Day 16

Today I would sadly be leaving Taiwan. I had a great time, and Taiwan was even more amazing than I expected – there was a large part of me that was kind of hoping I would miss my morning flight home. In fact, I didn’t even look up ahead of time what terminal I would be at expecting I could just walk between terminals if I was at the wrong one. Turns out that after arriving already kind of late, I was at the wrong terminal and had to catch the monorail to a different terminal. I only barely made it onto the plane, as they closed the doors right behind me after I boarded, and we took off within minutes of me reaching the gate.

Manila Airport

After 9 hours I was landing in the Philippines. It took quite a while for my bag to come out – but as I waited, I marvelled at the different lives the people around me at this airport must have been having. To me, one of the most interesting places can sometimes be foreign international airports as you always cross paths with people living such different lives to your own. I remember reading foreign addresses on parcels that were coming off the conveyor belt before my bag intrigued at how there were parcels coming from all different continents and how different countries structure their addresses differently.

After finally receiving my bag, I knew I only had a few hours before I had to be back at the airport. I took the risk of going through the immigration and heading out into Manilla for a mini adventure. I just wanted to see what this place was like, especially since I have worked with many people from the Philippines in the past.

Manila, Philippines

After adding another stamp on my passport, I headed out to the city on a Grab (SEA version of uber). I had no idea where to go, but the Grab took me to the area around the Manila City Hall where I could see the clock tour from outside, the Katipunan Revolution Monument, and the Chinese area. I sadly didn’t have time to really explore this area and look in the monuments, and to be honest I was feeling kind of nervous walking around. This was because on the way in the taxi, we drove through a slum area and people were banging on the window beside me begging for money. After stopping for a coffee, I headed back to the airport only having around 30 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. It was quite interesting sitting in the taxi watching the city go by and seeing the diverse lives that exist here.

The final Journey Home

Back at the airport, I could not find any information about what terminal my flight was taking off from. Eventually the signs showed my flight (hours after it was scheduled to take off) was at a certain gate, however when I got there was no information about my flight at that gate (Manila airport is quite big so walking between gates can take some time). Feeling kind of stressed I eventually got the right information by asking around and made it onto my plane. I spoke to another Australian at the terminal while we were waiting for them to locate our bags who told me about the great time he had had on one of the beach islands of the Philippines which made me interested to visit again. Upon boarding the plane, I was feeling exhausted after partying for the last 4 nights, and fell asleep almost straight away, waking only land back home in Melbourne getting back to my house around 7am, feeling refreshed (kind of) ready to start my first day back home.