Leaving!!!!

I have never been so pleased to be home!!!! Gettin out of Manila proved to be trickier than I thought. To start with my 8am pickup time was apparently 9am. I saw Mike, the driver, at 8am and he told me I was going to be picked up at 9. He still had to do a run out to site. I wondered how he was going to manage Nova and back in one hour as it usually took us half an hour at 3:30am when there is NO traffic but at peak hour on a Friday I figured it would take at least an hour each way but then Mike does the route every single day so he would know better than I.

Sure enough though, 9am came and went. As did 9:10am, and 9:20am (my flight was at 12:30 and it can take up to an hour and a half to get to the airport) at 9:30 I got a call from Mike to say that he was held up in traffic (BIG surprise) and that Si was 10 minutes away.

Si got there at about 9:40 and was a bit worried when he heard what time my flight was. Poor Si had been working since he had picked us up at 3:30am on THURSDAY morning!!!!!!! Anyway, good old Si managed to get me to the airport at about 10:30 (we were lucky with the traffic) and I got checked in and breathed a huge sigh of relief. BUT when I went to immigration it turned out that my visa had run out 2 weeks before and I was now an 'overstayer' (blinkin' work had said I didn't have to extend my visa even when I asked them about several times). Fortunately, all I had to do was pay 2520 pesos. Unfortunately, they don't take credit card and I had no cash as I had made sure I had none left before leaving the country. The immigration lady was really, really rude (bit of a shock from a Filipino) and didn't give a rats. She sent me back to the airline counter who had no idea why she sent me there and what they could to. Fortunatley, they found me the only ATM in the airport. Unfortunately, it said 'We are unable to process your request at this time'. The airline person started talking about changing my flights and I had a melt down. I was so tired and sooooo wanted to get home, so I cried. The poor airline man didn't know what to do. I stopped him from changing my flights and said I would have one more go at the ATM. Well, I managed to get my PIN wrong, didn't I???? Idiot!!! One more try and out popped some cash. The airline guy was jumping up and down cheering (bless him) and I managed to pay the waiver.

THEN I got my bag searched on my way through the final security gate. I think my favourite Manila Moment was the moment the plane's wheels left the runway.