Monday, September 5, 2005
It is hard to believe that we are actually here in the Philippines, Cebu City, when only a few days ago we were in the MTC in Provo. We left Provo Friday evening at 6:00 p.m. after a day of preparation – haircuts, laundry, calling some of the children, packing and sorting. I had a sore throat, Bob had one on Thursday, and I didn’t feel very well, so after lunch I took a long nap while Bob weighed all the bags. All was okay and we had time for dinner and then checked out of the MTC and took a van to the airport. We had been a little concerned about traffic, but we arrived in good time to check in. The Delta representative did not know what to do, so he checked our bags all the way to Cebu. It sounded good to us, but we found out it L.A. that it was not right – we had to go through Philippine Customs in Manilla and then recheck the bags there.
The plane was on time and we had a short flight to Los Angeles. We were told by the Delta representataive to go outside and walk a little ways to the left and we would be at the international terminal. It didn’t look right at first, when we went outside and started trudging down a long sidewalk in the dark, but we checked with a airport security man and he confirmed we were on the right track. When we got to the international terminal we saw signs that said, “EVA Airlines (a Chinese airline that turned out to have excellent service) Aisle C, so off we went, only to find a deserted counter beneath the EVA sign. We stood there a minute or two before someone came by and told us, “No, EVA is on Aisle A.” So off we went! We met there the first angel of our trip. A young woman, EVA employee, was very helpful. It seemed Church Travel had booked us for ‘deluxe’ class seats, but only paid for ‘Economy” and they had paid the fare for weekday travel and by the time the plane took off – 1:40 a.m. – it would be Saturday, and thus the weekend. After talking to her supervisor, and her talking to someone else, they agreed that we would travel “Deluxe” as that was where they had our seats available, but that we would have to pay the $32 each for the price of weekend travel. We were happy to do that in order to have the matter settled. Another problem to be tackled was that our checked luggage had to have new tags, sending it to Manila, rather than Cebu. She printed up new tags, said not to worry, she would get them on our bags, and gave us the new stubs. It sounded a little scary, but she seemed very confident and we hoped for the best. Finally we had boarding cards and were directed to one end of a long hall to go through security, We were a little confused about exactly where in the throng of people down there we were supposed to be, and seeing our confusion, our ‘angel’ sent a young man who took us through the middle of the crowd, to a special security line, walked us through, got our luggage cart through (we had a cart as we had put books and heavy things in our carry-ons to make our other bags lighter. Anyway, he sent us on our way to the boarding gate where we had about a two-hour wait. After about an hour, along came our ‘angel’ and chatted for a moment to make sure all was well, before continuing her other duties.
The EVA plane was very large and the “Deluxe” seats were less fancy that first or business class, but much better than ‘Economy.” We were so grateful to have them for the thirteen-hour flight to Taipei. We could recline them way back and they were wider than the cheaper seats. They fed us a good dinner about 2:30 A.M. and then we tried to sleep. I was quite restless and Bob also didn’t sleep well, but we did doze some. They served breakfast a couple of hours before we landed and brought Bob a newspaper to read. I chatted with the woman next to me, Chinese-American, who lived in Boston near the Boston temple. She was quite friendly, but wasn’t interested in hearing about the Church.
Taipei had a beautiful, clean, new airport and we were directed where to go to meet our next flight – to Manila. In the airport a man came up to us, identified himself as a member of the Church, and visited a few minutes. Other people chatted and were friendly as well. It is a very cosmopolitan airport and we saw many Americans on business and on tours.
We also saw a beautiful Orchid display in the hall where our gate was, along with a small National Museum with very old Chinese scrolls – some from the 700’s and paintings from about 700’s to modern times. Very lovely and interesting. We had about a three hour wait there. I saw a place to use the internet for free, so waited in a short line, visiting with the man in front of me, a computer science teacher in Manila whose family lives in Los Angeles, so he commutes to work! I sent a quick email to the children and checked to see if we had any notice that the mission president was expecting us and had plans to pick us up – no news.
Sunday, September 4, 2005
The plane from Taiwan to Manila was full, on time, and okay – seats quite different than in the ‘Deluxe” class and we were very grateful we had the comfortable seats for the long leg of the flight. In Manila we had to gather all our bags – and they were all there, HURRAH – and then go through Philippine customs. Then we weren’t sure what to do – we had heard two conflicting stories. One was that we would just go to a Philippine Airlines ticket counter in the airport where we landed and check in there. The other, which proved to be true, was that we had to go to another airport – the national rather than international one – which was about 5 miles away. Unsure, I ask a passing woman who was wearing a Philippines Airline badge. She stopped and answered our question then asked if we had pesos. Of course we didn’t so she directed us to a bank right near us, in the terminal and Bob changed a twenty into pesos. Then she led us outside, both Bob and I pushing very full luggage carts, she arranged for us to get a taxi and waited until we were in it and then, after hugging me and saying, “God bless you, hurried off. What an angel to us she was! Incidentally the taxis at the Manila airport have an interesting arrangement. If you want a taxi, you go inside an office, tell them where you are going and they write up a ticket with the price you should pay. They give you the ticket, which you then hand to your driver. When you arrive at your destination and pay him, you sign the ticket and he has to return it to the ticket office in order to be allowed to pick up another fare. Curbs dishonesty they hope. It certainly worked fine for us.
At the new airport, actually they call it terminal 2 of the international airport five miles away which is what led to our confusion earlier, anyway we again were helped by kind people who did charge us for the overweight big luggage – about 30$ we think…it was in pesos and we hadn’t begun to figure them out yet. But, they waved us through with our carryons which were each double the allowed weight – weight limits on carryons were new to us. We didn’t want to check them since we still didn’t have confidence that all our suitcases would arrive it Cebu. We then headed to the gate only to be told the airplane we were supposed to ride on had been hit by lightening on its incoming flight from Japan and would have to have a major check-up before it was cleared to fly again. We had about an hour delay while they found a different plane and then we were on our way.
The flight from Manila to Cebu is short – about an hour – and even though it was quite cloudy, we could see many islands below, some with what looked like beautiful beaches. The land was very green and the house roofs were red, yellow or blue, making very colorful patterns from the air.
The airport in Cebu is on a little island connected to Cebu Island by a big bridge. At the airport we again collected all our massive luggage pile onto two carts and headed outside, hoping someone would be meeting us as we still hadn’t heard if they even knew we were coming. Yes, there was mission van and two young Elders – Clark and Edlund- almost as happy to see us and we were to see them. They loaded us up and headed to the mission office, where our apartment is located as well. Unfortunately, the traffic in Cebu City didn’t look much different than that of Port Harcourt, except there were not nearly so many motorcycles and the cars were newer and had fewer dents.
We were very tired by this time – having been in transit about 36 hours- and were very glad to arrive at our apartment. However, it was Sunday night about 6 p.m. and we had last eaten several hours earlier, so were not only tired but hungry – and no food of any kind in our apartment. The elders hurried back to their apartment and returned with Top Ramen, apples and peanut butter, honey and bread. What a delicious dinner they made for us – well, remember, we were really hungry. We had made up our bed while they were gone – finding the sheets in our luggage after some searching.
We went downstairs to the mission office and saw Ben Little and delivered his birthday gift – beef jerky – and then it was up to bed. Our bedroom window is adjacent to a very busy street so it took us awhile to get used to the noise, but we soon were fast asleep. It had been a blessed trip from beginning to end.
