Manila night tour

Manila greets us with an hour long taxi line, not because there were so many people but rather for the lack of taxis offered. There seem to be two lines people are getting in, one is the official line and the other where we see people being dropped off and tired travellers grabbing the recently empty ones. I line up in the official line (because we all know I am no rule breaker) and Magnus goes for the drop-off one (because… you know). Taxis are just flying in for the taxi line but the poor official line gets one every 20 minutes or so. When the clock is approaching 9pm we still haven't gotten one and are getting pretty tired from travelling from Boracay at 2:45 pm. We had booked a hotel 3km away and could not wait to crash on a bed with AC and a TV. I was next in line for the official rule-following line when Magnus catches a cab in the rule-breaking line. I reluctantly leave my spot and we jump in a cab that is indeed official and has a meter. We give the taxi driver our address and to our surprise he suggests not using the meter and offers us to pay just 500 pesos instead. Warning bells start ringing in my rule-minded head but they are ignored due to fatigue. We order the taxi driver to turn on the meter and take us there, after all it is only 3km away. The taxi driver says something in Filipino and English about it being far away and we say no, it is close by. And so it goes for the first 10km, the taxi driver rumbling something about traffic and far away and us looking at each other like, jeez another taxi driver out to get us. Those second warning bells were also ignored and on we went for another hour before I had the brilliant idea of turning on RunKeeper to see if we were just being driven in circles. Of course we had no map and no data on our phones, all we could do was to put our trust in the kind heart of the angry taxi driver. RunKeeper showed that we were not being driven in circles but in almost a straight line away from the airport. When two hours had passed Magnus and his rule-breaking mind had enough, he ordered the taxi driver to stop and ask another taxi driver where the hotel was. The angry taxi driver agreed and through the window I can see Magnus become even angrier than the taxi driver. It turns out that we were right (well of course we were!) and the hotel was by the airport 2 hours away! With smoke fuming out of Magnus’ ears he tells the taxi driver to turn off the meter and take us back to the airport hotel, we would not pay for his mistake that we tried over and over to tell him. The taxi driver did not take the news so well, and now also fuming from his ears tells Magnus “no pay –you go to jail –I stop the police” and before I could even register this turn of events the taxi driver had indeed chased down a police car who was then stopped and trying to settle things between Magnus and the taxi driver. At this point Óskar had woken from his nap and turns to me and says “mamma, oh ohhh police”. All the bells rung in my head now and all I could ask for was for Magnus not to be arrested because he had all the money on him and I didn´t want to spend the night in the taxi with our friend. Finally the police had a solution, they found us a new taxi but we had to pay the angry one. The police was nice about the whole thing, telling us they were sorry we had to go through this. Our new taxi driver was much better and after detailed information from the police he said he would get us there in an hour and a half. At this point I managed to squeeze a little smile out of Magnus by laughing at the fact that he could have been put into a Filipino jail. After a short hour and 10 minutes we were almost there and the taxi driver just needed to get some quick little tips to find the hotel. The police did not know where it was, the taxi driver we asked had never heard of it and Magnus was fuming again. Did this hotel even exist? I started doubting the webpage Magnus booked it on and feared the worst. Finally it took a tricycle driver to show us the way and just before 1 am we got to the hotel (that really did exist) after landing in Manila at 8pm. For the first time this trip Magnus crawled into fetus position and told me he just wanted to go home. I smiled and started laughing but was met with “I can not laugh about this yet”. The next morning we set sails yet again to meet up with Ray and Gebba, my friends from Iceland but Ray is playing professional football in Manila with a team called Global. Before daring to sit in a Manila taxi again we printed maps, got detailed information about where they were staying and made sure the taxi knew exactly where he was going before getting in. To our relief the taxi knew exactly where it was and got us there without any issues. The next few days we spent with Gebba and Ray and their two daughters in Bonifacio Global City, a modern high-rise neighborhood, different from all the other places we visited the night before during our Manila tour. It was great seeing some friends after a while on our own and Óskar was glad to get some playmates! We have now said goodbye to Gebba and Ray and we have made our way to the amazing Palawan –stay tuned for the next blog and please be careful when choosing your taxi driver!