even though school is technically out for winter vacation, i only get 9 days off [sadness]. this year, i decided to go to the philippines with my friend jen, basically because it's warm and i'd never been there before. in hindsight, our vacation should have been more heavily researched [meaning: researched] prior to leaving korea. oops.
manila:
our vacation got off to an amazingly wonderful start. the lady at the ticket check-in counter was taking foreverrr to check us in, and we were starting to worry [i don't trust "e-tickets" haha]. as it turns out, it took so long because she had upgraded us to first class--probably because she thought we were pretty awesome. neither jen nor i had ever flown first class before, and it was quite possibly the greatest experience of my life. the seats are soooo big that i was able to curl up into a ball and sleep. also, the food is...edible. i don't think i can ever fly economy again.
after maybe 4 hours of flying, we landed in manila. the weather was hot and wonderful, and we were still pretty excited about our vacation. so, we hopped into a taxi and 30 minutes later the driver stops in sketchville and gets out of the car. we have arrived at our hotel. excellent...
our hotel was literally in the middle of what appeared to be a crime-ridden slum area. [i say this because it looked like a picture of the great depression-era hoovervilles that you see in history books, and there were people sitting on the sidewalks flipping knives.] also, i'm pretty sure we were the only guests staying in the hotel, and the workers definitely lived there. so that was kinda weird.
as it turned out, our hotel was a 2-mile walk from a big, nice shopping area, which is where we spent most of our time.
on our second day in manila, we decided to go sightseeing. luckily, we got the world's nicest cab driver, who [for a very small fee] played the role of tourguide for the day. he drove us around for about 6 hours, taking us to all of the interesting/historical places in manila. we started at intramuros, which was the old spanish fort/prison. it was really cool; you could climb the walls surrounding the fort and it offered a pretty good view of the city. from there we went to the gardens [conveniently located at another old spanish prison], the cathedral, chinatown [the oldest chinatown in the world...allegedly], and the U.S. WWII memorial. pretty interesting stuff.
oh yeah, i was also on tv. in the philippines. so, i'm kind of like an international superstar. [of tourism shows...i've also been on tv in korea twice, both times on tourism shows for the kpop segmentㅋㅋㅋ] at intramuros, a camera crew was set up, so i told jen to "casually" lurk in the background, and luckily my plan worked because the reporter came up to us and asked us to be on her show. jen didn't want to talk, so i did...just answering questions about tourism in the philippines [where we were from, why we were there, etc. etc. etc.]
cebu:
when the time came for us to leave manila [we were there for only 4 days], we weren't really sad at all...we were wayyyy too excited about going to the beach!! too bad we didn't know...
...that our hotel was lies.
ok, so before we went to the philippines we wanted to book our hotels to avoid hassle at the airport. so we researched the cheaply priced hotels we found using kayak.com [an excellent travel search engine], and we found one that we thought fit our standards. it claimed that it was merely 0.9miles from the beach and 3miles from the airport.
LIES.
it was 45 minutes from the airport and 1 hour from the beach. by taxi. pretty much it was the worst hotel ever. EVERRRRR. it was located in the middle of freaking nowhere. in an even worse area than our hotel in manila. [for real. we were awakened every night to the sound of sirens, and there were homeless people and hookers everywhere outside of our hotel. not okay.] even worse, our room was literally infested with ants and cockroaches. we told the people at the front desk about this problem...they looked at us like we were stupid, and they refused to let us change rooms.
also, the guard at the door seemed intent on trying to rip us off on cab fares. we had checked with the travel agent next to our hotel, and they told us what metered cabs would cost to get to various locations. they circled a nice beach on a map, and told us that the guard's job was to ensure that guests are not ripped off.
well, our first full day in cebu, we wanted to go to the beach. we showed the guard our map, and then he attempts to charge us 5 times what the metered fare should be. we argued with him for a while, and finally were able to bring it down to a more fair price. because of this, the cab driver starts off in an extremely pissed off mood. [which possibly explains what happens next...] the guy drives past the beach we had circled on a map and down a long unpaved side-street, overgrown with trees and bushes. we ended up in the middle of what appeared to be a run-down, abandoned resort. he pulled up the the beach area, stopped the car, and asked us to get out. when we refused, he actually got out of the cab and forced us out! then, he sped away, leaving us completely stranded. suddenly, about 10 guys came out from the abandoned hotel rooms [evidently, they lived there]. they started calling out at us, and i looked at jen and told her we absolutely had to get away. NOW. i remembered that there was a big resort nearby, and that if we could make it back to the main road, then we would probably be ok.
luckily, we walk fast and were able to make an escape. honestly, i've never been more frightened in my life [and i don't scare very easily...i mean, i've been followed at night and robbed at gunpoint. soo yeah, being frightened by this experience is saying a lot.]
apparently, there are no public beaches in cebu, and you have to pay to use any resort's beach area for the day. we were able to find one within our price range, and while we were there we asked the [thankfully] kind and helpful staff about public beaches. the lady said there was one, but that it wasn't safe, especially since we were white women travelling alone. her exact words were "getting kidnapped is probably something that would happen to you, as white women." awesome. she also indicated that it was in the direction that we had come from. more than likely it was were psycho cabbie had dropped us off.
the next day, to avoid the hotel and it's staff we spent the day island hopping. jen was mostly happy about being on a boat, and i was happy about snorkeling. it was awesome!! we collected sand dollars, saw blue starfish [they reminded me of papua new guinea!], and we got attacked by the same "ninja" fishㅋㅋㅋ
after one more miserable day at hotel hell-hole, we decided we could take no more. we decided to take the [monetary] loss and book a resort on the beach. luckily, i found a sweet deal online [$73 a night for a room that usually runs at $200/night--UMMHECKYESS], so we spent the last 3 days of our vacation blissfully sleeping on the beach. our resort was called costabella [i absolutely recommend it], and everything about it was beautiful, it had 2 pools, and a super clean beach area--white sand and clear water. sigh.
even though the vacation ended well, i think we were both ready to head back home to korea.
to our shock and surprise, we got upgraded...again!! for freeeee!! [happiness and joy!!]
sigh. i freaking love business class^^
all-in-all, an interesting vacation...with equal parts good and bad [and the good was VERY good...while the bad was also VERY bad]. not sure that i would ever go back, but then again, even if it was the world's most amazing vacation i still probably wouldn't go back...i'm far too interested in seeing things that i've never seen before, and going places that i've never been. [i have a list of 30 more countries that i want to visit...]
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