7NNT25: Day 25 – Angeles City to Cebu

Soundtrack: “Danger Zone”, Kenny Loggins

Not the most exciting of days, basically a get up, pack, check-out, check-in, pass security, wait for flight, wait more for flight, squeeze into plane, squeeze out of plane onto bus, get luggage, get car, check-in, walk, get dinner, sleep.

That’s the 30 or so word version — am writing this in Wordpad as my ISP has temporarily broken the server slowlyandloudly lives on, so I don’t have a word count function handy.

Last morning in Angeles City, so I headed out and grabbed a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and coffee at the same cafe as yesterday. I think I’m at that point where there’s a certain novelty fatigue, and even a little bit of routine eases the load on my brain. Not that the breakfast choice was a great relief, as it certainly brought some novelty, as while it contained bacon, egg, ham, and cheese, the bread was also spread with something sweet, possibly maple syrup. Maybe they thought I was Canadian, I have been trying to be polite afterall, but yeah, I wasn’t looking for a sugar fix in my toastie.

Finished packing (swapped shorts for jeans as my jeans fit without a belt, one less hassle for airport scanners) and did the checkout thing. My flight wasn’t scheduled until late afternoon, so I could have stored my luggage and done some more wandering, but figured I’d conserve some energy. The rare observant regular reader will notice I haven’t posted any pics of my packing for a while, as the case generally looks somewhat less organised now. As long as everything fits, I’m counting it as a success. I had one last chat with the doorman, he mentioned that the Cebu flight was delayed several hours yesterday, he had family on it, so we hoped it would be okay today. He assured me Clark was a big airport with lots of shops and things to look at.

I feel like I saw so little of Angeles City in my time, there’s a whole section the other side of the highway that I didn’t venture into until my car to the airport went through it, though it seemed mostly residential and commercial so I’m not sure I would have found much to see. The road to Clark airport just about goes all of the way around to get to the terminals, though there’s some roadworks going on that might make it a shorter trip.

The main thing was my luggage was underweight — I’ve read so many stories about Cebu Pacific being incredibly strict about baggage limits. They also have a weird requirement that electronic/electrical cables shouldn’t be packed in cabin baggage. I’ve never seen that before, especially as once I was through security, the first shop was for electronics and selling all the adapters and cables anyone could want.

Clark isn’t really a big airport. It looks like there are more shops planned, but right now there are only a few. They do have an outlet for Susie’s Cuisine, and I grabbed another decent serve of pancit palabok for lunch (no halo halo unfortunately).

One thing Clark has that many other airports don’t is the US airforce using it (possibly the Philippine airforce too). Wandering to amuse myself, I spotted a couple of C130 transports landing and taxiing. As I munched on my pancit there was some solid roaring of jet engines, and I just caught sight of a couple of F16s and F/A18s taking off, plus another more snub-nosed plane I didn’t recognise. (I’ve read that there may also be some A10s based there currently, and was hoping to see one of them, as they are another one of those crazy planes; while the Mig-25 was basically built aroung a couple of huge engines, the A10 was built around a huge cannon, basically what’s the closest thing to a tank that can be made airborne). I got some later snaps of the planes landing, and of a helicopter/plane hybrid that was doing the rounds.

The flight was delayed, pretty close to a couple of hours. I’d hopped on to one of the flight tracking sites and could see that this was going to happen, as the plane’s schedule was lots of short hops around the Philippines, with not a lot of time in between, so it’s really no surprise that the flight’s average departure is more than an hour late by the time it gets to the Angeles City to Cebu part.

Full flight, and probably the least leg room I’ve had so far this trip. But we got to Cebu, where we then had the fun of being loaded into shuttle buses to get to the terminal. At least my luggage arrived. Managed to get a car — please don’t ask me how this is supposed to work, as the Grab app tried sending me one way to get the pickup spot, while the driver called and came to a different place.

Cebu has a lot of traffic, and less street lighting than many cities, so I was happy to let the driver do the work. It took around 45 minutes, even after 9pm on a Thursday night. I’m trying to decide if I give myself an hour or 90 minutes to get back to the airport on Saturday.

Checked into hotel, got sdome tips on good local eats from the front desk, and went for a walk. Was planning on just a short block stroll, but ended up a bit further afield, as Cebu isn’t a nice grid. Found a place that has a large bottle on the roof, but never got to a point where I could see exactly why. Ended up back at a place near the hotel with a big sign that says “beer, chicken, seafood”, which sounded good to me. Seems to be more Korean style menu, but I got some fried chicken and a beer, and it was pretty good.

Tomorrow is trying to cram in a bunch of Cebu, including some things around Magellan.