Day 119: Moving in Manila

Still in Manila today, but it's time to move hotels in preparation for the convention. We ended up spending most of the morning hanging around our initial hotel, getting a few last minute preparation things done as we knew we weren't going to have much time during the conference. And of course we made a quick trip out to Jollibee's for lunch!

In the afternoon we caught an Uber to our new hotel. It's over on the waterfront side of town, about 5 minutes in a car from the convention centre (and as an official hotel, all of the conference's transport options would drop by the hotel). The room itself was small but modern, similar in style I guess to the Formula 1 motels but obviously a bit nicer (and without the hookers). We spent the afternoon settling in.

In the evening we'd agreed to visit an unofficial TBEX welcoming drinks party over in Makati City, so we gamely set off at 5:30pm for an intended 6pm arrival. It was only 9 kilometres, so surely it couldn't take that long, right? Wrong! It took us an hour and a half sitting in a taxi - very painful. Manila traffic is genuinely unbelievable - easily the worst I've ever seen, even beyond Jakarta and Cairo.

At least everyone else was late too! Shandos knew a couple of the ~12 people having dinner & drinks, and some knew of me via her (and the guy we'd met on the film shoot a few weeks earlier was there too). Met some interesting people and had some good chats, but as Shandos had a guided food tour of the city starting at 7am the next morning, we decided to bail pretty early. Eventually pulled the ripcord at about 10:30pm and got back to our hotel by 11:15 (yes, even at that time of night travelling 9 kilometres takes 45 minutes). A good (but unofficial) start to the conference.Read more