Adventures in Guangzhou!

I unpacked, repacked, got a few hours of sleep, and then Kelly and I headed off for a quick adventure to the Philippines. I wish I could say that I've always had a burning desire to get to the Philippines but actually it came down to Manila having the cheapest plane tickets. This being national holiday time in China, we were excited to get as far away as possible from the hordes of travelers in the mainland.

Our luck in finding plane tickets had us departing from the Macau Airport, normally about two hours away. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 3pm and we were on a 7:30am bus from Guangzhou, but I was still worried we'd be late. Luckily for us, we managed to beat the crowds on the highway and really only ran into long lines going through customs from Zhuhai (the Chinese border town with Macau). The thing is, when you hit lines in China, it can be like a brick wall. There were thousands of people in a small room and it was a small step away from mass chaos. We made it through, though, and after a quick bus ride to the airport, it was surprisingly empty.

The flight itself was an uneventful two hours and before I knew it we were touching down in Clark Airport, site of the old U.S. military base about an hour north of Manila. Unfortunately, due to traffic (presumably unrelated to the Chinese holiday), our hour turned into more like two and a half hours to the city center.

First impressions: Manila is huge! Even Guangzhou-huge! The city seems to alternate between sparkling skyscraper and poverty-stricken slum every 100m. There is English everywhere! There are malls even in the middle of the countryside. Consequently, they seem to have every fast food chain imaginable (Wendy's? Check. Sbarro's? Check.)

We got off in the Pasay neighborhood not at a bus station, but rather at the mini lot where this particular bus company had space. Apparently Manila doesn't really have any large bus stations, but rather areas where each company has a lot and a ticket office. Luckily we were prepped for cab drivers trying to hustle newcomers coming off buses and we managed to avoid guys trying to charge us 350 pesos for a ride around the corner. We flagged down a random cab and he used the meter without prompting, which was a nice change.

The cab we got into turned out to be one of the more entertaining taxi moments in recent memory, as our driver was something of a comic. He spent the entire ten minute ride joking about Manila, the Philippines, cars, traffic, the U.S., tourists, guards, and food. He also wasn't totally sure where we were going so he stopped a few times and asked guards of other apartment complexes, cracking jokes the whole way. It was quite impressive, actually.

Anyhow, we finally arrived at the complex for my friend Juliana, a PiAer living in Manila and working for Save the Children. The guards stopped us and asked us where we were going. I said that we were going to visit Juliana and gave them the apartment number at which point their eyes lit up and they shouted in glee, "Juliana! Save the Children!!" "Yes!" I responded, and they happily led us in her direction. I was amused. Juliana actually wasn't home yet so we went in search of dinner.

The closest option was Max's, a fast food chain that proclaimed to be "The House That Fried Chicken Built." Sounded good to us and we were surprisingly impressed. Maybe it had just been a long time since we'd had barbecue chicken. Either way, we finished up and headed back to her place just in time to catch Juliana walking in.

We caught up on the last two years or so and then Ali, the other PiAer in Manila, also came over to hang out. Not only was it great to be welcomed in such grand PiA fashion, but it was also amazing to hear about what they were both doing. Juliana was saving the youth of the Philippines and Ali was busy being a media star by reporting news on a national TV station. Wow!