Manila Again

We left Puerto Galera on Easter Monday morning along with many other people. The boat was rammed and double over its allowed capacity of 40 people. The boat took about 1 hour and 40 mins and was very uncomfortable. Once off the boat we got straight on the connecting bus to Manila that took about 2 hours and took us straight to the hotel we were going to stay at which is really nice.

We got showered and had a wonder round the mall and popped on the Internet. I wasn't feeling to good so I went back to have a lie down and ended up in bed for the rest of the evening watching National Geographic and Robot Wars lol.

Today we had a right mare. We had to get visa extensions as ours run out on 19th April and our flight to Malaysia isn't until 24th May. After finally finding an ATM which worked to get cash to pay for the extension we got a taxi to the Immigration office. It was total chaos inside and not even organised chaos. It was a biggish room with rows of plastic seats in the middle and all around the outside was booths. So we went to this counter to ask where we needed to go and got told window whatever, so went to that window and got told to go to another window. At that window we were told to go to another window to get a form. Got to that window and there was a que. Got the form, filled it in, asked which window we needed, got directed to another window, handed in the forms, they got signed and stamped. Then had to go to another window to pay, then from that window had to go to another window and were told we had to return 3 hours later to pick up our passports with the updated visas! and that wasn't the end of it.

The National Museum was close by so we walked there through the old Spanish Fort. There are only the Fort's original walls remaining and inside a couple of old buildings but the rest has been rebuilt. To begin with it looked quite nice with some lovely looking buildings but then as we walked in further we started walking through some slums which were a little unnerving as there we no other tourists around. We kept getting harassed by the rickshaw drivers and one followed us all the way down this street saying stuff to our backs. We finally made it out to find the museum is closed until tomorrow due to renovations! The choices then was go to a huge shopping mall or go to the Chinese cemetery which is supposed to be quite impressive. Chinese Cemetery it was. I flagged a taxi and we got in. It didn't seem very far away on the map, maybe 6 km and the roads to it seemed to be straight highways but we had been going for ages all along these back streets. I started to get a bit concerned as we obviously wasn't going the right way or so it seemed. We got the map out and tried to find the street names we were passing but couldn't see them. Eventually we found a street name which was near the Cemetery and 45mins after we left the Immigration office we arrived. The driver obviously took us the longest way round possible but we couldn't just get out and get another taxi as he took us through some very dodgy areas for example, some of the shops had big steel bars across the front where customers had to shop and pay through! that's not a good sign and i didn't see any other taxis. Anyway, we got there and we were in a strange place. It was obviously the cemetery but not what we expected. Apparently the Cemetery is for wealthy Chinese people who have tombs and Mausoleums built. The first few we saw were very impressive and enormous. We hadn't got far and some guy who looked like a security guard and had a hand gun tucked in to his trousers pulled up on his motorbike beside us. He asked us what we were doing, which I thought strange as this place was in the Lonely Planet so surely tourists come here!! We said we were just having a look round and he asked if we knew someone deceased there. Obviously we said no and he was kinda like "oh" and advised us to be careful and went to ride off. Before he did i asked why should we be careful. He then said that further on down the road was a few streets which were quite dangerous and it was possible we could be "hold up". Hmm!! on that note we turned straight back round and walked out of the cemetery. It really wasn't going well. We had a little bit of a walk to the main road so we could catch a taxi and that was scary. I really didn't fancied getting robbed at gun point! We got to the main road and managed to get in to a taxi and got it to take us back to the Immigration office. This time it took 15mins! We had a drink and something to eat and then it was time to get our passports back.

Immigration round 2! We got inside and it was manic. The room was absolutely chocka with people. We fought our way to the counter and asked which window we needed. Unfortunately many other people needed that window too and there was a massive que. but due to the sitting in the middle of the room it was impossible to que in a straight line and so ques for 3 windows were merged together in this huge mass off people. After half an hour of standing in what seemed immense heat they turned on the ceiling fans which relieved the heat a bit and then a seat became available so i sat down. It was really frustrating as there was no one at the window, the que was not moving at all. After about 40mins we heard someone say that the guy who signs the papers had gone missing and they were trying to locate him!! Finally someone turned up at the window and the que started to move. Unfortunately for some people there passports were still not ready and had to rejoin the back of the que after finally getting to the front. We were really hoping ours were ready. When Billy got to the counter we were lucky and ours were the very last 2 passports in the pile so we were able to get out of there and not rejoin the que! though this still took us 1hour 15mins.

Next stop HSBC bank. We needed to go to the HSBC as we read that we could draw out 20,000 Pesos instead of the usual 5000. We needed more as apparently there are not ATM's in Donsol where we are heading next. Once we got our cash we walked a short way to the travel agent to book our over night bus ticket to Legaspi where we will then have to catch another bus to Donsol. The walk there though was not nice. I'd kinda had enough of Manila for today and we got hassled so much. It's the only city that we have been to where we feel so unsafe. We walked past this one bank and there were so many armed security guards all with different types of heavy duty guns, from rifles to shotguns and M16 machine guns! Scary and this was a similar theme as we walked to the travel shop. We were also hassled by many homeless people and at one point were surrounded by homeless kids who would not leave us alone. I had no small change otherwise i would have given some money to them but i only had large denomination notes as just been to the cash point. I felt really bad walking around with this much money in my pocket and not giving anything but i couldn't and i wasn't about to try and get change for a note as i didn't want anyone to see me getting my purse out of my pocket. Eventually Billy had to shout NO to these kids to get them to leave us alone. Again a bit further on a homeless guy grabbed my hand to ask for money. Again i had to say no but i was really starting to freak out. I wasn't feeling safe at all. We got to the travel place and booked our tickets and walked back to the hotel which was quite close. I will be glad to leave here. I really don't like this city much.