Sooo...on Wednesday I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to board the little boat from Carabao Island to Caticlan at 6 a.m. For some dumb reason, they only have one boat a day, so if you go from one island to the next, you have to wait a day to come back...oh well. Anyway, so I was at the airport by about 7:30, even though my flight wasn't 'till 11...Caticlan is a pretty small town, and there isn't much going on, so after hunting down some breakfast (chocolate milk and some awesome local pastries), I went to the airport, checked in and waited. And waited. And waited.
At around 10 a.m., the screens showed (no announcement was ever made for anything) that my flight was delayed. Upon asking the sour staff, they told me it's delayed by an hour due to mechanical troubles with the plane. Sounded pleasant. By the time 11 a.m. rolled around, the screens showed that my flight had been pushed back to 2:30 p.m. Wonderful. This put my afternoon connecting flight in Manila (to get back to Busan, South Korea) in serious jeopardy.
Then I saw this...
So much for that. Of course, again, as expected of the fine folks at Cebu Pacific Air, no announcement was made.
They did, however, serve lunch for those of us stuck at the airport. You had a choice of chicken, chicken or chicken. Wonderful news for the vegetarian in the room. I asked about a vegetarian option and they looked at me as if I told them I was hoping for Martian turtle soup. Because, apparently the Philippines' biggest airline is still stuck back in 1952.
Soon, with the rest of the discontented herd, I lined up at the counter to figure out just what I was going to have to do (by the way...as peaceful as the Swiss may be in time of war, the ones at the airport were a bunch of jerks when it came to rebooking...they were ruthlessly cutting ahead of anyone they could in line...poor showing, my friends...poor showing).
Upon my turn at the desk, I was told that I was out of luck for getting back to Korea on Wednesday. In fact, the best solution they could come up with was bouncing me literally all over the country for more than 24 hours before putting me on a plane to Korea. I asked, rhetorically, if they're going to pay for a hotel room. To that they said no, but they assured me (as if expecting an outpouring of thanks from me) that they won't charge me for the extra flights.
It was then that I hit 100% pissed off and let loose on them. Turns out an angry Hungarian in the middle of the Philippines armed with a handful of words I wouldn't want my students to ever utter in class can get a lot accomplished and I managed to get a few concessions: hotel room and breakfast paid for. At least it was going to beat spending another night at an airport (the Manila airport, where I was originally going to have to spend the night is pathetic...spending the night on my way to the Philippines there was more than enough).
Then they gave me my itinerary: Just after 2 p.m., I'd have to take a van from the Caticlan airport south to the Kalibo airport, where I would board a plane bound for Manila (to the north) at 7 p.m., land there at around 8:30 p.m., rush to the departure gate and grab a flight back down south to Cebu at around 9:30 p.m., where I'd spend the night and then board a plane at 2:30 p.m. the next day bound for Korea to the north. If you were to draw my trip on a map, it would look like a seismograph...up, down, up, down. In case you're keeping track (I was...since I had nothing better to do), that puts me at FOUR airports in 9 hours. That has to be some sort of a record.
So, I got in the van, passed some stunning scenery on the way to Kalibo, arrived at the Kalibo International Airport, whose name made me want to both laugh and punch whoever decided that such a lofty moniker was appropriate for what was basically a barn in the middle of a field. The floodlights for the runway were connected by exposed wiring that had been cut, taped together with electrical tape, cut and taped again countless times. Straight wicked.
At the airport, it being dinnertime now, they again served food. Considering they knew my situation and they were the ones bouncing me around, I was sure they'd have something for me. Nope. Chicken again. Bastards. So, I ventured outside and dodging the pushy store/restaurant employees shouting "yes siiiiiir" at you every time you showed your hide (I grew to hate these people within about 20 minutes of landing in the Philippines...12 days prior to this), I found a restaurant and had a quick meal.
Back at the airport, I boarded, took off, flew, and landed in Manila. There, I had just enough time to grab a drink, go to the bathroom and run to my gate.
Once at my gate, the lack of two things quickly jumped out at me. 1: An airplane. 2: Enough people to fill an airplane.
You see, my departure gate was completely deserted and outside of it I saw nothing but unlit tarmac. The two Cebu Pacific employees packing up their station (their day obviously done) asked for my boarding pass to figure out what was going on.
After much scratching of heads and twitching of eyeballs, the problem was discovered: the imbeciles at Caticlan booked me on a flight on the wrong freaking day.
Yup...Aug. 18. Too bad it was the 17th...they were so close. They almost had it!
What scares me even more is that I was able to get past all the security people, get all the necessary stamps, etc, without anyone noticing that I shouldn't have been there. But they did confiscate my mini-tripod, lest I bring down an Airbus A320 with it. Wonderful experiences.
After much scrambling, the staff in Manila (the only competent Cebu Pacific employees I met in my many, many interactions with the company) managed to get me on the last flight bound for Cebu that day...barely. I was the last one to board after running to the gate.
After landing in Cebu, I swaggered up to the airline's counter and asked about my hotel room. This request was met with blank stares and confusion. Apparently the staff in Caticlan neglected to inform the Cebu office of this little detail. That's okay...they only had 9 hours to do it.
While I sat in the terminal waiting for them to figure things out, airport security started hassling me and telling me I wasn't allowed to spend the night at the airport. Exactly what I needed...some fool with a toy pistol and a cute little plastic badge pestering me. (More on security personnel in the Philippines in the next blog).
Finally, with minutes to spare to midnight, I got in a sketchy van and was whisked off to the magical land of the Cebu Days Hotel, thus ending what was possibly the weirdest day of travel of my life.
The next day everything went smoothly, and I got two fresh additions to my new hobby...stamp collecting:
Okay...that's it from me for today...I must admit, though, that...despite the people at Cebu Pacific effectively wasting a day of my vacation (not happy about that) and all the sarcasm and jovial negativity in this post, it was kind of a fun day...definitely makes for a good story (I hope). And, far from turning me off of travelling, I wasn't even back in Korea yet when I started hatching plans for my next trip. Hong Kong? Singapore? Taiwan? We'll see...for now, this is it from me, I'll try to be back tomorrow with a post on Boracay Island (and I promise I'll have tons of pictures).
Be good!
T
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