Philippine Travel Notes

This is a short one and just a teaser really for those of you who like looking at city lights from a flying witch’s perspective! Okay, the Cebu Pacific flight from Cebu City is at about 5:50PM so you expect to arrive at 7:40PM over at Clark. Dark enough when passing by the Metropolis, right? The return flight is even mighty better, leaving Clark at 8PM and arriving at Cebu by 9:50PM – you get to view the night scenes of both Metro Manila and Metro Cebu! The flights (both ways) use an ATR72 aircraft. It’s a turboprop, not a jet so that it does not fly high enough over the clouds. Thus, you get a very good view of the cities below. Whichever way you take, your flight will be passing somewhere above Manila Bay so you have a fantastic view of the whole metropolis at night. The street, house and building lights are so nice to see criss-crossing the vast urbanity. It’s like a mesh of arteries and veins made of lights. Some are too bright, some are faint and others are just specks. But th...

Quote from previous blog entry: And the bus departed… but one more lesson learned here… have thicker clothing ready for the bus ride. Air conditioning on most Ceres buses can be too cold to bear – even if its sunny hot outside. On this bus ride, some passengers requested the conductor to close the “aircon” from time to time since the minimum thermostat setting was still too cold. This is a 3.5 hour or so bus ride and is just worth P176. Unquote! Okay now, the bus departed from Lilo-an and I think I never even got to see a clearer view of the town of Santander. As that bus started speeding through, most of us were still busy trying to fit bags and backpacks wherever they may fit. Plus the conductor was also busy roaming around giving us our tickets. Am not even sure where, but I know I got a glimpse of the Santander Municipal Hall – a generally pink building. The bus started tracing that road running along the eastern seaboard of the island. So what not to miss? If you are the...

From the church, I walked the short road that leads to the jetty port. This street actually runs along the side of the church. Interesting! It is lined with a lot of little stores that sell “pasalubong”, foodstuffs and many other things - including those that have videoke machines. This also seem to be the favourite eating place of drivers and high school students from the school nearby. The only taxi service in town (not metered) has some kind of a hub here owing to the presence of the little port. The jetty is a busy crossing point to Liloan (pronounced Lee-Lo-Un) in the island of Cebu. Oops, two things to note here: 1) Liloan is a barangay of the town of Santander (southernmost town of the island province of Cebu). It is not to be confused with the town of Liloan over at the northeastern portion of the same island and of course. Take note too not to confuse this with the town of Liloan in Southern Leyte which also has a ferry port (going to Surigao), and; 2) this jetty is not wher...

Check-out from Harold’s Mansion was without any fanfare. The lady who processed my bill even told me I could take a tricycle to the town of Sibulan instead of taking a jeep/multicab so as to avoid the long wait until it gets full. Having recalled that the airport is actually in the town of Sibulan, and that it did not take me long from there to the city, then I deduced that Sibulan is just near to Dumaguete. So I opted to take a trike ride… and right in front of Harold’s Mansion! Hailed the first empty tricycle to pass by and the manong greeted me with “good morning ser, where to?”. Yep, in English! And I liked the “where to?” part of his question. Told him I am not foreigner and wanted to go to Sibulan Plaza in front of the church and the city hall. He agreed, but although I instinctively felt this man won’t fool me with an exorbitant fare, I still asked him “how much”. At first I heard the usual “ikaw bahala sir”, but I insisted on an amount. He did tell me an amount – which I can...