I’m back! In the last few years it feels like I have been paying for this domain name more for my own hope and sanity than actually doing any travelling. It’s finally happening. It’s taken a while to get going with the blogging as I get settled in Australia, but I have finally managed to sit down with my laptop for a few hours and blog after a hectic day of substitute teaching.

It seems like just yesterday but ten years ago I started travel blogging when I spent 9 months living in Wales. It’s so exciting to be moving abroad once more (at one point I definitely thought I never would again)! My partner, George, and I have moved to Australia for a year from Canada – we both took leaves from work, subleased our apartment, and hopped on the plane for a year of fun and adventure… but more on that later.

For my first post after this hiatus, I’ll be sharing about our adventures spent on a long layover in Manila in the Philippines.

The whole reason that this little adventure transpired started with us looking for a flight to Australia that included meals and two free checked bags. You would be disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that most airlines now only offer one free checked bag per person on these long haul plane rides halfway across the world. Adding a second bag per person often costs upwards of $400 CAD. George figured out that Philippine Airlines was one of the few remaining companies that offered the two free checked bag situation. This plan had one stipulation: an 18 hour layover in Manila.

I have done a long layover before, on the way to Peru when my friend Kristy and I stopped in Mexico City for 16 hours. It was fun, but our red eye flight wasn’t very long, so we spent most of the layover being exhausted. Due to this previous experience and what I had heard about Manila, I was unsure when George floated around the Manila idea. I have friends who are from the Philippines, and I have friends who have backpacked in the Philippines, and they have all the same thing: there’s not much in Manila and it wasn’t worth seeing for the day. After my day there, I kindly disagree!

We were able to start off on the right foot with a good sleep (for me at least) on the 12 hour flight, and a smooth bag storage process. Our first experience outside of the airport in Manila was true to expectations: the traffic. We got a Grab from the airport (Uber-type company in Asia) downtown, and it cost about $8 Canadian and took us an hour to travel just under 10 kilometres. It was very slow, but came as no surprise as it was the most frequent complaint that we heard about Manila.

After getting some emergency coffee and breakfast from the McDonald’s that was near where our Grab dropped us off, we started our adventure to Intramuros, the old walled town inside Manila. The architecture and structure of the old town reminded me of Cartagena, Colombia where I visited last summer. Here are some photos from our explorations:

During our travels around the inside of the city walls, we made a stop for a snack break at a local 7/11. We were excited to get some fresh Siopao (Chinese steamed buns) which included a Filipino Adobo flavour. We also spent quite a long time perusing the shelves just to see what was being sold, but I won’t bore you with the details – just something about travelling that George and I love to do.

After seeing some gardens, a fort, and a cathedral, we our way to another spectacle of Manila: the mall!

I have been to some malls in Asia but this was next level. It was incredible (but also somewhat soul-crushing) to see the Americanization/globalization of a place so far from North America..

We didn’t really go to any of the stores but did walk around to take a look and people watch. On a recommendation, we went to a Filipino restaurant in the mall called Manam. It’s a comfort food franchise, and I would imagine it the Philippines equivalent of Earls or the Cactus Club – you can get elevated basics and they are reliable. We had such a great meal there, getting crispy garlic rice, sinigang, pancit sisig, and an delicious ube frozen drink (George’s first time having ube, too)!

After our feast, we decided that we didn’t want to spent any more time waiting in traffic and see more of the city on our way back to the airport. Instead, we decided to take the subway train (more of a skytrain as it was above ground) to the last stop, and then catch a Grab from there to save ourselves from another hour-long car ride.

The metro itself was great. Besides being busy, it was cool to see how the locals get around. We paid for a ticket and had to put on a mask to travel, and I was intrigued to see a “women only” car on the train. Since George was there, I went into a normal car, but I definitely would have gone in the women only car had I been alone.

After getting off the train, we were greeted by a giant marketplace that had many blocks of the street closed. We ended up having to walk through the market to get to the main road to get our Grab, and I picked up some $2 “Birkenstocks” along the way.

Our one mistake in Manila was heading back to the airport too early. We were worried about getting back to the airport and some of the logistics that we had to sort out while at the airport. While we were right in it taking much longer than anticipated, we had budgeted WAY too much time to be waiting at the airport for our flight.

At the airport, we picked up our bag and went through security, though we had been told to visit a transfer desk to “update” our boarding passes. This involved going down a special flight of stairs to the transfer desk then going through a different security again before returning back to where we started in the international terminal.

When the time finally came for us to board, we heard our name over the PA and had to go down to a holding room to ID our checked bags. One of my bags was missing, and we spent about 15 minutes explaining to the agents that I knew what my bag looked like, and it wasn’t there. They eventually found the bag, and when we were ready to sit by our gate, learned we had to go through a third mini security, and give up our water bottles before getting on the plane. These little details were frustrating, but definitely not the end of the world by any means.

The Manila airport wasn’t all bad – just an adventure within a bigger adventure. We had spent the evening there in Terminal 1, which serves all Philippine Airlines international flights. I enjoyed that this section of the terminal because was filled with people flying all over the world, to places that Vancouver could never dream of having direct flights to. However, this particular terminal was not built for long stays, and we found ourselves wandering the various gates for hours waiting for our past-midnight flight.

The biggest highlight of Manila for me was finally being in a country where so many people I know and love dearly are from. Though I’d like to go back to the Philippines one day to see the whole country properly, it was definitely great to get a little taste – and a fun way to break up a very long set of plane rides.

Overall, I recommend a Manila layover. If you have an adventurous spirit, enjoy warm weather, and fun snacks, then I highly recommend it! These long layovers can be a pain, but add such value to life when you use them to your advantage to enhance your overall experience when visiting new places.