Getting to Cebu

Ahh The Philippines- world-class beaches, beautiful islands, white sands and beautiful weather all year round. What a tropical paradise, right? Honeymooners’ dream! We came here in search of this paradise but what we found was so much more than that. I hate to burst your bubble but there is much more to the pristine white sand beaches, and turquoise blue water than you have been told. The truth is it’s not all sunshine and roses in the Philippines. Perhaps, it's because the vacationers do not venture out to see the "real" Philippines...the undesirable parts that are lived by the locals that we saw.

Prior to this visit, I heard that the Philippines was a 3rd world country so obviously I expected some level of poverty but what we saw, was not expected at all! A complete shock for us. Being an African, this type of environment is not new to me. Just didn't expect to see it in the country that had been described as "paradise" by many for so long.

But before I get into the details about our "shock ", let me back up to the trip to Manila from Incheon. The flight from Incheon, South Korea to Manila, Philippines was only 3 hours and 40 minutes. It was a smaller plane so no upper deck this time around.

Our plan was to spend all our time in Cebu city and venture out to nearby islands because we had read that there isn’t much to do in Manila. We landed in Manila right before noon and our flight to Cebu was scheduled for 6:30 pm. We had enough time to exit the airport to get a bite to eat before coming back to check in for our Cebu flight but since we were new to the country, we decided to check-in before, just to be on the safe side. Boy was that the best idea we had. Firstly, Manila airport is not a conventional airport. It is scattered around in different terminals that are not connected. We landed in Terminal 1 and our flight to Cebu would be leaving from terminal 3 and the only way to get there is by a bus shuttle. It is not walk-able. It seemed like everyone had the same idea because the line for the shuttle was super long and we did not board the shuttle until an hour later.

Now to get to Terminal 3, we had to drive around the tarmac, go through what looked like a residential area then first stop at Terminal 2 (it took about 10 minutes). From there, we entered the gates onto the tarmac in terminal 3 and drove around to our stop. It seemed very unsafe because although majority of the planes were parked, we saw some taxing. I was just shaking my head because this is some stuff that you would see in Ghana. We finally arrived at terminal 3 ten minutes later. We all entered the airport from the tarmac through a set of open doors. There were a couple of “guards” at the door but they weren’t checking anything or anyone. Now to get to the departure area upstairs- either take the stairs and drag all your luggage or join the everlasting line for the elevator in the hallway. Elevator line it is! There didn’t seem to be any type of order as people were cutting the line and just taking forever to get on and off. We wasted 30 minutes here. Finally got upstairs to what could only be described as a “chaotic mess”. I was immediately overwhelmed. It was just as crowded as any airport except with more people and no organization or direction whatsoever. In order to get in line to check-in for any flight, you must have a print-out receipt of your flight and go through a preliminary security check. Our flight to Cebu was with Cebu pacific and since we were there so early, we were able to change our flight to our earlier one. Cebu Pacific airlines is a budget airline so of course their customer service is also on a budget. They are worse than Frontier airlines. If you have ever flown Frontier airlines, then you know it doesn’t get worse than that but I hate to disappoint you my friend because it does with Cebu pacific. The only thing they have over Frontier is their free carry-on.

After check-in and getting a bite to eat, it was almost time for departure so we headed to the gate. Oh the gate!! I use the word "gate" very loosely because it was anything but that. First of all, when we arrived, it was way too crowded that there is no way that it was not a fire hazard. That waiting area seem to only be for Cebu pacific with 4 boarding gates right next to each other in an open area. As if they knew to give the poorer airline the worse place in the airport. You know how airlines typically put a group of children travelling together in the back of the plane by the bathroom because they know the children will be loud and it will annoy the other customers? Well I think that’s what happened to Cebu Airlines. All the couple hundred seats in the waiting area were occupied and another couple hundred people were either standing around or sitting on the floor waiting for their flights. It was very disorganized and uncomfortable. It was super-hot and humid as all the doors were open so of course you could not feel the AC. Our flight was scheduled to leave in 30 minutes but our gate was boarding for another flight and our flight was not even listed on the screen to be boarding anytime soon. Keep in mind that we asked several attendants if our flight was delayed and they could not provide any useful information. They just said to wait. SMH. No regard for customer service whatsoever as if our tickets were free. We could have left the area to go to a better waiting area in the airport but we did not want to risk missing the flight. After all that we had been through already in Manila, we could not wait to leave. If this was how we were greeted at the airport, we didn't want to find out how we would be greeted in town. So we stood and waited…30 minutes became an hour and an hour became an hour and a half. All standing in that sauna of a room. It was finally time to board.

The boarding process was very interesting…after getting our tickets checked by the airline attendants, we had to get on a bus that was parked on the tarmac right outside the gate. After the bus was full, it drove us to the plane which was only about 2 minutes away. I guess they didn’t think it was safe for us to walk on the tarmac. Now 2 hours delayed…we could not wait to take off.

But of course it would not be Cebu pacific if we had taken off right away...noo! We wasted another 45 minutes just sitting on the tarmac waiting for some stupid document to be delivered to the pilot. Seriously? They couldn't get the documents before boarding? At this point, we were so glad that we had switched to an earlier flight because it was now 6 pm and we had still not taken off so imagine what time the 6:30 pm flight would have taken off?

The flight was pretty smooth except the A/C was on the fullest…I mean uncomfortably cold. No, we did not get fed. water was not even free. The flight attendants did attempt to engage us in games during the 30-minute flight which was cool. They did not have any other form of entertainment system on the plane so I guess the games made up for it.

Arriving in Cebu airport was a breath of fresh air. We didn’t have to get on a bus in order to enter the airport. We simply walked through the jet-bridge and viola....we were inside the airport. This airport felt like a different country. It was calm, clean and organized. No more bustling chaotic mess. We could finally relax!!

Uber took us to our airbnb apartment. Driving through town was nice but I almost felt like I was on the wrong continent. Stay tuned to find out what I mean by this.