I have arrived in Asia at last! My flight to the Philippines arrived in Manila at 3:30 am - two hours earlier than scheduled. Due to a misunderstanding when I booked the flight, my connection to Jakarta, Indonesia did not depart until 9 pm which meant I had more downtime between flights than it took me to fly from San Francisco to Manila! I was really dreading this portion of the trip … 16 hours in the airport which had now became 18 hours due to Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) efficiency in delivering me to Manila.

Over the phone last week, when I discovered the booking error (my original connecting flight to Jakarta was supposed to have been at 7:30 am, merely a few hours after my arrival in Manila), PAL was less than helpful to say the least. Their line was basically “Tough luck. And no, you can’t leave the airport because your ticket doesn’t allow a stopover in the Philippines. And no, you can’t have PAL lounge privileges despite flying business class from San Francisco because your flight to Jakarta is only coach class.” It was with amazement and great relief that I discovered the agents at the PAL desk in Manila were much more sympathetic and understood the concept of customer service. They not only gave me lounge privileges, but allowed me to leave the airport and even comp’d me a 4 star hotel for the day (which they called a “wash up”) where I could sleep and get a shower during my extensive layover. Hallelujah!

So at 4 am, my taxi driver (also complimentary) drove me to the Park Century Hotel. In the 20 minute drive between the airport and the hotel, I got my first glimpse of Manila and Asia. Within the first 5 minutes, things didn’t really look so different from the U.S. All the signage was in English. The cars mostly looked the same as those in the States. The gas stations looked the same. But then it changed … at least a little. First, I noticed that there was a significant amount of traffic on the roads for 4am - it looked like American rush hour except that it wasn’t “stop and go.” My driver told me that the workday in Manila starts at 6am and ends at 4pm and many people travel from outside the city to get to work. So I basically caught the cusp of Manila’s rush hour. Also, I began to see many unique looking vehicles that we don’t have “back home.” 

They’re called gebnies and they resemble the old tourist vehicles that were used in Yellowstone National Park in … was it the 50’s? According to my driver they exist only in the Philippines - and somewhere in Africa where they ordered 100 gebnies from the Philippines. I’ll blame it on jet lag that, despite seeing hundreds of gebnies, it didn’t occur to me to photograph one until, as it turns out, we were heading into the airport terminal later that afternoon for my evening flight. So I’m sorry to say, this isn’t the best photo of a gebny but this will give you an idea of what they look like.  

My Room at the Park Century Hotel

After checking into the old but still fairly cushy Park Century, I crashed for several hours. My rumbling stomach woke me up at noon and I ventured out of the hotel to the mall across the street to find a bite to eat. I ended up in Rai Rai Ken, a Japanese bento and ramen restaurant that, although I was being waited on, felt more like fast food than traditional restaurant. Like Waffle House, they had pictures of all their offerings so, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was ordering, I knew it looked yummy. How dangerous could a bowl of ramen something or other be? Plus I could identify the egg floating on top so I knew I was getting some good protein. The mystery meat in the dish was later identified as pork liver. Not bad.

Mystery Ramen from Rai Rai Ken

With a full tummy, I wandered around the mall where everyone greeted me as “ma’am.” With the accents it sounded like everyone was calling me “mom.” Several guys dressed smartly in suits tried to give me free things including an alarm that would fit on the doors and windows of the house I don’t have explaining they were just trying to advertise. Most people I talked to guessed that I was from Australia. Although all of this made me giggle and I wanted to stick around for more, jet lag and my full tummy were calling me back to bed so I crashed again for another few hours before heading back to the airport for my evening flight to Jakarta, Indonesia. When I arrived in Jakarta at midnight, I headed straight to the in-airport hotel where a friend had reserved a room for me. There was some kind of misunderstanding though because neither my name nor my friend’s was on their reservation list and they were fully booked. The man at the front desk kindly called around to other hotels until he found one that could accommodate me for the 6 hours I had before heading back to the airport again for my final flight to Bali in the morning.  

My Room at the FM7 Resort Hotel

I arrived at the 4 star FM7 Resort Hotel at 1am. I was extremely dubious that I had been delivered to the right place as I walked up the flight of stairs. The thunderous noises emerging from above sounded more like a disco than a hotel reception desk; much less that of a 4 star hotel. The karaoke room from which the obnoxiously loud noises eminated was closed away behind a heavy wooden door. Given how loud it was in the lobby, I couldn’t imagine how anyone’s eardrums survived upon opening that door. In broken English, the manager assured me that the rooms were completely sealed off from the karaoke sounds. It was 1 am. I had no choice but to trust him. Luckily, he was right. My room was indeed quiet and comfy with extremely modern decor. A basket of complimentary fruit sat on the desk - and I was starving! I recognized the bananas and oranges but there was also a mystery fruit. Since all the fruits were “peelable” I knew they were safe for me to eat (I’ll get into “eating rules” another time but basically, “pretend you’re in Mexico” is the general guideline).  

Mystery Fruit

The mystery fruit was the size and shape of an extremely large strawberry. The skin looked and felt like rich brown snakeskin.  When I peeled the skin away, there were three sections of fruit inside. It had the texture of an uncooked squash.   The closest thing I can compare the taste to is pineapple - but it wasn’t juicy, but was quite yummy.  Each section had a really big seed/pit that was the size, shape and color of the brown river stones often seen in people’s rock gardens.  I ate one mystery fruit and brought the other with me for identification. Still breathing.

For breakfast this morning I had rice, fried fish, hot and sour chicken, cabbage with anchovies and some little sausage things - all of which I neglected to photograph in my hurry to eat before catching the 7 am shuttle back to the airport. I’m looking very forward to arriving in Ubud, Bali this afternoon where I will encounter no more airports for at least 5 weeks!

Additional photos for this and other blog entries can be found on the “Photos of Her Adventure” page of this blog.