Today is a simple day, I woke up at 5:00 on the floor in the kitchen of the hostel (they had over booked 2 days running and I offered to sleep on my camping mat in the kitchen that no one uses (because it has no WiFi or cooking facilities) for the two days and I got a refund for those two days, I was happy, they were happy, everyone wins, especially my travel fund) to catch a plane at 10:10 to Manila and I land at local time of 22:10… Yep, the 8 hour flight takes up all the hours of the day, smooth.

I currently have absolutely no idea what to do in the Philippines or where anything is or anything booked, so this will be an interesting 4 weeks…

 I landed and got a sim for mobile internet (very cheap out here), then got a taxi to my hostel (that I booked on the plane, prepared), taxis are crazy here, it’s not like a London taxi, only 1 sort is metered, the others are pre-pay. The cost is entirely dependent on your bartering skills… Entirely. For my trip apparently someone paid 1300 pesos, you should pay about 200 pesos… I paid 750. I didn’t do very well there. So taxis should be cheap. The driver also didn’t know the way at all, was on the phone (actually on it, not Bluetooth or anything) for half the journey, I had to find the place on google maps and direct him from the back, luckily I had bought the mobile internet sim otherwise I would be completely lost somewhere, before he asked me to use Google maps he went the wrong way for 20 mins, making the 10 min drive take almost an hour. I was very tired when I arrived so went straight to bed.

The hostel I’m at here, for two nights, is really nice, it’s got a nice pool, everything is new and shiny, there are fans everywhere… Oh yeah it’s mid 20s at the coldest point of the night and early 30s at the hottest, and very humid. And as this is so close to the airport you have planes flying over very low about every 15 mins.

I’m planning to relax the next two days and organise some flights around the islands (domestic flights around the Philippine islands are very reasonable).