Manila, notorious for being an expensive, unpleasant and a somewhat dangerous place to be in all of the Philippines wasn't nearly as bad of an experience for both Marlieke and myself. Perhaps it had something to do with having such low expectations about the city but aside from getting stupidly ripped off by the taxi driver from the airport all was great.
Another thing many travelers mention about the country is the less tantalizing food, compared to other countries in SE Asia especially Malaysian, Indonesian and Thai food the street food we found here was not so bad at all.
One thing the was a huge surprise to me was that almost all the locals from whichever class whether upper, lower and all in between all spoke impressive English.
The owner and workers of the pleasant hotel in which we stayed were all very helpful and catered to all of our needs without hesitation and always with a smile. Filipino people are some of the happiest people I have come across having travelled extensively in SE Asia - I know Marlieke and I are going going to have an awesome time over the next month here.
Getting about the city on both the light rail service and jeepneys (elongated old jeep people carriers) was all very easy, cheap too.
We spent one of these two days in the Mall of Asia, where I spent more money than I needed to but it was time to treat myself having worked as hard as I had back in Canada.
The first day however I spent reviving myself from the exhaustion of jetlag and of course the time made up from not seeing Marlieke for 4 months.
Getting ripped off by the taxi driver from the airport really irritated me as it was stupid on my part but quite ingenious on his. As friendly as Filipinos are, they won't hesitate to take that extra cash from you, especially the taxi drivers. What he did was tell us that the taxi meter was broken and would display the total upon arrival. When the total was twice as expensive than initially quoted by the set price taxis back at the airport and being as tired as we both were I reluctantly paid the price at 1135 pesos. The moment the taxi driver drove off presumably with a huge grin on his face I had the realization of the monumental mistake we had made. 11:35 was the time but displayed without numerical punctuation!!! Arrrg!
I'll give the guy credit for his ingenuity albeit that these scams annoy the hell out of me but even more so that I didn't see it sooner.
After a crazy downpour, Manila
The converted Jeeps left over from WWII called Jeepney’s
The people of Manila
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