Thursday February 11 5:00 a.m.

Domestic Terminal – Manila Airport

I am sitting inside a coffee shop in the airport waiting for my cappuccino. There is a menu right at the front that lists all the different coffees that they serve. However, there are no prices there. I looked around to find the prices, and I found them on the menu above the counter. I saw there that a cappuccino went for 85 pesos. The exchange right now is 46 to the US dollar.

Anyway, the guy was just starting to ring up the purchase on the cash register and he said to me “One thousand pesos.” I already had a hundred-peso bill out to pay him, though. When he saw that, he changed his tune and told me the real price and gave me my change. I guess I looked like a rube. I can see it working from time to time. And what has the guy got to lose? If someone notices what he tried to do, like I did, what is going to happen? Nothing. It’s not like he tried to rob me. I can’t turn him in to the police. He loses nothing by trying, and he might get 915 pesos. Someone who has just arrived in the country is probably totally unfamiliar with the currencies still and would probably think nothing of handing over a thousand-peso note as opposed to a hundred-peso note. It’s just a 1 and some zeros after all.

The guy probably did me a favor by trying to rip me off so soon after my arrival in the country. (Technically, I am in the country even though I am still in the airport. I arrived on an international flight, and I went through customs and immigration, and then I checked in for my domestic flight to Palawan.) I say he did me a favor, because it put me on my guard. This is a brand new terminal – very clean and modern – but I noticed this young teenager wandering back and forth and back and forth through all the coffee shops and restaurants. He looks like he’s trying to decide what to order, but he has gone through the tables in my coffee shop four times already. I have the feeling he is looking for unattended luggage and things that he can steal. I was already on my guard a little bit. I hadn’t, for example, put my knapsack on the ground under the table. I put it on the chair right beside me. My brush with the cash register con has made me realize, however, that just having my knapsack on the chair beside me in plain sight is not enough. Someone could grab it. I’d see them grab it, but that wouldn’t do me any good if the guy has speed and just disappears. I remember in Ecuador how many people had their knapsacks stolen in Internet cafes. I realized at that time that you had to have physical contact with your knapsack. In Ecuador, I got in the habit of always looping the shoulder strap of the knapsack over my knee. That way, no one can slowly remove it and no one can do a snatch and grab either. After this guy trying the cash register con on me and the kid cruising the tables, I now have the knapsack looped over my knee.

It’s a tough thing to suddenly become aware of stuff like that when you come from a place like Canada or Taiwan. There really is no concern at all for anything like that in Taiwan. You just walk around freely just like you would in Sarnia. I remember that in Ethiopia, I adjusted my behavior to protect myself. However, it wasn’t nearly enough, and I realized that when those kids pickpocketed me. I made plans to adjust my behavior and systems here, but I haven’t had a chance to do it yet. I’m still in that transition state from Taiwan to the Philippines. I haven’t had a chance to do any kind of big switch. I was thinking about it even before I left from Taiwan because I remember the last time I came to Palawan. I met this German woman who had been pickpocketed in the airport right after she arrived. They got her cash. Then she found out that her bank card wouldn’t work in the ATMs. So she was in big trouble.

The difficult thing is that I’m here only for a short time. And I didn’t really want to strip myself of all my Taiwan stuff. I wanted to have all of my Taiwan ID and bank cards and MRT cards with me as I went to the airport. And I wanted to have them with me when I land again. It turned out to be a good thing I did, because they asked me for my ARC at the airport.

Technically, I suppose, all I really need for this trip is my passport and cash. I could have left everything else behind. Then I wouldn’t have to worry quite as much. As it is, I brought my full wallet with me, and it is exactly the same as when I carry it around with me in Taiwan. I brought a second wallet with me. This wallet is completely empty. And my plan was to switch wallets here. I was just going to put my Philippine pesos in my old empty wallet and take my regular wallet and just put it away and never carry it with me. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet, though, and I still am using my full wallet. And that’s making me nervous. All I’ve been able to do so far is make sure to put it in my front pocket – and close the snaps.

It’s interesting how quickly this topic has made an impression on me. It started earlier than this, in fact. It started when I changed money. The last time I came to Palawan, I got into all kinds of trouble because I didn’t know that the only place to change money on Palawan was in Puerto Princesa. I tried to be sensible, and I changed just some money in the airport in Manila. But then after I left Puerto Princesa, I learned that none of the banks outside of that city would change money. And even in Puerto Princesa, they wouldn’t change traveler’s checks. I really got screwed on the exchange when I had to go to the black market to do it. I can’t remember the figure anymore, but I think I lost something like 30% of the value. I had no choice. It was that or starve to death.

This time I didn’t want to make the same mistake, and I decided to change all of my money in the airport in Manila. I assumed the rate would be slightly worse than the rate at a bank outside the airport, but that’s okay. And in the end, I changed money right in the baggage claim area. I didn’t even wait until I was outside in the airport proper. One would assume that the very first money exchange booth you see – the one in the baggage claim area – would have the worst rate. I assumed that, anyway, but I figured the slight loss would be worth the security of doing it there and doing it early. I was very surprised, then, to find out that that booth had the best rate of all. Not by much, but still. They gave 46.15 pesos for a US dollar. Every other place I saw was offering 46 or 45.9. That’s very strange in terms of my life. I ALWAYS get the worst rate no matter what I do. My life appears to be programmed that way. But this time, I actually changed money at the best place. Of course, the rate outside the airport could be 49 or 50 or something. But I don’t think so. I was chatting with my seatmate on the plane, and this guy had been to Manila a few times over the last few weeks. He said that the rate just yesterday had been 44 to the dollar.

Anyway, the point isn’t the rate. The point is that the young woman who counted out my money did it at least four times. It might have been five or six. I lost count. And she counted it out in different ways, totaling it on a calculator each time. Perhaps any mistakes come out of her pay. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that that is true. If her counting was supposed to give me confidence, it didn’t work. I actually lost confidence in her. I counted along with her each time, and the total was correct each time. But then she’d count again, and she did it with such dexterity, she could easily have palmed some bills or pulled some kind of trick at the last minute. I was so confused by the end, that I was starting to lose track of what she was doing. She also counted so many times and for so long, that the people behind me in line were getting impatient. That put pressure on me. I wanted to count the money for myself, but people had already waited for so long, that I felt guilty. Had this woman counted the money twice, I would likely have let it go. But she did it so many times, that I couldn’t trust the final count anymore. So when she gave me the rather large stack of bills, I forced myself to count them. I’d also brought a calculator. I know from experience that using a calculator is the only way for me to really be sure of exchange calculations. I get flustered in those situations, and I can easily misplace a decimal in my head. They’re very tense situations, really. All that money in public, and you generally have your passport out and other things. It is so easy to get mixed up and get ripped off or accidentally lose something. I find I have to force myself to be very careful – especially when I am as tired as I am now.

I’m almost as tired as I would be had I flown around the world. The problem is that my flight was at 1:30 in the morning. I worked all day, and then I went home and showered and packed and then caught the airport bus at around 10 at night. It’s now 5:30 in the morning, and I haven’t slept all. On top of that, I was tense for some reason, and I got almost no sleep the night before either. It was a tough day at work because I was so tired. And it has been a tough time in the airports.

Packing in some ways was a lot easier than all of my other trips for the simple reason that I didn’t bring a bicycle. No weeks of fine-tuning the bike and the gear. And no long, long days and nights of dismantling a bike and trying to get it into a box. And then no huge physical effort of getting the box to the airport and checked in for the flight.

Yet, because there seemed to be no pressure, I never really came to grips with packing and I left everything to the last minute. I also couldn’t decide how to pack. I told you that I rented a motorcycle. Well, that left me wondering how to carry my luggage on the motorcycle. I really have no idea what’s possible. I did a normal packing (for me) and I ended up with what felt like too much to put on a 125 motorcycle. I packed and repacked and repacked again, changing my mind each time about what to bring. My final packing was a somewhat light one. There were two main problems – camping gear and camera gear. I decided that for this trip, I was going to go with neither. I took out all of my normal hotel-camping gear – mosquito net and sleeping sheet etc. Then I forced myself to leave the camera gear behind. I really didn’t want to carry all that heavy glass around. I might end up regretting it, but, to be honest, right now I’m feeling good about it. I’m only here for 11 or 12 days. I’m just here to relax and enjoy myself. I enjoy photography, of course, but I tend to get carried away. I go out there looking for pictures like I’m working on assignment or something. It becomes almost a job. And right now, I can’t see that I need another 400 slides from Palawan. I took pictures of the beaches last time I was here. So, despite having all my camera gear ready (I bought new batteries and new film), I left it all behind. All I brought is my little digital point-and-shoot. I think in the end that will prove to be the right choice. If I were traveling by jeepney and boat, I could bring more stuff. But on the motorbike, I don’t want to be overloaded. I just want to be more free and easy.

I heard a lot of horror stories about my airline – Cebu Pacific Air. However, so far those stories are just stories. There was a fairly long line at the airport in Taipei and they could have used another counter or two open, but that wasn’t a big deal. And the flight left more or less on time and there was no problem checking in. The interior of the jet was fairly old and worn, but there was tons of legroom. That’s a fair trade-off for me. I’d much rather have legroom than a fancy video screen. There were no meals or free drinks. You had to pay for any drink that you wanted, but that was fine, too. They only wanted the equivalent of a dollar for a drink.

I was very impressed with the operation when we landed in Manila. Both their international and domestic flights land at terminal 3, so you don’t have to really go anywhere to make a transfer. They had tons of staff and they all spoke good English and were professional and helpful. There was lots of room to move around and everything was clearly marked.

I even got lucky with my seatmate on the flight. He was a total psycho, but I was lucky in that I didn’t start up a conversation with him until we were landing. That’s when I learned he was a psycho. So I only had to deal with his babble and craziness for just a few minutes. He was one of these guys that would never stop talking once he started, and I couldn’t understand anything he said. I can’t imagine if I’d started a conversation earlier. I’d have had two hours of that babbling and his extremely bad breath.

I was luckier here in the airport. I had a coffee at that place where they guy tried to rip me off, but then I went to a little restaurant called “Let’s Chow.” I had a tasty bowl of chicken soup for 140 pesos ($3). A Filipino man asked if he could share my table and we chatted over our chicken soups. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, and had spent most of his life working overseas. He was a chicken-sexer/sorter. It took me a long time to figure this out. He finally got out a cell phone and showed me a video of him standing at a table in front of boxes of hundreds of baby chicks. His job was to sort them into male and female. He did that for nine years in Saudi Arabia and then for four years in Sri Lanka. His contract in Sri Lanka is up, and he will be going to Nigeria next. Amazing what people do for jobs and where they go to do them. It was interesting to compare notes on working overseas. He, of course, became fluent in Singhalese. He was the only foreigner in his chicken factory, and he was in a rural area. So he had to learn the local language. He commented that white people in Sri Lanka are treated like royalty. I guess the implication was that he was not. I tend to complain about my job and my working conditions and salary etc. But compared to working in Saudi Arabia as a chick sorter for nine years, I’ve got it pretty sweet in Taiwan.

I’m now in another coffee shop. I have another half hour to kill before my flight to Palawan starts to board. Being in this airport is a totally different experience from being in the Taipei airport. This airport is more modern and much, much nicer and cleaner. It also has an abundance of nice places to shop and places to sit and have a cup of coffee or some food. The people are also different. They are more cosmopolitan. In Taipei, you pretty much see Chinese people. You don’t get anyone else except for the odd foreign English teacher/editor like me. This airport is full of people from all over the world and from all walks of life: backpackers, businessmen, families, Europeans, Americans, everybody. The Filipinos working in the airport and in all the businesses in the airport speak excellent English. More, they excel at their jobs. The service is fast and prompt and friendly and logical. I’d say that the service in Taiwan is none of those things except that I’d first say, “What service?”

 

 

 

Tags: Domestic Terminal Manila Airport, job, Palawan Motorbike Trip, Puerto Princesa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan