Day Eleven + Twelve – Legazpi City and the return to Japan

Sharing a van to Legazpi City meant we only had to pay 300 pisos each, which was steep in its own right but what can you do. When we arrived at Legazpi City we had the driver take us to an ATM where we were able to get some money finally and found an internet café closeby which we used to try and find some accommodation for the night. In the middle of our session, about 30 minutes later the driver from the van enters into the establishment and said we owed him 400 pisos or something. I told him we had already paid the other guy that paid him and he left, but his van stayed parked outside for another 20 minutes ago. Kinda freaky that guy was.

Not really finding much online we went to outside and asked a random Polish person who knew nothing and then got into a tricycle and told them to take us to a hotel, they took us to Alicia’s Hotel easily the best place we had stayed at yet. It was a bit pricey but we got a great room with all the works, breakfast the next morning and well everything was nice. The bed was amazingly awesome. I’ll always judge a hotel by its bed and they got top marks. ^^ Anywho, content with our accommodations and a lot of time left to spare we headed out for some exploring.

The best place we had stayed at yet!

We decided to walk so we could take our own time and see what we wanted to see. The people of the Philippines did not like this. As it turns out, if you are a foreigner you are expected to use a tricycle to go anywhere and if you don’t you’re a bloody idiot.. apparently. We tried walking down the street but before we got far we had tricycles slowing down as they stared plainly at us. Ange thought it was all her being pretty and whatnot but clearly it was because we, so called rich foreigners were walking and not paying someone to ride us somewhere. We literally had to wave of half a dozen people that wanted to pick us up.

On a quest for ice cream.

Getting into the middle of the ‘city’ and finding an ice cream we had decided we wanted to got to a place called ‘Max’s because we saw an excellent picture of an ice cream dessert. Asking the attendants at the place where we bought our ice cream, they told us we had to go to Pacific Mall and they put us onto a Jeepney that would take us there, they even waited the 5 minutes looking for it passing on the road. Arriving at Pacific Mall we did some shopping and ate some food, funnily enough not at Maxs and I found an old friend of mine!

Feeling the love Ronald! feeling the love.

We bought Taidye Pants too before finding the need to go home as it was getting late. Haggling a little with the tricycle people we got a ride home for 40 piso but one the way we were astounded to see a beautiful volcano staring at us. Unknown to us, our hotel was right next to the glorious Mayon volcano! Turns out that this bad boy had some lava streaming down its sides 6 months previously and that it was also once considered for being named one of the 7 New Wonders of Nature. Despite all of this we had just noticed the thing although we knew it was in the area, and it really did look something. There was a constant stream of smoke rising from the peak of the volcano and that seems to be the norm for that perfectly cone shaped peak!

Appearing from no where was this volcano.

Anywho, after snapping some shots of the volcano we eventually went back inside and before we knew it, it was 5:30 in the morning! Yaaay, had to be ready for our 8am flight. Calling the hotel restaurant we had them make us some breakfast for 6am while we showered and packed our luggage up for the final time. Once we arrived at the airport the volcano, once again was obscured by a thick coating of fog. Checking in and waiting for our plane we found the French guys that had taught us some drinking games back in Donsol a few nights earlier, they were sober now and not as fun seeing it was so early in the morning.

Back to Manila we flew! Landing in one of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) – turns out that we needed to be at Terminal 2 and the Terminals are actually really far from one another so we took a shuttle bus! Arriving at Terminal 2 we were able to check in our luggage some 5 hours or so before our flight because we had nothing else to do! To make a note about these airports, I’m not sure about other countries but where I come from airports are awesome places where there are many restaurants and places to shop. Terminal 2 NAIA had only a handful of shops none of which could be considered fast food, that’s right I didn’t see ONE McDonalds in the place! A shame really, but we made do with our iPods, laptops and random food until we boarded our flight; Manila to Osaka by Philippines Airlines.

Flying high.

This being our last flight, I think it’s right that I talk a little bit about electronic equipment of aeroplanes. Ange seems to be under the misguided idea that if you have a CAMERA and you turn it on you’re going to crash the plane and kill everyone on board. I tried telling her that the camera doesn’t exactly emit a wireless signal that could interfere with the on board equipment and that in fact a lot of electronic devices that do have wireless emit on a frequency that doesn’t disturb the aeroplane’s equipment. But alas, she made me turn it off anyway! Bloody tyrant. But I succeeded at making her feel stupid when I made her believe that the lights above our heads were voice activated and that they would turn on and off if you talked, she went quite red in the face when I couldn’t hold back from laughing and informed her that I was pressing her armchair button. Some subpar aeroplane food and a movie later we arrived in Japan, at Kansai International Airport.

We were home at last.