As if our hor­ri­ble flight (read here) had not been enough, mak­ing our way into the coun­try was not easy either, as we did not have an out­bound flight  because we didn’t know what our next des­ti­na­tion would be.  We were told we had to pur­chase a ticket on the spot, but even­tu­ally man­aged to get through cus­toms with­out doing so by show­ing an itin­er­ary we had printed a few days before as a pos­si­ble flight  com­bi­na­tion. Next step wast to get to Manila  from Clark air­port; we took the bus which  is 350 pesos per per­son ( 1 euro is aboyut 67 Fil­ipino Pesos) and a 1.5 hour ride. This should give enough time to decide where you’re going to stay because at 11.5 mil­lion peo­ple Manila is no easy city to be tamed.

Jeep­ney in Manila

Using ould LP guide we decided to check out a hos­tel in Ermita, not far from Intramuros(Manila’s old Span­ish quar­ter), which sounded good. But upon arrival it was a bit to pricey for what it ofered and we tried sev­eral hotels close by that were a much bet­ter value for just a bit more  money.  After check­ing avail­abil­ity in many of them Cherry Blos­soms Hotel (odd name I must admit) was our pick and we called it come for 2 days. They have superb food (boy were those spaguetti awe­some) and very friendly staff.

Unfor­tu­nately Manila (city) does not have much going on. The city is exactly what I imag­ined and reflects what most movies por­tray of it. Traf­fic, noise, pol­lu­tion, poverty and fast food restau­rants (prob­a­bly the US biggest cul­tural impact) are all– or almost– over,  except in Intra­muros, the area sur­rounded by a wall built by the Span­ish dur­ing col­o­niza­tion that has changed very lit­tle since. I also rec­om­mend that If you really want a burger you stay away from Jol­libee restau­rants– make  your way to good (?) ol’ McDonald’s instead because the burg­ers are quite better.

Street parade

Real­iz­ing that there was not much more to enjoy we checked trans­porta­tion to Don­sol, a small town in SE Luzon that doesn’t have much going on except prob­a­bly being the best place in the world to see whale sharks. How­ever despite only being 450 km away the bus appar­ently takes about 14 hours to get there from Manila. Liza was not too pleased about another long bus ride, so fur­ther research said that Moal­boal in Cebu was also a good spot to see the whale sharks and sea tur­tles. Cebu is the main hub of the Visayas, a stretch of islands world famous for its beaches, plus it was a good place from which our trip south. We also looked into a nearby vol­cano that is said to be a great day tour, but unfor­tu­nately we didn’t visit it because we found a cheap flight with Cebu Pacific Air (the Philip­pines LCA) to Cebu and the thank­fuly smooth flight had us there by mid morn­ing of the fol­low­ing day.