Day 6 – Singapore Manila

We got the counter and the lady there serving told us that due to a F-up by Cebu Pacific, the flight was grossly overbooked. Apparently we were told that their booking system lets them keep accepting bookings for the same flight even though it is full. So they didn’t have 6 seats for us. WTF???? I bought these tickets back in August!! YES AUGUST!!! I was probably the first one to buy tickets and because our queue progressed soooo slowly (ie the girl’s processing speed for each passenger is sooooo slow) we missed out on our flight. So I asked, when the next flight direct to cebu was……we were told Friday…..WTF???? We made up some white lie about needing to be at an appointment at 9am in Cebu hoping that would work….it didn’t. All they could offer us was a flight to Manila and then a connecting flight from Manila to Cebu. This is another disaster waiting to happen because from the time we land to the time the next flight takes off to Cebu there was a gap of an hour. It doesn’t take an idiot to calculate that more than one f-ing hour is required for 6 people need to go through customs, collect luggage, move from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, check in and board the next plane. And because it’s F-ing Cebu Pacific, they probably overbooked all their flights!!!We had no choice but to accept the manila flight or risk being stranded till Friday!

Then the customer services officer who I shall nickname Dickhead decided to make a bad situation worse by looking at my passport and saying that with a Brunei passport, I would need a visa to enter Philippines. Since it was past midnigh and my patience was already sooo stretched, I informed him as politely as I could that I don’t need a visa. Then he got on the phone and phoned someone at the Manila airport who apparently told him that I did need one. At which stage I started to doubt myself and made a call to my father who confirmed no visa needed. Then I rang my sister who hopped online and checked out the Philippine embassy website and confirmed that as my stay was under 21 days, no visa was required. I relayed the information to Dickhead who didn’t believe me and told me that he would not let me board any flight headed to the Philippines as the airlines would have to pay a fine. At which stage I got quite rude and told him that I would deal with it if it came to that at the airport but I was 100% sure I didn’t need a visa. Dickhead stood firm at which stage, I started demanding his name, his duty manager’s name, the check in girl’s name and the name of the man he spoke to at the manila airport …..which must have rattled him a bit because he went to speak to his manager and came back to inform me that if I signed a waiver form absolving the airlines of any penalty, I could fly. It took Dickhead a good 15 mins to find the f-ing forms which I signed and when I asked for a copy, I was told that I didn’t need one. Can you imagine me at this stage???? I was ready to leap over the counter and stab him with any blunt object I could find!!! I nearly yelled out that he was getting me to sign a legal and binding document full of spelling mistakes and I had every right to a copy. Dickhead got the useless check in girl to make a photocopy for me.

By this time, Jeromel had fallen asleep on the check in luggage conveyor belt, Jordan, Jarryd and MIL were sitting down on a few luggage conveyors as they were not allowed to go far from the counter. Everyone was sooo tired and hungry by this stage. By the time we were issued with our boarding passes, we had to run in to catch our flight to find a huge queue waiting to get on. The plane was grossly full and there was so much hand luggage that by the time we got on board….we were right at the front of the plane in row 1…..our overhead compartments had been filled. So we put our hand luggage in front of us. Then we were informed that our hand luggage had to go in the over head compartment by a rude air stewardess ….wrong move woman…..wrong f-ing move to mess with a very irate customer. We demanded she empty OUR over head compartment so that we can put our luggage there. One look at our faces and she did as she was told. Very smart.

After the plane took off…the air stewardesses started getting the food cart ready and forgot to serve us….whether it was deliberate or by accident, we didn’t care….we were thirsty, hungry and not in any mood to be messed with. Arriving at Manila, thank goodness, everything went well. No questions about my passport or lack of visa, no problems with luggage. On the flight over, DH and I decided that we could not put ourselves through another flight….so we would stay on in Manila for a few days to rest before going to Cebu. So we got got a couple of rooms at the Rosas Garden Hotel, got here very quickly, ate our complimentary breakfast and washed our faces and got into pjs and collapsed into bed. In the evening, we decided to walk to Robinsons Mall to get some dinner and omg…what an eye opener for the boys…..the smell, the dirt, the street people, the kids sleeping on the sidewalk, the skimpy bar girls trying to solicit customers, the roadside stalls cooking food that was unrecognisable. Truly culture shock!! By the time we got to Robinsons mall and went to the food court, our appetites had disappeared and we finally ate a small dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Yah….you read right….first dinner in Manila and we ate Japanese food. Tooo tired to even remember to bring the camera, so no pics to share with you…and totally no regrets about that either.

That night, Joseph’s cousins flew in from Cebu to holiday with us in Manila for a few days.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Two new weeks in the Philippines