Philippines Books

Christmas Chaos At NAIA 2!

I had left my place of employment in Quezon City seven hours before my flight was due to depart.  Being PAL it would be later than that, of course.  In nearly twenty years of flying with PAL I can’t remember when they weren’t late, hence their slogan, “Planes Always Late”.  I was hoping to snatch a standby seat on an earlier flight but that was not to be.  Seven hours up ones’ sleeve is a bit much, even for Manila and despite the stupidity of the taxi driver who actually hit the world’s longest car park (EDSA) five kilometers, half an hour and fifty peso on the meter before he had to if he had known his way around.

Still, two hours to the airport wasn’t the worst time ever recorded.  The lines at the security checkpoint just to get in were horrendously long and of course full of Filipino’s more important than others, pushing their way to the front wherever a turned back or lapsed attention allowed.

Mind you, standing in a long queue with nothing to do but watch the pretty Filipina’s walk by isn’t the hardest duty to pull on this earth.  There were several very obvious “Japanuki’s”, Filipina’s who had just returned from working as an entertainer in Japan.  You could tell them by one of two ways,  They either displayed a loud, garish and weird dress sense picked up from the Japanese girls or they were in the company of a middle aged Japanese man and one or both displayed loud garish and weird dress sense. The colour blind slutty schoolgirl look is in this season.

There were several bargirls heading home for the holidays with their foreigner boyfriends, standing out like sore thumbs as they flaunted their wealth in a way only a poorly educated gal from the provinces going home with cash to spare could do.  The boyfriends were also of a type; older, larger and doting on their diminutive dates.  One or two wore shorts and shoes with black business socks!  Nothing looks worse than black ankle length socks worn with shoes and shorts.  Buy some white sports socks for goodness’ sake!

The married couples, bringing home the anaks for the grandparents to dote over for the first time were also obvious.  Either she was dolled to the nines to show it was her first trip back or she was dressed well down showing how used to the whole tiring trip she had become over the years.  Either way it was the kids that got the doting over.  Romance may not have been dead in the marriages but was probably (and sensibly) on hold until after the stress of travelling with junior was over with.  At least until the trip back to Minneapolis or Manchester or Melbourne or maybe Munich.

Rich Filipino’s were everywhere, vying for who was most important, even though nearly every flight to the far flung provinces they called home were serviced by aircraft without a Business Class.  Never mind, buy an overpriced pastry at Delifrance and make sure someone sees you doing it!  The drive to the airport had been interrupted several times by convoys of window tinted Expeditions and Suburbans with motorcycle outriders and ominous looking bodyguards following in the Revo.  Sirens and horns and flashing lights everywhere.  Get out of my way, I’m more important than you, I can afford an entourage!

I even saw one convoy that had three outriders who were not armed and not Police.  It seemed to me they were a civilian escort service with police like motorcycles.  I must confess having done the job myself when I was in the Military Police, these civvy’s did a better job of controlling intersections than the Police I had seen trying several times.  I guess you get what you pay for!

I thought one convoy might be Erap heading for his flight to Hong Kong, due today unless someone threw a conscience ridden spanner in the works.  Then I figured since he had attended FPJ’s funeral yesterday by helicopter he wasn’t going to fight the traffic in the back of a Benz!

My taxi ride by the way, cost P245, at least P70 over the average fare and thirty minutes longer than necessary thanks to the drivers’ ignorance and incompetence.  His driving was erratic and amateurish and I think he has a lineal recognition issue to deal with.  We never seemed to sit within a lane, just straddled the white lines!  Nevertheless we made it and with no chance of getting an earlier flight, I settled in for an afternoon of working on the laptop and sipping over -priced coffee at the aforementioned Delifrance.

 Before I knew it I was boarding my flight and we were less than ten minutes late, a new PAL record!  Next challenge, getting a Cebu cabbie to use the meter!