Manila

I had heard mixed reviews of Manila before we arrived, but I have to confess that of the (less than) 1% of the city that we walked around and saw first hand, I liked what I saw. To be fair, we only saw the part that was near the airport but I would be up for spending more time someday investigating what Manila has to offer. Terminal 3 of the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport is exceptionally clean and was mostly empty when we arrived from our Cebu Air flight from Caticlan.

We had pre-booked three rooms at the Manila Marriott Hotel (highly recommended). We could see the hotel from where we stood on the arrivals platform at the airport but because we had several bags and even more children, we decided to wait for a shuttle. Without going into all the luxurious details, the hotel is very nice. I’d put it into the “moderately luxurious business travel” category instead of the “staying with family and kids” category. By the way, the kids were very impressed by the bomb sniffing dog at the front gate; however Jess didn't seem to share their enthusiasm.

At first glance, the bomb sniffing dogs and under-car mirrors look out of place, but the precautions are not unwarranted. In November 2010, the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand warned their citizens that Manila and other parts of Philippines were a terrorist threat and issued travel advisories. Also, there were at least five incidents in 2010 that were attributed to terrorist groups. I think now is a good time to digress and write a little about my thoughts regarding Philippines' pre-occupation with security protocols. We had many opportunities to witness the country's love of metal detectors, x-ray machines and pat downs during our vacation. My only realization is that they make up for their complete lack of thoroughness (or in many cases sheer apathy) with raw quantity. There are metal detectors before entering major hotels and casinos. Heck, you can't even enter the airport without showing your ID, boarding card and then going through a metal detector (with all bags going through an X-ray machine). Through all of these security measures, I always managed to inadvertently smuggle some sort of 'contraband' past the eyes of the security detail. At the Manila Airport it was just easier to receive the cursory pat-down for weapons then it was to properly remove the metal and liquids from my person.

I will say one neat thing about the security guards in the Philippines is that they are armed. In the case of Boracay, many of the security guards looked scarcely old enough to drive but they had impressive looking bandoliers (with shiny gold belt buckles), batons and service revolvers (one of my goals during vacation was to talk a security guard into holding up his revolver James Bond style so I could take a picture but I never quite had the nerve to ask). And since the security guards (think “rent-a-cop”) had the revolvers, the actual police officers often had sawed-off shotguns and bulletproof vests (although it still doesn’t match Italy, which has army personnel with machines guns stationed at the airport. I think they just do it as part of a macho guy thing…).

After we got ourselves settled into our rooms, we went in search of the pool. The kids had been sitting patiently on cars, boats, buses, shuttles, and airplanes all day so letting them burn off some energy in the pool seemed like the right way to go. After a quick check for the pool on the 8th floor (sorry everyone in the VIP Executive Lounge, we're just confused tourists with a gaggle of children. What, no pool up here? Very strange …) we found it outside on the second floor. We ordered lunch and cocktails and let the kids do their thing in the pool.

After several hours at the pool and a nap for me, we decided to shower the kids and walk around until we found someplace family-friendly to eat for supper. After a 10 minute walk around the immediate area, it looked like our best bet was actually back inside the casino building that was attached to our hotel.

We wound up eating at a very nice New Orleans style restaurant (how very Filipino of us...) and finished it off with some crepes and ice cream. Luckily for us, right outside our restaurant they were performing a Chinese New Year dance. I’m not sure they realized we actually fled the country to avoid such things… (just kidding, sort of).

Back up at 3:40am on Saturday to get the clan back to the airport. Travel Day #2 here we come! The Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport has several terminals and they are actually 10km apart. We were staying by Terminal 3, but we needed to get to Terminal 1 (the International terminal). We piled into a couple taxis, made our way through the aforementioned x-rays machines and metal detectors and promptly walked into the most dysfunctional airport I have ever seen. Seriously. The exact opposite is true for everything good I said above for Terminal 3.

All I can say is that every step that a traveler must take between entering the airport to boarding the plane was seemingly a surprise for the airport staff. It was Saturday was everyone's first day on the job. In no particular order, I’ll list off a few struggles we ran into:

  • Every line is unbearably slow.
    • And it is unbearably slow because each station is understaffed by 300%. Why would you lay out an airport so you have 10 immigration lines feed into TWO security lines?
  • No respect for the gold card.
    • This may sound a little snotty to some of you (because it totally is) but if I have a gold card and you don’t, that means you’re going to wait and I’m going to cut you if there is a separate gold card line available. The little red ropes with the VIP lines are there for a reason, people. I have a flat spot on my butt and bruises on my knees from all the airline miles I’ve suffered through and that entitles me to faster service. I’m nice as a wait in line, but dammit, I’m not waiting in the Economy line.
    • So we and the Esmonds (Dan is also the owner a magic gold card) are waiting at the Business Class check-in line. We don’t fly business class, but our gold card lets us pretend like we are. An airport worker held us in the line and made us wait until all the economy passengers had been serviced before we could go forward. Partway through the drama, Dan asked the worker if we were indeed standing in the business class line and he replied with a firm “yes”, then he proceeded to continue to hold us there. If I was traveling alone and had time to kill it would have been funny, but with all the children, at 5:00am, with very little time to spare it wasn’t so humorous.
  • Ticket-counter workers who are friendly, but utterly clueless.
    • Maybe I’m being too harsh, but the ticket counter attendant put Jess, myself, Henry and Addi (Truman had no ticket) in FOUR separate rows spread throughout the airplane. Ummm, who does that? When Jess requested that we sit together she looked confused and replied that the plane was full. Jess replied that it was too bad but entirely the agent’s problem and that we needed to be seated together. After several such iterations, she managed to get Jess and the kids together but I was ticketed for a seat 15 rows away. But she kept smiling warmly at us the entire time. At that moment I would have given anything for the fast, efficient coldness of a United Airlines ticket counter attendant. I’m pretty sure they take care of your problems quickly because they hate you and just want you to leave but in the end they still solve your problems. No such luck with Air China in Manila.
  • Terminal Fees that aren’t included in the cost of your ticket.
    • That’s right folks, after the check-in line, they put you in a separate line and make you pay 750 Pesos, per person, just to continue on to the immigration line. I'm not sure what happens if you have no money to continue. Do they hold you in the airport? We were expecting 200 Pesos per person so we ran out of money. Luckily Dan had brought along some US dollars and she accepted a combination of Philippine Peso and US dollars. In my opinion, the entire operation is a way to enable corruption (which is rife in the Philippines). That’s the only explanation I can come up with why they wouldn’t include it in the price of the ticket.
  • Bad lounges, bad lounge staff.
    • We found the airport lounge. In short: it sucks, don’t bother. But that’s nothing new. Nearly all United lounges in the Unites States suck. Sucky lounges, I can deal with. But the woman took our tickets and did some lounge bookkeeping with them and neglected to tell us that our flight had an early boarding time and was boarding at that exact moment. She may not have noticed the six kids with us when we walked in but she must have realized we’re not the fastest walkers in the airport. We had just sat down with snacks and juice for the kids when a frantic Air China worker comes in and tells us that the plane is boarding at the doors are closing in three minutes! After we wet our pants we grab our stuff (except Jake’s sweatshirt, Dan had to run back for it later), and start power walking through the airport to our gate. We made the flight but the entire debacle could’ve been easily avoided by the lounge staff telling us about the flight.

All-in-all, Manila seems like a very cool place and I would love to visit again to check it out. Of all our experiences in the Philippines, I have to say that Terminal 1 of the Manila airport was really the only downer during the great week we spent there.