Taken for a Ride

I was still nursing a dehydration headache from the flight. It had been somewhat of an experience - the journey from Puchong to Clark International Airport (Manila). The flight was slightly delayed, as low cost flights frequently are, and we arrived in Clark at one a.m. along with two flights from Korea. We were faced with long queues for immigration and also for customs, which wore our lethargic selves down even further.

In a sleepless daze we inched forward in the Philippine immigration queue. We hustled into Customs, where humanity of all sizes and nationalities elbowed and jumped queue. Smiling I noticed that queue jumpers finally got their comeuppances on being stopped by immigration officers and asked to open their luggage.  It was then that all varieties of personal and intimate clothing were revealed to the clear plastic-glove wearing, broadly smiling, Customs men, while my wife and I were waved through with grins and a most satisfied air.

Early morning may not be the best time to visit Clark International Airport. However, our low-cost carrier only gave the most reasonable rates if we emulated non-too-wise owls and stayed up all night, bleary-eyed. This may not have been the wisest decision in the history of aviation but, eventually, having escaped the confines of what can only be described as one of the tiniest airports in the world, we were faced with the further adventure of finding transport for our two hour journey into Makati City – an adjunct to Manila proper.

I might explain here that, having booked our air-tickets on-line, and imagining Clark airport to be the airport for Manila, we were sorely disappointed and a tad annoyed that no one had pointed out to us that Clark was in fact a separate city, and had been a United States Air Force base, on Luzon Island, from 1903 to 1991. Though the American involvement was none of our business, Clark was a low cost carrier airport stuck out in the Philippine wilderness, some 30 miles from Manila.  It was therefore a further shock when we realised that we would have to navigate a path to the distant Makati City, which itself was on the fringes of Manila, and every bit of two hours away.

The dark Philippine early hours brought a scarcity of available transport.  After a significant amount of thoughtful head scratching, a worried frown or three, and looks of utter puzzlement between my wife and I, we managed to exit that miniscule airport and just miss the only vehicle we could have identified as a bus.
The time rapidly approached one a.m. and, after some debate about personal safety and thoughts about what could possibly happen if we bundled into the back of a local non-descript van - we were roughly bundled into the back of a seemingly non-descript van, and thus began our cramped journey towards Makati City.

Sitting in knee-touching intimacy with a mixed group of Filipino locals, I began to empathise with Mexican illegal immigrants and how they must feel on their illicit journeying towards El Norte (the North of America). One half of an hour later, the van stopped at something which might be identified as a bus terminus – mostly due to the number of buses. One smiling, kind, but firmly heroic Filipina guided us into the terminus and volunteered to find a suitable bus for our onward journey into Makati City (Manila). That smiling Samaritan suddenly bolted from our side and dashed in front of a bus. It was not a suicide attempt, but a dash to hail transport for us. Seemingly the first bus was not headed in the correct direction, so she tried a second with more success. Our saviour insisted that we board the bus and reasoned that it would take us to within half a kilometre of our destination - and it did, within a half kilometre in some direction or other.

On an adventurous two hour journey through the early morning streets of Manila, accompanied by dishevelled, sleeping humanity, we witnessed Call-Centre slaves crawling from their phone tied desks, fruit merchants piling mountains of dappled green watermelons and elongated jeepney taxis disgorging and being filled with all varieties of Filipino wage slaves. That shabby, but nevertheless welcome, transport edged its way along dimly yellow lit streets and inched its way towards Makati. The journey seemed every second of its two hour length, and as the time approached four a.m. - the bus stopped. The not unhelpful bus conductor lifted our luggage from his aromatic comfort zone, and finally we stepped down onto an almost deserted Makati highway.

The bus ambled off, leaving us, literally, stranded on a Manila main thoroughfare in the middle of a quarter-moon night. We innocents were without a clue as to how we were going to find our hotel. Suddenly, butter-yellow taxi after butter-yellow taxi emerged from the saffron twilight. One driver after another tried to entice us into dark air-con depths, offering fares ranging from 250 to 100 pesos. However, now being a tad cautious, none of those prices seemed at all genuine - so we began to walk. Yes, yes, I know – dark city, night, strangers, danger – I was well aware of our situation and had been in that situation once before, in Goa (India), and survived.

My beautiful, but somewhat trusting, wife walked up to the first stranger she witnessed, just off that taxi bestrewn highway. He was a well-armed, handsome young guard in a tight fitting khaki uniform. Within seconds of hearing of our plight, and no doubt because of the sweetest smile from my wife, that gun toting security guard flagged down a taxi and encouraged the driver to take us to our hotel - on the meter. There was a sense of 'or else' about his manner, as he noticeably rested his hand on his holstered gun stock. The cost - 54 pesos, we had been right in our suspicions. Sleep eventually caught up with us in that brown-themed mini-suit sixteen stories above the wakening street, and we slept fitfully, in preparation for an afternoon of business meetings.