Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
We hadn’t even left Japan and we were starting to lament about how lovely the Japanese people were. This was prompted from a 2 hour wait in a bag drop queue for a flight to Manila surrounded by Filipinos. Unlike the Japanese they constantly pushed against you in the queue, panicked out loud, asked why they didn’t have a Premium seperate queue and then proceeded, when their turn, to try to check in too many bags with too much weight – the whole family squabbling and passing stuff back and forth. Next the security queue where, even though everyone in the queue was on the same Manila flight, we saw people push their way to the front as “their plane was boarding now!!!!”. One lady was physically returned to the queue three times by the security guard. WOW! I think we’ve been spoiled with months of politeness, orderly queuing and impeccable manners. The Japanese are SO polite. Getting off the plane in the Manila was a MASS free for all, on the other hand. That said, a little girl (who was definitely flying for the time ever) started feeding both of us her crisps as she stood in the aisle, waiting to get off 🥰
The airport toilets were the next reminder of leaving Japan – no gadetry or lovely heated seat (although at 29C at 10pm thats wasnt an issue), but also no toilet roll, no hand towels and instead a toilet seat covered by the water spray from the previous user.
Next was the bombardment of people offering lifts and taxis. In Japan, no one would follow you along trying to get you into their vehicle – although I still wouldn’t trust a taxi driver to charge a fair fare – but that is just taxi drivers the world over. Anyway, our overnight stay was walking distance, so thankfully, we didn’t need to get involved in the three deep melee the whole way along the arrivals pavement. We walked up and over the highway and straight to our apartment block. I definitely held onto my bag tighter than I would in Japan, where the chance of theft is minimal. Even if you drop or lose something in most of Japan, it will be returned to you.
Upon returning to Manila airport the next day (after passing a poor boy asleep on metal, railing bench, obviously designed to deter the homeless 😭 ), our bags were searched on the way in. They seem to be taking terrorist threats seriously, and, as predicted in our guidebook, we commenced a wait for a delayed flight. It seems that unlike Japan, things do not always run to time in the Philippines, and our 3 hour delay was considered quite normal.
Upon landing in Cebu, we took a Grab car (luckily, we have downloaded the Grab App, so you get a fixed price and no “Oh, my meter is broken.” ) and joined a crazy frenzy of a journey with scooters, tricycles, jeepneys, motorbike taxis, buses, cars and a few brave cyclists jostling along a single carriage highway. I love the variety of life that you see getting on and off these different forms of transport and different places we passed from a spangly mall, with The Golden Arches displayed, to tiny “shops” and “cafes” at the side of dirty roads. The tiny and cramped housing also blows your mind – all with the cleanest washing hanging outside.
So now it’s time to put our old backpacking, Asia chaos loving, haggling heads on and embrace the colour and craziness of Cebu, which happens to be the most populated island in the Philippines. Im sure we will be seeking smaller, less populated places along our travels through these gorgeous islands.
