On the way back home
Guys, I think I am getting paranoid… last night when I just was about to doze off the guy in the room next to me started to sing opera arias. He was whistleing first so I put my ear plugs back in but when he started to sing that was too much again. I went out and shouted that I would like to sleep. In his favour I have to say that he apologized and stopped.
This morning I woke up rather early (which is what I always did while being there I just never got up that early) and took a few pics on my way to breakfast. In the restaurant there was some box-fight going on and all the guys from the kitchen had come out to watch (since there weren’t many guests at 7 Am yet this wasn’t really a problem I guess). Here are the pics…
That’s part of my walk to the restaurant.
Liked those lamps…
The pool nearest to my room (there were 2 more in the resort).
I was ready ahead of the time my transport was scheduled (btw. there was an english couple which took the same flight but they had a different driver… that’s economic, isn’t it? 😀 ).
On the way to the airport we ‚ran‘ into this procession…
And I think this was the back window of a public bus… cosy, isn’t it? 😉
Btw, all the tricicles we saw this morning on the way to the airport had something like ‚In god we trust‘ or ‚god bless you‘ or something else with ‚god‘ in it written on the back. This just shows once again how catholic the Philippines are (but after 300 years in spanish hands this is hardly astonishing).
Once at the airport I had the impression that the two women at the ‚terminal fee‘-counter were tring to rib me off. Terminal fee was 20 pesos (which is really nothig) but I had only 50 pesos. They didn’t give me the change but kept telling me they didn’t have change. Honestly I don’t believe that. I stayed there till the next passenger paid with a 20 Pesos bill and then I got my change. Didn’t really like that. On Bohol it happened to me a couple of times that I felt a little bit uncomfortable. Once I saw someone looking at my camera (the DSLR) and I had the impression he was evaluating me. Not a nice sensation. The other time was on the dive boat at Balicasaq. In between the dives we had to wait till going in the water again and during that time women from the island came on board the dive-boats to sell souvenirs. When the first day one of them asked me where I was from and I said ‚Germany‘ she just said ‚Euro, Euro‘. I didn’t like her tone then. Sounded like: wealthy and can buy al my stuff. I didn’t buy anything though since I didn’t need and want anything they had to offer. I was more careful afterwards.
But let’s continue with the flight. While waiting for the gate to open I stood within a group (didn’t know they belonged together but afterwards I saw that one of them wore a t-shirt with something like a catholic congress on it) and one of them was eating something purple. Since he made funny faces I asked him what it was and he told me he didn’t know. Everybody was laughing and suddenly I was in a group foto with all of them. 😀 On the walk over to the plane I saw this fire extinguisher which I thought was funny…
On the plane to Manila my neighbour was a swiss guy who owns a dive resort on Bohol. He told me that his resort was featured as ’secret‘ in one of the german dive-magazines. Have to look whether I still have the november edition of it. Small world again, is it? 😉
Once arrived in Manila everything went sort of smoothly. This is one advertisement-wall in Manila:
I checked into my hotel again and then went to ‚La Glorietta‘-shopping mall since this is where the Hard Rock Cafe is and I had promised to buy the HRC-baseball cap for Günther, my friend Kerstin’s husband and favourite dive-buddy (and yeah, I bought another pin for Bumper/Bob in Winnipeg but this is a secret 😉 ). The Glorietta mall actually is built like a star with numbered ‚arms‘. And there are connections to more shopping malls (look like ants running…)
This is the center of the ’star‘ where the 4 arms of the 4 Gloriettas are meeting. Funny thing is that there was some sort of small dive-fair going on. Since admission was free I went in and got some leafleats from more dive-resorts (and yes, I will be back to the Philippines!).
While waiting outside La Glorietta for a taxi I saw that lots of people had been at a supermarket there and guys with carts were helping them to get it all into the taxi. Geeez, the trunk of the taxis were full with what they had bought at the supermarket… but I probably should remember that today is saturday.
That’s it more or less with pics from today. In Manila I took taxis to get to Glorietta and they are really cheap. A car from the hotel would have cost me 4 times as much (one way). The taxi drivers do have bad driving habits though. A couple of times I thought I’d be sort of dead within the next seconds but that never actually happened. I had booked a city tour for tomorrow morning but it will not happen so I am going out to explore the city on my own. Hopefully I will not be hassled by anyone. Have seen some very sad things today in Manila which reminded me of the poorest people in India. Didn’t take any pics of that though.