Elvin Peria

Last October 27, we embarked on a new journey to explore a new land. We've conquered some of the Philippines' beautiful spots before, like Palawan, Baguio, Cebu, Hundred Islands, Majayjay, Tagaytay, Villa Escudero in San Pablo Laguna, Laiya Batangas, Pagsanjan and Boracay. This time, we decided to venture outside the country together to meet the world of Mickey, the Great Buddha and the lazy Panda.

Our day started out early. We were excited to wake up at 6:30AM even though our flight was scheduled at 7:15PM. We agreed that it is better early.

According to our source, it will be a three hour drive from Manila to Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Clark (traffic included). We don't want to risk getting late and missing our flight. Since we'll be coming from Laguna, thirty to one hour drive going to Manila, we decided to leave at 10:30AM from Jessiline's house. We expected to be at the terminal two hours before our flight.

So we fixed ourselves, ate breakfast, bid our farewells to our parents and went straight to Jessiline's house.

Minutes later, we hit the road.

11AM. We were entering EDSA already. I never expected that there was no traffic jam in SLEX.

12PM. We were in NLEX already. I was starting to worry because we were too early.

12:30PM. We were getting hungry and decided to stop in the next gasoline station. We ended up in Razon's somewhere in Mexico, Pampanga, few kilometers from our exit. Edel and I ate Sisig with rice. Ninang Lilian bought us Razon's special Halo halo.

At around 1:00PM. We went back on the road.

At 1:30PM. We were already in Subic! We were really early!

I realized that I miscalculated our travel time. Adding four hours to 10:30AM means being at the Clark at around 2:30PM. That was 3 hours early! My mind was set to catch the 11:30AM or 1PM bus in Philtranco. Oh, well.

Nayong Pilipino sa Clark (aka Expo Pilipino): Abandoned?

Good thing along the way to the airport, we saw Nayong Pilipino sa Clark (aka Expo Pilipino). We decided to visit it first before going to the airport to make the best out of our time. By the way, Ninang Lilian paid for our entrance fees which is P50 each.

Upon entering Nayong Pilipino sa Clark, I had high expectations. I have never been to Nayong Pilipino even in Manila, so I was excited to be there. However, my expectations were not met. Nayong Pilipino sa Clark does not look good anymore. There were only few visitors, lots of closed stalls, cracked paint walls, etc. I felt I was entering a ghost town. Edel felt the same thing. While walking, we kept on discussing about the place's history and my previous visit when I was still in high school.

Anyway, the list of our frustrations about the place grew. To add more, the scorching heat of the sun immobilized us from exploring the place. We just sat down at one spot and decided to play Monopoly.

Seven houses and almost hundred dice throws later (2:15PM), we decided to go to the airport since Ninang Lilian needed to go back to Manila before 7PM.

At about 3PM, we arrived at Diosdado Macapagal International Airport. We learned that we cannot check in yet because it was still early. I also learned that Tiger Airways is under the umbrella of SEAIR. So our plane has the SEAIR logo on it and not Tiger Airways.

First Panoramic shot of Diosdado Macapagal International Airport

At 5PM, we started to fall in line at the check in counter. I noticed that our flight was the only one scheduled that night. The next one was scheduled at 12 midnight. It is safe to say that DMIA is a not-so-busy international airport.

After depositing our baggage, I was surprised that we needed to pay travel tax amounting to P1,620 each on top of the P200 terminal fee. Oh, well.

We waited for one and a half hour more before our plane left the country.

.. to be continued...

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