Manila, Philippines

After a very long, somewhat uncomfortable, 14 hour flight to Taipei, Taiwan, we landed safe and sound at the airport. We toured the place, walking up and down the long hallways, hoping the next 4 hours until our connecting flight would pass by quickly, so we could jump on that plane and be on our way to our final but first destination of this journey. Whew! We've arrived! This is insane, we're actually here! We made our way to the customs line up, just to discover that Mallory forgot her customs form with all of her private information on the plane. Running around trying to look for another form and/or get past the guards to the plane, she luckily was able to obtain her customs form fairly quickly. After that, we decided each of us was allowed one f&%* up per day. We headed to grab our bags from the carousel, set them up quickly and put them on our backs. At that moment I decided it was too late to re-think what I packed in my bag considering I probably should have made it less than 30 lbs. With all in tow, we headed out of the air conditioned building, grabbing a few SIM cards for our 3...nono, 2 unlocked phones (courtesy of Richmond). Ed cashed in his f&%* up of the day by forgetting a very important piece of his iPhone at home, leaving us no choice but to head to the Mall of Asia to find a replacement. We decided it would be best to take the safer option of an airport taxi to this Mall as we heard this form of transportation was more reliable however, more expensive. We had a very eyeopening first peek of the city with some sketchy individuals trying to peer into our car windows. We luckily were able to navigate through the 3rd largest mall in the world and obtain this SIM card holder. After doing so, we attacked Manila's public transportation first hand by squishing into the back trunk of a small van, hopping from jeepney to jeepney (old army trunks left over by the Americans) and running for our lives amidst crazy Metro Manila traffic. Eventually, we made our way to Pandacan, where we were to meet Lewis, a British Uni student from Cambridge currently doing an internship in Manila. Mallory chatted with him online through Couchsurfing.com so we could secure accommodation for our time spent in Manila. Questionably as it was, he actually turned out to be quite a nice guy with a 3 bedroom apartment that we had a very good time with....

Check out http://www.youtube.com/user/AsiaOceania2012#p/u/37/6aUWukzD0tY - Ed's Video's on YouTube.
Until our next entry.......

See you soon,
xoxo
K