Day 20

I didn’t sleep as well as I would’ve liked due to a sore back, but I still felt like I slept enough. I did need to get up and redirect all the air conditioning vents though as every one of them was blowing directly onto my face!

Today involved a lot of waiting again, as our flight to Manila wasn’t meant to depart until 6.10pm. As we weren’t required to check out of our hotel until 12pm, our morning was somewhat uneventful! We went down to enjoy the beautiful buffet breakfast which we’d enjoyed at this hotel before, and relaxed in the room until it was time to check out.

Fortunately the reception area of the hotel is equally beautiful so it was easy to relax there with a decent coffee, which went perfectly with the egg tart I bought at KFC last night. The seating area has a view of the swimming pool which, Ted is convinced, he saw a couple making whoopee in it! We wanted to eat lunch somewhere other than the hotel so we braved crossing the highway of hell to see what was on the other side of the road.

We are both over Asian food at the moment so going to The Pizza Factory, which was offering two for the price of one, seemed like a good option. We did some more browsing through the shops and bought some clothes for the gym before heading back across the highway to our hotel.

At about 3pm, we ordered a Grab to take us to the airport. The check in counters hadn’t opened yet but did shortly after. Thank God Ted noticed the tagging on the bags - we have a 20 hour layover in Manila, meaning we have a hotel room for the night - and the check-in agent had tagged our bags all the way to Melbourne! In other words, we would’ve spent the night and morning in Manila with little more than the clothes on our back.

We were given passes to the Miracle Business Class lounge before the flight which was a nice place to relax beforehand. Our flight ended up being delayed though due to the late arrival of the aircraft, so we ended up spending even more time in the lounge than expected. When it was time to board, it was a long walk from the D gates to the F gates, and when we arrived, they had already began to board the Economy class section.

Our aeroplane seats were wonderful as always, and I definitely think the Business Class product on Philippine Airways is far superior to a lot of other airlines. The staff and food were both wonderful, and the 3 hour flight seemed to, well, fly. Unfortunately we didn’t arrive into Manila until very late, which was delayed even further by the really long immigration queue.

Our pick up driver was messaging me whilst we were in the queue so it wasn’t difficult to find him once we were outside the airport. One thing we found surprising was how busy Manila was even around midnight. Our hotel is definitely below the standard of the past hotels we’ve had on this holiday but it was adequate. The booking has caused endless hassle too, as they kept emailing us saying that both our credit cards had been rejected and then after a lot of correspondence with booking.com, told us that it was finally okay. In other words, it wasn’t until we actually arrived that we knew for sure that we had a room for the night.

The room is definitely not that great either, but since it was already 1am, we didn’t really care that much. We have the whole morning in Manila to explore but to be honest, I’m not that excited about it.Read more