ten pesos

Mabuhay!

We flew from Panama City soon after 6 a.m. on Monday, March 3 and arrived in Manila on Tuesday, March 4, at 10:40 p.m. local time, (8:40 a.m. Tuesday in Panama City). Dominic hadn’t gone to bed in Smokey’s home on Sunday night/Monday morning, and I had awakened at 2:40 a.m. sneezing with a pet allergy and never resumed sleep before arising at 4:00. We had to go to the airport by 5:00.

We didn’t sleep on the flights, so by the time we landed in Manila on Tuesday at 8:40 a.m. Panama City time, we had been awake a long time and were ready to go to sleep. Remember, Dominic had last been in bed on Saturday night. I couldn’t sleep in an airplane full of people making noise and walking to-and-fro and hearing loud headsets. By the way, I was surprised at the effect of turbulent air upon the big 747 that we flew in from Detroit to Nagoya to Manila. I wouldn’t have expected it to move so much. We weren’t in the rearmost seats of the airplane, but we felt a lot of see-sawing and lateral jarring, especially when ascending to altitude then descending to land, Detroit to Japan then Nagoya to Manila.

After disembarking in Manila International Airport, we soon found the fastest of 18 lanes of travelers waiting at Passport Control. I picked one of the shortest lanes at far right, far from our entrance into the room, and after a couple of minutes he observed that the adjacent, last line of people was feeding two or three immigration checkpoints and was thus moving faster. So we moved four feet aside into that lane then soon visited unsmiling immigration control officers who stamped our passports without question or comment. We didn’t hear “Welcome to the Philippines,” and we weren’t directed with a wave where to go from there.

We veered right again, to the luggage carousel surrounded by passengers from Northwest flight 71. We soon retrieved our four pieces, quicker than most of the people on our flight, then pushed our borrowed luggage carts toward a bored customs inspector under a sign reading Nothing to Declare. Without inspecting our luggage nor questioning us, the customs officer scribbled his initials on my declaration form then waved both of us past him.

We exchanged the dollars in our wallets for pesos at a bank’s booth in the terminal, 40.25 pesos per dollar, then Dom hid his fortune from potential pickpockets.

Then we emerged from the airport terminal and looked for the Filipinas who would meet us with a hand-held sign reading “.” I walked around with a sign reading “Cresencia,”then Dominic took a turn carrying the sign. We also stood together under a sign designating a waiting area for arriving passenger with surnames beginning with “M” and held up the sign for the woman whom we hoped would see two white men and a sign bearing her name. Then Dominic carried high the sign with name again.

We had thought that we would be very easy to see in a crowd of Filipino faces and ultra-dark, straight hair. Two goofy-looking white guys standing near the sign for arriving passengers name “M” as agreed back in Panama City. We wondered if Crisincia was late arriving or had car trouble or a mix-up with the date or time of our arrival.

After perhaps forty minutes, I saw walking near me three women with a white page lettered “Brian & Dominic,” so I eagerly greeted them. They were happy to have found me after looking under “B” for “Brian” and “D” for “Dominic” for more than an hour, and I was relieved that the wait was over. I wanted to ‘get going’ so that I might be able to go to bed!

I left the luggage with the ladies and scurried away to find Dominic who was carrying the sign. After ten minutes or so we boarded a Toyota wagon to travel about an hour on a very straight highway, a route with no turns, to Angeles City to spend the night (and presumably sleep late).

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Around 1 a.m. we went to bed in Nepo and Crisincia’s home near the highway, outside Angeles City. Unfortunately we couldn’t sleep. Dominic thinks that I drifted off for a few minutes a couple of times because I was snoring somewhat. But I wasn’t really asleep. I was just half-dozing at times because the very poor neighborhood was so noisy, including the dogs barking and howling sporadically for hours and the roosters crowing repeatedly after 4:oo. So we didn’t sleep. I insisted on lying in bed and relaxing with eyes shut, hoping to doze-off, yet Dominic arose early to chat-up our hosts.

We ate breakfast after a while of conversation. Dom had a shower and I reorganized contents of luggage and photo gear then took some photos of the home and neighborhood.

Then we hired ‘tricycles’ (small motorcycles with sidecars) to ferry us and our luggage to a local bus terminal so that we could go uphill to Baguio City, the cool ‘Summer Capital’ of the Philippines.