothered with girts and staying in the "Edsa Shangri-la" at 130 quid a night. Jenna and I ran about taking in the luxury of the place and using the luxury toilets. We all shared a few more drinks and as the sun rose decided that we better be heading home!
- Posted by emily1183 on 16/06/2007.
- emily1183's site
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