All Jumbled Up: Philipines, long misunderstood..

..or not. This was all written long before the storm and the manila bus hostage incident. The country had been very quiet and peaceful for a long time until recently.

I once stumbled on a promotional return air ticket to the philipines at only RM25. It was a bargain but i did not proceed to purchase it. With numerous riots and political revolution happening, it gave me the impression of a very dangerous city to be backpacking around. So i opt for other countries. I was confused when my colleagues told about the the beautiful beaches there and she even went there so many times as if it was her second home. I never thought of it after that until I was asked to backpack there. I jumped at the opportunity not knowing what to expect but a whole lot of adventure.

I was so used to SGD, USD, Pound, Euro, Baht but when it came to Peso, I got confused. I tried comparing the rates from a few different money changer till i lost my sense of mathematical skills. Even now I still don't know if I changed at a higher rate compared to the others.

First up, the bumpy journey in Manila.

Touch down in Clark airport after 4 hours on air. Looking out from the plane at Luzon island was awesome. The mountain stretch throughout the island with river so wide and green lushes all around. In the middle of all the greenery pop a brownish and greyish symetricall squares lining up neatly to form a bigger plot of brownish grey area. That's the city.

I never see a river so wide before. It was a little dried up though.

Passing immigration counter was a swift for the front sitters but as the queue built up, the longer it took for them to pass through. We waited about 40 mins because there's two of us seated behind plus there were only two counters opened for foreign passports.

It took us 2 hours to manila from clark. or is it 1 and a half?! Anyway the bus ticket cost around 300 peso.

The bus stopped at SM megamall and I was reliving my initial thoughts of how unsafe the country was. At the entrance, we had to pass through metal detectors and opened our bags for inspection. At first I thought it was only us as it was rational because of our huge backpacks. Then I looked again and realized it applied to everyone with or without bags.

Met up with Hannah our philipines host and ate our first meal in philipines, jolibee. It's a fast food chain comparable to kfc or macdonald. Every corner in Manila you are sure to see one.

Heading towards the LRT station.

Next we proceed to GoHotel. I highly recommend it if you are looking for budget, clean, comfy beds and there's wifi too. Think tune hotel and the same concept applied. The hotel was quite new because the taxi driver didn't even know about it. Want to say thanks to GoHotel for allowing us to nestled our bags there for half a day.

The size of the board advertisement was crazy huge. Even if i didn't put on my contact lenses i could still see them clearly.

After freshening up, it's time to experience life of a manilan. We headed to the lrt to get ourselves to intramuros.

One of the public transportation there. The trike. Highly recommended if you want the adrenaline rush. Try fitting 3 people in there.

Departing from Boni station.

The amount of people. This is consider not many people to them.

Stop by for a drink because the weather was extremely hot.

The lrt ride was one hell of an adventure. The non peak hour for Manila lrt was like kl lrt peak hour. Think of kl lrt peak hour and duplicate ten times, that will be Manila lrt peak hour. It's like the whole Malaysia population squeezing in the lrt (ok this is too exaggerated but you get my point). Even if the lrt was already packed, people will try to squeeze in leaving you with no space to breathe. People standing at the door of the lrt had to push out the people trying to squeeze in. No wonder Hannah said she don't take the lrt because I won't too if I had to go through this everyday. Lol. Everytime we enter or leave the station, our bags had to go through inspection. Made me think that I was in another Bourne movie. Lol!

Bought my lrt ticket to Taft station.

okay. This is illegal. No photos at the lrt station but what the heck.

LRT interchanging at Taft station. Manage to take a photo in between. That's how the lrt looked like and like i say the people you are looking at, that's not even peak hour yet.