Day 55 - Tuesday Feb 21 Manila, Philippines

Manila photos

position at 7:00am: N14 34.58 latitude E120 58.01 longitude
(Manila, Philippines)
temperature: 80F, 78% humidity, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 19,774 miles

So, today we finally arrive in Manila. This has been the most anticipated port on our itinerary as regards the people working on this ship. They will finally get to see their families. Their families will be allowed on board the ship. It looks like we will be losing some crew here as well and we suppose gaining some new. We expected to dock by 8am and slept in.

Debbie was awakened by the smell of something like an electrical fire and noticed a lack of motion. Clay was in the shower. It was not 6:30am yet. Debbie got up and followed her nose to the balcony. There was daylight outside and she pushed open the curtains and stepped out. We were in Manila Bay and the smell was apparently coming from the smog and pollution visible on land. Clay went out to the Coffee Corner while Debbie was in the shower and got her a chocolate croissant. Debbie ate it before going up to LaVeranda. We got a corner table outside at LaVeranda and so had a nice sail in to dock. We both ate cold cereal and toast with juice. Then up top to see what else we could see. We arrived up top just in time to take in the 180 degree turn backing up to the dock. The breakwater and dock are crumbling. We stopped after tying off about 6 feet from the dock. An announcement was made that someone had run to the laundry to get some sheets to hang over the big, old tires that were hanging off the side of the dock. They had crew out there in Kota Kinabalu putting a coat of fresh, white paint and Capt. Dag did not want to mess up his new paint job. An announcement was made about 8am that the ship was cleared and we could leave. We did not have our car coming until 8am so we stayed put until about 8:30am. There was a tent at the foot of the gangway selling Voyager 2006 World Cruise T-shirts with flags of the countries we visit on it and all the ports listed on back. There was a sign up saying the shirts were $9.99. Clay wanted to go down and get some and so we went out to the Main Atrium to see about going out and buying shirts and coming back up before going out on our private tour. The atrium area was packed with people for 2 floors. The blue rope was still across the security checkpoint. It had been 30 minutes since they announced that we could leave, what the heck was going on. We figured that we better go ahead and get our stuff and get in line to be at the foot of the gangway to meet our car by nine. There was some kind of lack of communication going on between the Tour Desk personnel and the Cruise Director's staff. Jamie kept making loudspeaker announcements telling us to go on out and Dionne was standing at the bottom of the stairs yelling the same message. But, after we fought our way to the security checkpoint to try to exit, Asta refused us. We and everyone else who was not going on the Corregidor tour were told to get out of the way, move away from the exit and wait to be called. Called by whom? Jamie had been making general calls for people to disembark for the last 1/2 hour. Asta told us that no cars or buses were being allowed on the dock yet and she knew we had a car and would call our names when it was here. It was already sitting out there. It sat all the while that we waited to leave the ship. (We finally just merged in with the next tour group and exited the ship under their cover in order to shop on the dock.) After we shopped, Clay was going to take the sack of shirts up to the cabin. Debbie had been checking people holding up name signs, but had not seen ours. Just as Clay walked away, a woman broke out from a group of tour guides sitting and standing under a tent with maps and literature and she held up a sign that said BURCH PRIVATE CAR. Debbie yelled for Clay and told the woman that we were here and ready. The woman did not want us to have to walk to the car and was not sure where it was. So, she spoke with us under the shade of tent and made phone calls. Finally, she walked about 100 feet away from the tent area to a line of cars and ours had been sitting there all along. She had a phone number that was 1 digit off. While we were under the tent alone, Roger came in and he still did not understand that this was where all the guides were waiting for their passengers. And waiting, and waiting.... There were some major communications problems at this port. The guide and driver were very pleased that we had come because 3 other cruise ships had all cancelled their port calls here in the last 2 weeks and that another one scheduled to come in a day or 2 was wavering about cancelling or coming. We asked why, and they said because of the news. What news? Have we missed something? We don't get a lot of news onboard just because we don't watch Fox News onboard or CNN when it is available, but still if there had been something that was affecting cruise ships we would have expected to heard about it. They said, no the only international news out of the Philippines was about the mudslides and that had nothing to do with Manila. What news then? We don't know. We asked if it was related to our cancelled stop in Sandakan because of concern with Mindano pirates and they thought maybe that was it, but did not know what had changed recently with that situation that was causing ships to reroute. We left the dock about 9:20am. We did a city tour first to see Future Manila which was the area that Imelda Marcos built on reclaimed land in Manila Bay and around Pasay City. Then to see their Little New York, Makati, and then to see their little Beverly Hills, we don't know the name, and then to see past Manila, or Intramuros. We were to go to 3 museums and have lunch before returning to Voyager around 2pm. We searched for an ATM machine and had some user error issues before we put all the heads in the car together and read the back of the ATM card and found the right kind. Then, there was more user error and we had to make 2 trips to the machine to get more than $5USD worth of pesos. Oh, well, these are the trials of traveling with only a day in each place. We drove around for about an hour. It was alright. The traffic and jeepneys were thrilling and it was cool and comfortable in the car. Jeepneys are jeeps that the US Army left behind here. The locals have converted them into a unique kind of private bus service. It is a trip. It is apparently the cheapest way for locals to get around, not to mention colorful. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. We were the only people in there other than the workers. The place is under renovation and our guide, Dolly was not even sure it was open. It was, and only part of the exhibits were there and scattered strangely. But, all the classical gold and pottery from the pre-colonial era was still in the vault in the basement and that was what we were really interested in seeing anyway. It was an impressive and probably priceless collection well-displayed and signed in English. We are glad that we made the effort to visit and it is too bad no one else was there. Our only stop in Intramuros was a curio shop. We really only intended to use their bathrooms, but we did also spend a few pesos with them. They greeted us at the door with free beads and told us that since we were cruisers touring with Dolly that we could have a 60% discount off several of the products they had for sale. Clay got a toy Jeepney and a 30 peso ($.60US) San Miguel beer in a brown bottle. (That's how it should be drunk according to our Filippino wine steward. Also, our driver today agreed that the stuff in the can does not compare to that in the bottle. Clay agreed, too.) After, that we drove around Intramuros and learned that the San Agustin church is closed until 6pm so we could not see that. Then we went to lunch at the Blue Bay restaurant in the Harborview area. We sat right out over the water and it smelled very bad. There we had a buffet featuring Filippino food. It was a real test for Debbie who does not do buffets to start with, and to do one that was mainly seafood and other unidentifiable foods was particular trying. Our guide was very proud of the selection though and seemed very unhappy when Debbie looked over the items and asked to eat something else. So, Debbie retracted and said that it was fine, we should stay here and try the local dishes off the buffet. She did eat some chicken and noodle stir fry-to-order that she found tasty. We all had the national dish of roasted suckling pig, splayed open in half length-wise with a face. Clay ate roast piglet, crabs, something the driver called Dim Sum but was just a single item. Clay also ate some Sushi and got another San Miguel beer. This one cost 60 pesos, but it was a high-class restaurant. We also had some typical Filippino desserts including flan and two others (one based on coconut and the other based on a purple sweet potato). They were all good, even the flan, which was much better than the one served on Voyager. After lunch, we headed back to catch the National Museum, or the Museum of the Filippino People. Well, when we got there, this one was also closed. It seems they had just switched their schedule to Wed-Sun instead of Tue-Sat. So, Dolly suggested a museum in Intramuros that focused on the role of Chinese in the Philippines. This one we found open, though again only barely, they turned the lights on for us! We were again the only people there and we spent maybe 30-40 minutes going through it. After that, we headed back to the ship and got back around 2:30pm. After a quick room stop to drop off our parcels, we took the Radisson shuttle bus into town. It stopped at the Robinson Mall. It was a huge mall having all the stores you would find back home plus some others. They also had a market area with lots of little stalls and a grocery store. It was really busy and bustling with lots of people. We walked though it to the end, saw the TGI Friday's restaurant and decided we had seen enough. We walked back through and waited for the Shuttle bus to return. We got back on the shuttle and drove around in very heavy traffic for about 10 minutes before the bus stopped again, in front of wouldn't you know it, TGI Friday's. We had circled the mall. If they had told us that they stopped at both ends we could have saved ourselves a 20-minute backtrack. We were back at the ship a little after 5pm.

Tonight is country club casual. There were still lots of visitors aboard. Compass Rose was very empty tonight. There were some new waiters and we had one named Albert. We thought we saw Edwin, one of the head waiters, leave the ship today. He was in shorts, T and sandals and rolling around a big stack of luggage. He seemed to be going around shaking hands and saying goodbyes to lots of crew and passengers around the dock area before loading on a bus and leaving. We sat on the other side of CR tonight so did not get to see if someone else was working his area. Dinner was good. The reason we had to go was for the leftover white chocolate sherbet being incorporated into dessert tonight. So, Debbie got that and it was all she cared about. She has a tummyache and is sure that either we'll die from lunch or wish we had. She thinks she will have nightmares for days about that tiny piglet that she had to eat pieces of. Piglet pieces. Piglet! We have to stay up late tonight. At 9:30pm in Constellation Theatre they are having the Bayahihan National Dance Company of the Philippines. May have to wait until tomorrow to report on that.

Manila photos