In the morning, I did some last chores in Cebu City - things like finding a post office to finally mail the postcards I'd written a week ago, and finding replacements for some items that had reached the end of their life: a bag, a toothbrush cover, and a pen. I was quite surprised that I was able to find all that in a fairly small amount of time. Malls be praised, I guess ;-)
Cebu wasn't quite as chaotic as Manila, but that doesn't mean it's a nice city. There were several kinds of pollution at work - air, noise and garbage come to mind. Still, the bus terminal, my hostel, and downtown were all in walking distance which - in the absence of good public transport - was something to be grateful for.
When I left the hostel around noon, the guard calling a taxi for me warned me that some flights might be cancelled due to the typhoon Ofel. Luckily, the flights to Manila were not affected; there were few cancellations overall, and they concerned other parts of the country. As I'm writing this, however, googling for the typhoon's name brings up headlines like "Hundreds flee as typhoon Ofel hits Mindanao," (Mindanao being an island in the south, while I was trying to travel northwest) so it doesn't seem to be a matter to be taken lightly.
With only two flights to catch, I wouldn't have thought it possible that I would experience another chapter in the 'Public transportation in the Philippines' story. Unfortunately, I was proven wrong at the airport in Manila, where I had to change from the domestic terminal 4 to terminal 3. There is a shuttle bus that connects the four terminals of Manila's airport with each other. The bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes. Being consistent with the level of service of most public transportation in the Philippines, however, it didn't: I waited for well over an hour until a bus finally made its appearance. Since I had plenty of time and a book at hand, I didn't mind much. But still - a terminal shuttle should be something rather basic and important, wouldn't you think?
To end my goodbyes to the Philippines on a more positive note, I have to say that I really liked the Filipino people. They were always friendly and smiley, and whenever I smiled back at a souvenir vendor and said "no thank you" they were actually content with exchanging a few friendly phrases and then leaving me alone without pressing the vending matter any further. I also liked the Filipino language. It sounded very gentle and melodious; so much so, in fact, that I found it almost impossible to imagine people swearing or cursing in their language.
