We have had so many travels go so smoothly for so long that I guess something had to give eventually.
We attempted one last breakfast at our favourite eatery but had the misfortune of arriving to order behind a large group, so after almost half an hour with our driver waiting back a the hotel we had to leave unfed. We made good time on the drive back to Baguio (just under four hours) and Ferdinand managed to find the address of the PA Booking agent we had found on the internet to try and sort out our flight home. We dropped Laura there while I guided Ferdinand to our hotel so I could complete the check-in and drop off our bags before walking back to the travel agent.
I met Laura there to find that the travel agent's office on the 3rd floor no longer existed and no other travel agent she had found was interested in helping us, given that we already had a ticket. After having something to eat for a very late breakfast we opted to go back to our hotel and try ringing PA in Manila from there. But no - it is not possible to make long distance calls from the hotel. Instead they directed us to a Long Distance Phone Company office about 10 minutes walk away. But guess what - we can't make calls from there, they are just the Marketing Department! However, they said we could make a call from there if we bought a "budget card" from the 7-ll across the road, so across the road we went. You guessed it - they don't sell "budget cards" and don't know anywhere that does. Back to the Long Distance Telephone Company. After some pleading a helpful lady there drew us a map of how to get to a place where we could make a timed long distance call (upstairs from a supermarket - where else!).
It turned out that the place was only a couple of minutes walk from the hotel where we had stayed a few days ago, so we didn't have any trouble finding it. At this point would anyone be surprised if I said that when we got there the shop was shut? It was about 2:30pm by now, well shy of the advertised 5:00pm closing time, but the fact that there was another man waiting for it to re-open at least gave a glimmer of hope. The same young man was also kind enough to send a text message to Ferdinand to cancel the arrangement we had made to meet at the hotel at 3:30pm for a last bit of sight seeing - clearly our hopes of having any travel change sorted any time soon had long faded.
Things improved slightly when the lady who ran the shop turned up within 10 minutes to re-open. She put us through to PA Booking and Laura started our first attempt to sort out the ramifications of PA having effectively cut our transit window in Singapore to 0:55 minutes, via their unilateral schedule change (which was a result of the Pope's scheduled arrival at 5:00pm). The first problem was their suggestion to get our travel agent to make any changes, but since this was an online agency based in Madrid it wasn't an attractive option to try and negotiate. After about 15 minutes of banter on this and similar issues, and being put on hold, we were cut off so Laura had to start the whole process again. Their next tack was that since Hung Airlines (sic) was the "dominant carrier" they were the ones who had to make any changes to our PA flight. Where Hung Airlines came from we have no idea, but they eventually settled on telling us only Scoot Airways, who we were connecting with in Singapore, could make a change to our ticket. Trying to speak to a Manager didn't help so eventually, after being put on hold for the umpteenth time and with the phone bill having reached about AU$18, we cut our loses and just hung up.
Feeling both hungry and exhausted we retired to the big Mall at the top of the hill to eat and plan our next step. We also stocked up on food from the supermarket, in anticipation of a long wait at one or more airports and in the knowledge that Scoot - assuming we eventually do get to fly with them - do not include cabin service in the fare.
By the time we walked back to the hotel it was 5:30pm and we found Ferdinand still waiting there - apparently the text message cancelling our 3:30pm meeting had not reached him. Assuming we would still have to catch our re-scheduled 9:00pm flight tomorrow we arranged for an 11:00am pickup.
After retiring to our room to put our feet up I decided to put some credit on Skype and try ringing Scoot in Singapore to see if they could do anything to help or facilitate a priority transit. It was no surprise to learn that they could not change a Philippine Airlines booking and couldn't even allow us to transit as our booking was for two entirely separate flights, not a single multi-leg flight as we believed. So we would have to actually redo check-in and pick up our bag in Singapore. With Scoot's check-in counters closing one hour before scheduled departure it was starting to look like we'd get to "enjoy" a 24-hour layover in Singapore - for the price of a new ticket, since our existing one was non-refundable.
With admirable patience Laura decided to have one last crack at getting PA to allow us to change tomorrow's flight. It was a marathon performance, worthy if an Oscar, but after about 45 minutes of cajoling the little miracle worker pulled it off - a free transfer of our booking from the inconveniently rescheduled flight to the earlier 3:20pm flight. Of course there was one final sting in the tail resulting from the Papal arrival tomorrow - for security reasons a number of the roads around the airport were to be closed off from 10:00am, so we were warned that it was imperative for us to get there well in advance of our flight. Thus forewarned we next rang Ferdinand and settled on a 4:30am departure for Manila. So having checked into the nicest hotel since we left Manila two weeks ago, which included a complimentary breakfast, we were destined to get half a night's sleep and no breakfast. Such is life!
Of course life would have been so much simpler if I thought to buy some Skype credit in the first place (Doh!) and save all that trudging around, but it would have made for a much less interesting day.
We booked a wake-up call for 4:10am before going to a nice cafe around the corner for what turned out to be a delicious meal. Thereafter the priority was to get to bed early but it still felt like only half a night's sleep when my alarm went off at 4:10am. We were packed up and just leaving out room at 4:25am when wake up call arrived - timing!
Of course Ferdinand was already waiting downstairs and we were quickly refuelled and on the road to Manila. Not much in the way of traffic of course, so we made really good time. Which is more than we could say for all the (presumably non-devout) traffic heading out of Manila for the four-day "Papal Visit Holiday" - we saw traffic crawling north for tens of kilometres along the expressway.
Meanwhile we had made it into Manila in just under three hours and from there through the early morning public holiday traffic to the airport in half an hour. Just to put that in perspective, on the drive up last Friday the drive through Manila to the expressway took more than an hour and a half. Thus we made it to the airport with just 7h:30m to spare before our flight.
It took less than an hour to confirm our flight, complete all formalities and pass though into the departure waiting area. We dip our lids to Sam & Keira who spend a 21 hour layover here last November; though possibly about 18 of those were spent queuing for the very limited toilet facilities. Laura has counted a total 6 ladies cubicles in the whole boarding gate area, and even the gents only has room for two "standing performances" plus 3 seats in both toilet rooms.
Before we reach the comfort of home we have another seven hours to look forward to in Singapore Airport but all reports are that its facilities are far superior - even including free two hour city tours.
We attempted one last breakfast at our favourite eatery but had the misfortune of arriving to order behind a large group, so after almost half an hour with our driver waiting back a the hotel we had to leave unfed. We made good time on the drive back to Baguio (just under four hours) and Ferdinand managed to find the address of the PA Booking agent we had found on the internet to try and sort out our flight home. We dropped Laura there while I guided Ferdinand to our hotel so I could complete the check-in and drop off our bags before walking back to the travel agent.
I met Laura there to find that the travel agent's office on the 3rd floor no longer existed and no other travel agent she had found was interested in helping us, given that we already had a ticket. After having something to eat for a very late breakfast we opted to go back to our hotel and try ringing PA in Manila from there. But no - it is not possible to make long distance calls from the hotel. Instead they directed us to a Long Distance Phone Company office about 10 minutes walk away. But guess what - we can't make calls from there, they are just the Marketing Department! However, they said we could make a call from there if we bought a "budget card" from the 7-ll across the road, so across the road we went. You guessed it - they don't sell "budget cards" and don't know anywhere that does. Back to the Long Distance Telephone Company. After some pleading a helpful lady there drew us a map of how to get to a place where we could make a timed long distance call (upstairs from a supermarket - where else!).
It turned out that the place was only a couple of minutes walk from the hotel where we had stayed a few days ago, so we didn't have any trouble finding it. At this point would anyone be surprised if I said that when we got there the shop was shut? It was about 2:30pm by now, well shy of the advertised 5:00pm closing time, but the fact that there was another man waiting for it to re-open at least gave a glimmer of hope. The same young man was also kind enough to send a text message to Ferdinand to cancel the arrangement we had made to meet at the hotel at 3:30pm for a last bit of sight seeing - clearly our hopes of having any travel change sorted any time soon had long faded.
Things improved slightly when the lady who ran the shop turned up within 10 minutes to re-open. She put us through to PA Booking and Laura started our first attempt to sort out the ramifications of PA having effectively cut our transit window in Singapore to 0:55 minutes, via their unilateral schedule change (which was a result of the Pope's scheduled arrival at 5:00pm). The first problem was their suggestion to get our travel agent to make any changes, but since this was an online agency based in Madrid it wasn't an attractive option to try and negotiate. After about 15 minutes of banter on this and similar issues, and being put on hold, we were cut off so Laura had to start the whole process again. Their next tack was that since Hung Airlines (sic) was the "dominant carrier" they were the ones who had to make any changes to our PA flight. Where Hung Airlines came from we have no idea, but they eventually settled on telling us only Scoot Airways, who we were connecting with in Singapore, could make a change to our ticket. Trying to speak to a Manager didn't help so eventually, after being put on hold for the umpteenth time and with the phone bill having reached about AU$18, we cut our loses and just hung up.
Feeling both hungry and exhausted we retired to the big Mall at the top of the hill to eat and plan our next step. We also stocked up on food from the supermarket, in anticipation of a long wait at one or more airports and in the knowledge that Scoot - assuming we eventually do get to fly with them - do not include cabin service in the fare.
By the time we walked back to the hotel it was 5:30pm and we found Ferdinand still waiting there - apparently the text message cancelling our 3:30pm meeting had not reached him. Assuming we would still have to catch our re-scheduled 9:00pm flight tomorrow we arranged for an 11:00am pickup.
After retiring to our room to put our feet up I decided to put some credit on Skype and try ringing Scoot in Singapore to see if they could do anything to help or facilitate a priority transit. It was no surprise to learn that they could not change a Philippine Airlines booking and couldn't even allow us to transit as our booking was for two entirely separate flights, not a single multi-leg flight as we believed. So we would have to actually redo check-in and pick up our bag in Singapore. With Scoot's check-in counters closing one hour before scheduled departure it was starting to look like we'd get to "enjoy" a 24-hour layover in Singapore - for the price of a new ticket, since our existing one was non-refundable.
With admirable patience Laura decided to have one last crack at getting PA to allow us to change tomorrow's flight. It was a marathon performance, worthy if an Oscar, but after about 45 minutes of cajoling the little miracle worker pulled it off - a free transfer of our booking from the inconveniently rescheduled flight to the earlier 3:20pm flight. Of course there was one final sting in the tail resulting from the Papal arrival tomorrow - for security reasons a number of the roads around the airport were to be closed off from 10:00am, so we were warned that it was imperative for us to get there well in advance of our flight. Thus forewarned we next rang Ferdinand and settled on a 4:30am departure for Manila. So having checked into the nicest hotel since we left Manila two weeks ago, which included a complimentary breakfast, we were destined to get half a night's sleep and no breakfast. Such is life!
Of course life would have been so much simpler if I thought to buy some Skype credit in the first place (Doh!) and save all that trudging around, but it would have made for a much less interesting day.
We booked a wake-up call for 4:10am before going to a nice cafe around the corner for what turned out to be a delicious meal. Thereafter the priority was to get to bed early but it still felt like only half a night's sleep when my alarm went off at 4:10am. We were packed up and just leaving out room at 4:25am when wake up call arrived - timing!
Of course Ferdinand was already waiting downstairs and we were quickly refuelled and on the road to Manila. Not much in the way of traffic of course, so we made really good time. Which is more than we could say for all the (presumably non-devout) traffic heading out of Manila for the four-day "Papal Visit Holiday" - we saw traffic crawling north for tens of kilometres along the expressway.
Meanwhile we had made it into Manila in just under three hours and from there through the early morning public holiday traffic to the airport in half an hour. Just to put that in perspective, on the drive up last Friday the drive through Manila to the expressway took more than an hour and a half. Thus we made it to the airport with just 7h:30m to spare before our flight.
It took less than an hour to confirm our flight, complete all formalities and pass though into the departure waiting area. We dip our lids to Sam & Keira who spend a 21 hour layover here last November; though possibly about 18 of those were spent queuing for the very limited toilet facilities. Laura has counted a total 6 ladies cubicles in the whole boarding gate area, and even the gents only has room for two "standing performances" plus 3 seats in both toilet rooms.
Before we reach the comfort of home we have another seven hours to look forward to in Singapore Airport but all reports are that its facilities are far superior - even including free two hour city tours.
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