10-18th June The Phillipines
Manila 10th – 13th June & 17th-18th
The Philippines were first conquered by the Spanish and ruled by them for 400 years. The Spanish declared war on the USA in 1898 over Cuba. The war spread to the Philippines. The US and the Philippines locals managed to defeat the Spanish, although the Americans were almost as bad as the Spanish and took control shortly after the Spanish had been defeated. WWII saw the Japanese invasion. The Japanese were brutal conquerors and were finally ousted by General MacArthur in 1944. The Philippines became fully independent shortly afterwards only to suffer at the hands of President Marcos from 1965 to 1986. The Marcos’s are recognised by the Guinness book of records as the greatest robbers of all time, stealing between US$5-10 billion!!!
What surprised me the most was that all the signs were in English and most people speak very good English. English and Tagalog (the locals language) are both taught at school.
We flew into Clark airport. We both thought it was the main international airport, just outside the city. It turned out to be 100km or so outside Manila and a 2 ½ hour bus ride into the city itself! Grrrr!!!!
Manila itself isn’t that exciting. It’s busy, noisy (every vehicle uses it’s horn almost constantly). The traffic in Manila is horrendous! Fortunately there’s a cheap (approx 20 pence or 30 Euro cents) air-conditioned metro/monorail system. Food tends to be American style. San Miguel beer (brewed locally) costs around a Euro a bottle. It’s cheap but crap! Fortunately we managed to find a Belgian bar with prices only slightly more expensive than Holland J
What surprised us too was the amount of oldish white guys with far younger Phillipino girls, walking hand in hand.
There isn’t a huge amount to do in Manila. We went to Rizal park (named after a local hero) to see the park and Intramuros, the old Spanish built walled city. It started to rain so we took a horse and carriage trip. The guy said first 20 pesos, then 50 pesos each (about 1 Pound) for 10 minutes. He did take us around the park and Intramuros and gave us a running commentary. The ride went on much longer than 10 minutes, almost 90 minutes. He did buy us a can of San Miguel each. He was buttering us up and we both had the nagging suspicion we were going to be taken for a ride, literally! He eventually tried to charge us 1600 pesos or 24Euros/17 pounds. We refused on the grounds that he hadn’t cleared this price with us beforehand. Who likes getting ripped off? We managed to get him down to 700 pesos and 50 to buy the horse a beer! He was even trying to marry off 2 of his daughters!
We also visited the zoo, which cost only 40 pesos (60 Euro cents). Some of the animals didn’t look very happy and I’d prefer if they upped the price for foreigners and spent the money on better cages/conditions for the animals.
The jeepneys are a hangover from the American jeeps and are unique to the Philippines. They are the local equivalent of busses and are very colourful!
Taxis try to rip you off here. John caught one to catch the coach to the airport. On the outside of the taxi it said ‘meter tested and working’ and the driver said metered. After 10 minutes I noticed it wasn’t turned on! Yes, another rip off! It cost us 450 without the meter running. On the day I departed, I refused to step in until he turned the meter on. With the meter it only cost me 87.50!
Puerto Galera 14th-17th June
After John left I decided to go leave Manila before the traffic noise/fumes drove me insane. I decided on Puerto Galera, an island with beaches. It was a 3 hour bus ride and a 1 hour boat ride but cost only 300 pesos (4.5 Euros) all in. It wasn’t quite what I expected. After I got off the boat I was hassled by motorbike taxis trying to take me to my guesthouse. It took me all of 5 minutes to walk there! I really came to hate the Annoying motorbike taxis. if I was walking down the road I would get hassled every 20m or so. They were also annoyingly loud and gave off lots of exhaust fumes. I arrived at my guesthouse, just in time to miss the rain. I was going to explore but the start of the monsoon season persuaded me otherwise! Time for a beer and to watch the world go by….. Time for a new experience… I was just drinking my beer and talking to a Swiss guy who’d settled here and the lights went out and the fans stopped turning. A brown out! My first time ever. Out came the candles. This happens quite often here. They used to have brown outs for 8 hours a day, every day. Now they tend to get 1 or 2 a day or an hour or so. The great thing was that the sky was a lovely colour at sunset as there was no light pollution. See the pics. PG tends to close down around 9pm, even my guesthouse bar shutdown at that time!
My guesthouse, the Bahay-Pilipino was great. It cost only 280 pesos/4 Euros a night for a basic room and shared shower/toilet. The atmosphere was warm and friendly and the food was very good. Beer was only 50 pesos/75 Euro cents for a half litre of red horse J The only downside was being woken up by noisy cockerels, crowing, at 5:40am L After that, the hated motorbike taxi’s joined the cacophony!
One day I decided to go to one of the proper beaches, Sabang. It was only 6km and I was so irritated by the motorbike taxis that I decided to walk it. It took me just under an hour there and even less on the way back. Sabang is more upmarket than PG. There are loads of dive shops/hotels. I had my first ever beer at a floating bar there J There are 2 floating bars both with a free boat to take you to them. There’s also a hotel on the way into town built to look like an Austrian castle J
Last full day in Manila. It took me the morning and afternoon to get back from PG. The ferry ride was nice and relaxing but at Batangas bus terminal I was stuck waiting for a minibus which said it would depart within half an hour when it was full. “We are quicker and we will take you to your hotel!” After an hour of waiting my patience snapped. Fortunately the bus left only 10 minutes later and I was 1st on board J I won’t miss Manila. The sheer amount of traffic continually hooting their horns and belching exhaust fumes was trying on the nerves and I felt like I’d become a chain smoker overnight!
