Manila

Philippines- 7,107 islands in the Western Pacific oceans.

We arrived in Manila early in the morning, after a night of no sleep and were greeted by rain and the first culture shock of this trip, hopefully also the last.

Manila is a city of high-rise buildings of the western style, but what you notice first is the lower slum-like streets covered with dirt, litter, poverty. We looked at each other and thought simultaneously- lets try to keep moving. This turned out to be not as easy as we first thought. Drenched with rain we literally fell into a taxi. We had no idea where we were going or how to get there. "To the ferry", we said to the taxi man. He looked at us in confusion. "Which ship?" "Where do the ships go to?" we asked back. This confused the driver even more. "Which pier?" he insisted in his little English. Of course we had no idea and he was obviously not going to guide us in any way, so we said the only ferry company name that we knew- SuperFerry, coincidentally we knew this name only because the previous day it had been on the news- there had been an accident, 957 passangers were rescued, about 9 killed. No matter- onwards with bravery!

Getting to the ferry station we were unfortunately informed that there were no ferries going that day. We booked one for the next morning and went with heavy hearts to look for decent enough accomodation.


At a small bar in Manila

Next morning we arrived in the ferry station. Half an hour and no sign of the boat. 2 hours. 6 hours- almost falling over by this stage. After 12 hours of waiting the passengers were informed that there was still no clear indication when the ship would be given an OK sign by the inspections. This was for us enough. We were obviously not meant to sail from this town. The rain kept pouring down. We went to the Internet and booked a flight straight away to Cebu, second largest city in the middle of Visayas, furthest away from the capital we could go.