So the Philipines was my first experience in being robbed.
Well... attempted robbery... let me explain.
Our time in the Philipines was spent on Boracay, a tourist island well known for it's White Beach. We spent two weeks there at a budget hostel called Trafalgar Cottages. Trafalgar is a well known spot and is quite charming, I enjoyed my stay. It's located near the less developed side of White Beach, making it a good budget travel location. I have no complaints about Trafalgar Cottages despite it being the location of our robbery.
During the second week of our vacation, I'd come down with a terrible stomach illness (which turned out to be a bacterial parasite... no fun). This illness made it so I couldn't sleep through the night without diaherra, gas, and stomach pains. Yet, it's gastric distress that saved us all in the end.
Being ill, I'd gone to bed early that night, trying to recover on my own (unaware of the bacteria eating my intestines). I slept lightly and left the door to our little cottage unlocked allowing my friends to stay out later. My compainions, Ryan and Daniel, came in later that night. The last one being an inebriated Daniel, who slumped into bed without locking the door behind him.
You can tell where this is going I'm sure.
So after Daniel returns around 2am, I'm rolling around in bed wishing my stomach would leave me in peace. Lying still and unsettled on my foam mattress I desperately pray for sleep. As I lay there, I barely hear the cottage door open. I glance over to see a slight hand reach in through the door from outside over to the nightstand by the door. The hand gingerly plucks something from the nighstand and retreats.
My immediate thought was "why would the girls need their cell phones this late at night?" (Note: us boys were travelling with two girls who were staying in another room. However, since the boys had the power adapter, we were in charge of cell phones). Innocent though my thought was I immediately sat up and wrenched the ajar door all the way open. I was met with a surprised Philipino man wearing his T-Shirt on his face. He immediately turned about and dasked off, his flip flops slapping on the pavers outside our cottage. Without thinking I shouted, "HEY!" at the top of my lungs. Leading both boys in the room to jump up from their sleep.
At this point the thief was long gone, but my friends and I were hardwired for a fight. To be perfectly honest I'm amazed how quickly they went from dead asleep to ripped and ready to rock. However, the thief in the night had long since vanished into the dark corridors of the nearby mall. We flicked on all the lights and searched the cottage, thankfully only one thing was taken.
"My cigarettes!" Ryan cried when he discoverd their absence. "That M%$^& &*%3 stole my cigarettes! I'll kill him!"
So gastric distress saves the day!
Had I not been awake to hear the door open, the thief could have easily made off with several cell phones and some money. Had he decided to enter the cottage and root through our bags who knows what else he'd have made off with!
Needless to say it was a lesson in caution that I was able to share with our hostel neighbors in the morning. I realized then why we'd been targeted for robbery.
Primarily, I'd made the mistake of turning off our porch light before turning into bed that night. The staff at Trafalgar makes a point of turning on all the cottage's porch lights. As a sensitive sleeper, I'd deactivated ours. I hadn't realized how these light deterred crime, discouraging thieves from being seen.
Secondly, we'd forgotten to lock our door. Having spent a week at the cottage we'd grown too comfortable with the atmosphere. Trafalgar is a great spot to stay, friendly and cozy. However, it is near a destitute local population, without an exterior gate or CCTV, anyone can come and go from the premesis. I don't find this as a fault in the hostel, it's a great place to stay in Boracay. However, it is a cautionary tale not to get too comfortable when travelling in South East Asia.
Had I slept through the sound of the door opening... Had the thief been violent, drunk, drugged, or more desperate... Had any one of a million possiblities occurred other than me waking up to scare him away, this cautionary tale may have been a horror story.
So lock your doors
Keep tabs on your travel buddies
And don't leave your cigarettes by the door
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The world's worst airport, my nightmare in Manila
We all have nightmare stories of getting through airports, hectic experiences of mind rending stress. Tales of time sensitive terror, not knowing if it will take one minutes or hours to check bags and pass through security. Before last week my worst airport experience was in Paris. However, after trying to escape the Philipines after two weeks in Boracay I can honestly say:
Manila's airport is the worst airport I have ever experienced in my life.
I pray I never encounter it again.
So here's what happened....
After our vacation in Boracay my friends and I were eager to get home. Though we had suffered long layovers and delays little had gone contrary to plan... until Manila. Flying into Manila we claimed our baggage after arriving late on an Air Asia Zest flight. To our joy, we discovered Manila possessed a free airport transfer service from various terminals for passengers with connecting flights. A service we were eager to employ, given we had reached the end of our vacation fund (Previously, we'd had to pay over 1,000 pesos to get from one terminal to another). I myself was down to my last 50 pesos (equivalent to about 1.05 USD). We spoke with the dispatcher there and was informed our connecting flight was in Terminal 1.
After waiting a bit for the bus to arrive we were hurried onto the transport bus labeled "Terminal 1/3" to take us from where we'd landed in Terminal 3 to our connecting flight. To our confusion, we were taken to Terminal 4, where we were informed our bus would not take us to Terminal 1. After an exasperated conversation, the driver begrudingly agreed to take us to Terminal 1. We eagerly rode there with a few other displaced passengers for a roundabout ride to Terminal 1. At Terminal 1 we happily disembarked to find our flight. However, we were stopped by security before entering the building and asked for our boarding passes. The guards were rather confused that we did not already possess boarding passes despite the fact that we still needed to find the Air Asia desk (which was housed in a terminal building). After another esasperated conversation, we discovered we'd been misinformed and were redirected to Terminal 4.
We slogged our way back to the free transport service to have an accusatory conversation witht the dispatcher there who was reluctant to help us. After snidely inquiring why we came to Terminal 1 when our flight is in Terminal 4, my friend was forced to raise his voice to inform him we were not from Manila and could only go where we were told to go. The dispatcher folded instantly under the pressure and let us onto the bus. Wearily we waited as other misdirected passengers were taken to Terminal 4.
Finally arriving at our gateway to salvation, we climbed to the departures desk on the 4th floor. Happily navigating to the Air Asia desk we joyfully claimed our tickets back to Korea. This simple transfer between terminals had taken the better part of two hours!
However, our joy was short lived. For as soon as we checked our bags and claimed our tickets were were halted before immigration by none other than a 550 Peso terminal fee.
That's right, only AFTER having claimed tickets already paid for does the Manila airport demand you pay an additonal fee to use it's airport.
My friend Daniel right cried out in indignation, "How much is it going to cost me to leave this country!?"
Having already been reduced to 50 Pesos by other Terminal fees and charges along the way, I was also indignant for being nickel and dimed at every transit turn on our journy home. Thankfully, I still carried an emergency $20 in my wallet that could cover the fee. Unfortunately, they could not give me change in USD despite having accepted it as payment. I was able to use some of the change in pesos to help my friends through the toll gate into immigration.
At immigration we found it empty, devoid of exit forms and more importantly, pens.
Every immigration form must be filled out in ink. Yet, in spite of charging each passenger an additional fee to use the terminal, they can't supply those passengers with pens to properly fill out their forms to leave.
Thankfully, I had a pen hidden in the bottom of my bag or else my friends and I may have been forever trapped in transit limbo at Manila's airport.
Once slipping past immigration, we managed to find our gate with a few minutes to spare. Had our flight not been delayed more than two hours, we'd never have made it.
I have never been so happy to cram myself onto a plane.
In summary here are the faults I've found in my experience at Manila's airport:
-The entire airport is one inconvienent tourist trap. Each terminal is separated and passengers are ushered to take local taxis with substantial fees to get to their flights. Those who take free transit services are often faced with delays and inconvience found in no other airport facility I've ever encounterd.
-The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Nearly every employee encountered in the Manila airport gave us contradictory information. Be it the location of our flight, the flight time, and how to get there. I have never seen an airport staff so inept or inefficient.
-Here, the customer is always wrong. Everywhere we turned to try and get to where we needed to go we were halted by security guards, dispatchers, and drivers who blamed us for going to the wrong terminals! Nevermind that it was their employees that misdirected us in the first place!
-"You're foreign! Give us your money!" Terminal fees are everywhere in the Philipines and I can understand why they exist, and exist only for foreigners. As tourists, we are there to stimulate their economy, and they facitiltate the maintence of structures by charging tourists extra to use them. However, when it comes to an international airport, where customers arrange and purchase services ahead of time, sneaking in addtional fees for terminal use is underhanded at best (especially for such horrible service). Souldn't the cost of using an airport be met by the airlines who operate there? Or as a customer am I expected to believe the airport doesn't get a cut of my ticket price to use the airport? It just seems that everywhere your turn in Manila's airport you're met with someone trying to milk you for every peso you possess before letting you leave.
They say "alls well that ends well," and ending an otherwise pleasant vacation by leaving through Manila was as awful as putting my hand through a meat grinder. I can honestly say that it completely sapped me of any desire to ever return to the Philipines, if not actively avoid it in the future.
I don't write this to say the Philipines is a bad place, it isn't. It's an incredibly beautiful place and can be a relaxing place to vacation. Yet, my god, Manila airport is far and away the worst airport I've ever experienced.
Hopefully, you never have to yourself.
Manila's airport is the worst airport I have ever experienced in my life.
I pray I never encounter it again.
So here's what happened....
After our vacation in Boracay my friends and I were eager to get home. Though we had suffered long layovers and delays little had gone contrary to plan... until Manila. Flying into Manila we claimed our baggage after arriving late on an Air Asia Zest flight. To our joy, we discovered Manila possessed a free airport transfer service from various terminals for passengers with connecting flights. A service we were eager to employ, given we had reached the end of our vacation fund (Previously, we'd had to pay over 1,000 pesos to get from one terminal to another). I myself was down to my last 50 pesos (equivalent to about 1.05 USD). We spoke with the dispatcher there and was informed our connecting flight was in Terminal 1.
After waiting a bit for the bus to arrive we were hurried onto the transport bus labeled "Terminal 1/3" to take us from where we'd landed in Terminal 3 to our connecting flight. To our confusion, we were taken to Terminal 4, where we were informed our bus would not take us to Terminal 1. After an exasperated conversation, the driver begrudingly agreed to take us to Terminal 1. We eagerly rode there with a few other displaced passengers for a roundabout ride to Terminal 1. At Terminal 1 we happily disembarked to find our flight. However, we were stopped by security before entering the building and asked for our boarding passes. The guards were rather confused that we did not already possess boarding passes despite the fact that we still needed to find the Air Asia desk (which was housed in a terminal building). After another esasperated conversation, we discovered we'd been misinformed and were redirected to Terminal 4.
We slogged our way back to the free transport service to have an accusatory conversation witht the dispatcher there who was reluctant to help us. After snidely inquiring why we came to Terminal 1 when our flight is in Terminal 4, my friend was forced to raise his voice to inform him we were not from Manila and could only go where we were told to go. The dispatcher folded instantly under the pressure and let us onto the bus. Wearily we waited as other misdirected passengers were taken to Terminal 4.
Finally arriving at our gateway to salvation, we climbed to the departures desk on the 4th floor. Happily navigating to the Air Asia desk we joyfully claimed our tickets back to Korea. This simple transfer between terminals had taken the better part of two hours!
However, our joy was short lived. For as soon as we checked our bags and claimed our tickets were were halted before immigration by none other than a 550 Peso terminal fee.
That's right, only AFTER having claimed tickets already paid for does the Manila airport demand you pay an additonal fee to use it's airport.
My friend Daniel right cried out in indignation, "How much is it going to cost me to leave this country!?"
Having already been reduced to 50 Pesos by other Terminal fees and charges along the way, I was also indignant for being nickel and dimed at every transit turn on our journy home. Thankfully, I still carried an emergency $20 in my wallet that could cover the fee. Unfortunately, they could not give me change in USD despite having accepted it as payment. I was able to use some of the change in pesos to help my friends through the toll gate into immigration.
At immigration we found it empty, devoid of exit forms and more importantly, pens.
Every immigration form must be filled out in ink. Yet, in spite of charging each passenger an additional fee to use the terminal, they can't supply those passengers with pens to properly fill out their forms to leave.
Why?????
Thankfully, I had a pen hidden in the bottom of my bag or else my friends and I may have been forever trapped in transit limbo at Manila's airport.
Once slipping past immigration, we managed to find our gate with a few minutes to spare. Had our flight not been delayed more than two hours, we'd never have made it.
I have never been so happy to cram myself onto a plane.
In summary here are the faults I've found in my experience at Manila's airport:
-The entire airport is one inconvienent tourist trap. Each terminal is separated and passengers are ushered to take local taxis with substantial fees to get to their flights. Those who take free transit services are often faced with delays and inconvience found in no other airport facility I've ever encounterd.
-The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Nearly every employee encountered in the Manila airport gave us contradictory information. Be it the location of our flight, the flight time, and how to get there. I have never seen an airport staff so inept or inefficient.
-Here, the customer is always wrong. Everywhere we turned to try and get to where we needed to go we were halted by security guards, dispatchers, and drivers who blamed us for going to the wrong terminals! Nevermind that it was their employees that misdirected us in the first place!
-"You're foreign! Give us your money!" Terminal fees are everywhere in the Philipines and I can understand why they exist, and exist only for foreigners. As tourists, we are there to stimulate their economy, and they facitiltate the maintence of structures by charging tourists extra to use them. However, when it comes to an international airport, where customers arrange and purchase services ahead of time, sneaking in addtional fees for terminal use is underhanded at best (especially for such horrible service). Souldn't the cost of using an airport be met by the airlines who operate there? Or as a customer am I expected to believe the airport doesn't get a cut of my ticket price to use the airport? It just seems that everywhere your turn in Manila's airport you're met with someone trying to milk you for every peso you possess before letting you leave.
They say "alls well that ends well," and ending an otherwise pleasant vacation by leaving through Manila was as awful as putting my hand through a meat grinder. I can honestly say that it completely sapped me of any desire to ever return to the Philipines, if not actively avoid it in the future.
I don't write this to say the Philipines is a bad place, it isn't. It's an incredibly beautiful place and can be a relaxing place to vacation. Yet, my god, Manila airport is far and away the worst airport I've ever experienced.
Hopefully, you never have to yourself.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
First fist-fight
I've imagined fights lots of times. As a writer I envision how these scenarios would go down as exhilirating action sequences, and as a teacher I consider how to mediate them. Yet, for all my imagination, I could never have anticipated it happening as it did.
I work in a connected classroom. My main co-teacher and I share adjacent rooms connected by a set of glass double doors. While working at my computer nearby, I heard two kids come crashing into those glass doors. The doors swing freely and often bump into the whiteboard I keep in front of it. I use this board to give space between classrooms and provide a barrier to keep kids from being distracted by activities in my colleague's room. It's not uncommon for kids to peer into my room or even push open the doors to sneak around my whiteboard. However, when kids push hard it makes a loud crash.
The crash drew my attention, and the average "YA!" is often all it takes to show students my displeasure and send them on their way. Yet, as I saw two sixth grade boys grappling each other I knew this was different. I jumped from my desk and pushed into my co-teacher's room. She was absent between classes as she often attends the teacher's meeting in the passing period between 10:20-10:40. I quickly stepped up to the boys and began pushing them apart.
It's not easy separating two boys who have each other by the shoulders, pushing and punching at each other's faces. But I shoved anyway and got between them. I told the one nearest the door to leave and kept the other behind. This boy promptly broke into tears and the other three kids in the class were deathly quiet. I pulled the boy into my class and sat him down to cool off. I had to pull out the student photos to make sure I got his name and his combattant's name. Which I used to do the only thing I could do, tell my co-teacher in a email what had happened.
After 10 minutes or so, my co-teacher had returned to her class and replied with a "Thank you" email. The boy I held had stopped crying and cooled off so I sent him back to class.
That was 15 minutes ago.
I honestly still feel a bit shaken by the experience and I realize so many things about fighting that I never knew before.
1. Fighting is messy, awkward, and unsettling. The boys were pushing each other and struggling to keep standing. They only managed to throw punches as I stepped between them, reaching over me. Yet, most unsettling is how no other kids made move to stop it. They just watched and stood silent.
2. Mediating fights is not empowering in any way. I was practically invisible to them until I had physically separated them. They didn't seem to hear my voice, or acknowledge I was there at all.
3. The presence of violence stirs up a myriad of emotions, many of which I had not anticipated. I always imagined an actual fight would cause me to get angry and loud, but I didn't. I could feel the excitement of the situation in my chest and I acted accordingly, but I wasn't angry or loud. I was calm, even tempered and not aggressive.
Rethinking it now I see how I could have been more forceful in pulling those boys apart, perhaps preventing some punches from landing, but I didn't. I acted solely on instinct and it was calm and direct. I suppose that's a good thing, but I sit here with a looming sense of insecurity and deep concern. Not for my well being, these kids couldn't physically hurt me. Yet, I'm bothered that they do fight in my co-teacher's empty classroom with me next door. I can't help but wonder, has this happened before? Even more unsettling is the realization that I have no way of reconciling this event because I can't communicate how it errupted. I know kids say awful things to each other and often turn to slaps and shoves, Korean kids are extremely physical in their affections and slights. Yet, there is always a present playfulness, one that was obviously devoid in this event.
In the end I suppose I hate that I have no way of protecting my students from themselves, let alone each other. I have no way of mentoring them into better ways of handling anger or conflict. I have only one other teacher I can consult on such conflict because I don't speak much Korean. All thse these realities are crushingly apparent and I feel sad, shaken, disempowered. More and more, I realize elementary school is about cultivating sociable behaviors and conflict resolution. The kind of skills that make us functional members of the adult populace. The more I realize the importance of character development in young kids the less I feel I have to offer them. It's not a good feeling.
Hopefully, there will not be any more fights in school. Hopefully, these boys will settle their differences and get along in a school that's too small for kids to avoid each other. Hopefully, they'll all get along and just enjoy being kids.
But I've learned optimism is not often affirmed in such matters....
I work in a connected classroom. My main co-teacher and I share adjacent rooms connected by a set of glass double doors. While working at my computer nearby, I heard two kids come crashing into those glass doors. The doors swing freely and often bump into the whiteboard I keep in front of it. I use this board to give space between classrooms and provide a barrier to keep kids from being distracted by activities in my colleague's room. It's not uncommon for kids to peer into my room or even push open the doors to sneak around my whiteboard. However, when kids push hard it makes a loud crash.
The crash drew my attention, and the average "YA!" is often all it takes to show students my displeasure and send them on their way. Yet, as I saw two sixth grade boys grappling each other I knew this was different. I jumped from my desk and pushed into my co-teacher's room. She was absent between classes as she often attends the teacher's meeting in the passing period between 10:20-10:40. I quickly stepped up to the boys and began pushing them apart.
It's not easy separating two boys who have each other by the shoulders, pushing and punching at each other's faces. But I shoved anyway and got between them. I told the one nearest the door to leave and kept the other behind. This boy promptly broke into tears and the other three kids in the class were deathly quiet. I pulled the boy into my class and sat him down to cool off. I had to pull out the student photos to make sure I got his name and his combattant's name. Which I used to do the only thing I could do, tell my co-teacher in a email what had happened.
After 10 minutes or so, my co-teacher had returned to her class and replied with a "Thank you" email. The boy I held had stopped crying and cooled off so I sent him back to class.
That was 15 minutes ago.
I honestly still feel a bit shaken by the experience and I realize so many things about fighting that I never knew before.
1. Fighting is messy, awkward, and unsettling. The boys were pushing each other and struggling to keep standing. They only managed to throw punches as I stepped between them, reaching over me. Yet, most unsettling is how no other kids made move to stop it. They just watched and stood silent.
2. Mediating fights is not empowering in any way. I was practically invisible to them until I had physically separated them. They didn't seem to hear my voice, or acknowledge I was there at all.
3. The presence of violence stirs up a myriad of emotions, many of which I had not anticipated. I always imagined an actual fight would cause me to get angry and loud, but I didn't. I could feel the excitement of the situation in my chest and I acted accordingly, but I wasn't angry or loud. I was calm, even tempered and not aggressive.
Rethinking it now I see how I could have been more forceful in pulling those boys apart, perhaps preventing some punches from landing, but I didn't. I acted solely on instinct and it was calm and direct. I suppose that's a good thing, but I sit here with a looming sense of insecurity and deep concern. Not for my well being, these kids couldn't physically hurt me. Yet, I'm bothered that they do fight in my co-teacher's empty classroom with me next door. I can't help but wonder, has this happened before? Even more unsettling is the realization that I have no way of reconciling this event because I can't communicate how it errupted. I know kids say awful things to each other and often turn to slaps and shoves, Korean kids are extremely physical in their affections and slights. Yet, there is always a present playfulness, one that was obviously devoid in this event.
In the end I suppose I hate that I have no way of protecting my students from themselves, let alone each other. I have no way of mentoring them into better ways of handling anger or conflict. I have only one other teacher I can consult on such conflict because I don't speak much Korean. All thse these realities are crushingly apparent and I feel sad, shaken, disempowered. More and more, I realize elementary school is about cultivating sociable behaviors and conflict resolution. The kind of skills that make us functional members of the adult populace. The more I realize the importance of character development in young kids the less I feel I have to offer them. It's not a good feeling.
Hopefully, there will not be any more fights in school. Hopefully, these boys will settle their differences and get along in a school that's too small for kids to avoid each other. Hopefully, they'll all get along and just enjoy being kids.
But I've learned optimism is not often affirmed in such matters....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)