Flying to The Philippines, cheap air ticket, cheap flights, Asia air tickets, last minute flying. Following the hype that it’s better to wait with booking your ticket in the Philippines until the last minute I did exactly this. It worked for me perfectly fine in the past and the price of the ticket was going down the closer the date of my travel was getting. All happy and excited because of my travel back to Europe for three weeks I’ve checked the prices on my favorite flight comparison site: www.kayak.co.uk and to my surprise the price was unusually high. The Philippines Airlines are always a bit more expensive than the Cebu Pacific, although both of the prices were circulating in the region of 9000 peso for a flight from Manila to Hong Kong. Being a cheap skate with apparent jewish ancestors I went for the Cebu Pacific ticket which is always a tiny bit less expensive. And than I’ve encountered another problem: on Cebu Pacific website you cannot book the tickets for the travel for the following day. It happened to me before few times and even an Travel Agent encountered the same problem while trying to book a ticket for me. My last resort was going personally to Manila and booking the ticket manually, so I did. You have to go to Domestic airport and go to it’s right side. There you’ll find both offices of the Cebu Pacific and The Philippines Airlines. The Cebu Pacific’s ticket office is open 24 hours, Philippines airlines are opening at 9 in the morning and closing at 5pm. You can also find their ticket office in the international airport. That office opens at 2am early in the morning. The Philippines airlines office is not so crowded. Although Cebu’s is always, guaranteed. I have this situation before when my friend was buying ticket with them. It’s perfect environment for hordes of tauts that are hustling you to follow them to their Travel Agent Offices where they can sell you the ticket without the cue, but with hefty interest on the top. I got there just before 5pm. Cue was tailing out long outside the office. I took my number: 267. Number on the screen: 44! Fortunately for all of the passengers planning to fly in the next 2 hours there’s express counter inside. Unfortunately for me all of the tickets for the day were sold out. I went to the Philippines Airlines office, the same situation and the price for the next morning wasn’t necessarily the cheapest one. Well, I thought to my self, let’s eat something, waste some time and see how the situation develops. I went around, stumbled across some local canteen and had some native snacks. I wasted some time by reading copy of the Economist that I stole from the Philippines Airlines office and thought to come back to Cebu Pacific office. The number on the screen was 60. It must had been at least an hour from the time I’ve checked the screen last time. I had a word with the security guard on the door, he advised me to come back in 1 hour time. I came back in 1.5 hour time and the number on the screen was 73. Crowd of the people waiting outside started to be a little bit smaller. It was getting dark. Travel Agents touts were still cruising around in the hope of a prayer. I thought to my self, this is going to be long night. I remembered all the time that there is a nice and cosy business area in the International Airport that you can have a little nap, have a free drink and snack free of charge and what most important: It has free Wi-Fi. All for only 800 pesos. Before going there I had to still wait to buy my ticket. I decided to go to one of the nearby restaurants. I set my self up with the laptop and kept being patient. Being a budget traveler you can often make observation that you are not able to make by rushing to be the first in line. Sometimes sitting down and observing locals is very pleasant and entertaining activity. In between checking the number on the screen, having another tea and ice cream I hanged out for a bit with locals, had a balut or two. I was improving my skills of getting rid off the local hustlers in the polite way. I had a friendly chat with a Police officer. I Chatted to a seamen that visited my country while on a sheep. In this idle moment you I’ve tried to grasp this Philippiness of locals a small bit. The thing that I very much treasure and love in this country. Simple happiness from the life as it is. Coming back to my ticket: I eventually managed to put my hands on the ticket at 21.00. It was a ticket for next morning for 8am. I went straight to international airport NAIA with a taxi and learnt there that I can forget about my comfy business lounge. My check in was starting at 5.30 and before that if you don’t have a valid boarding pass your only option is to use bunch of the ancient metal chairs available inside the airport building. Geez, they must be most uncomfortable chairs I’ve seen at any airport. And the biggest problem is that there’s only about 20 of them. You’ll be lucky if you manage to lay down stretching yourself, although I’ve managed to do that having 5 hours of napping in embryo position. Next morning at 5am the crowds of passengers willing to get the fly out of Manila started to slowly make their way inside the terminal. There’s always crowd at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The deficit of luggage trolleys had been solved by some German company sending transport of new ones. So now at least this hordes of passengers don’t have to fight each other for the trolleys. I embarked my plane, we took off. I had a glimpse at Manila starting it’s everyday fight for survival. I’ve looked again after a while and I clocked Mount Groto in Pampanga. Friendly staff started to serve snacks. After the meal there was time for a game. It’s a Cebu Pacific trademark, they are happiest airlines I’ve traveled with. During every flight you can win some gadgets and souvenirs branded by Cebu Pacific. The game might be a song recognition competition, game of speed where you need to show some object as first or simply a quiz. My impression about the Philippines doesn’t change: These people are poor but happy. The place is shabby but funny. You wait a lot but manage to have a laugh between. This are the things that keep me coming back here. In these place people know a lot about life and are good at living. This place teaches you how to cope with problems having a smile on your face. Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! Keywords: flying to The Philippines, cheap air ticket, cheap flights, Asia air tickets, last minute flying, discount air travel.

By Joseph Gorka

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