We're Here!

We made it to Manila, finally. After something like 23 hours in the air and another 5 or so on the ground, Tanaka and I arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport at about 11:00 Monday night.

Aside from it being a long, long walk from the gate to the immigration and the baggage claim, NAIA was nothing like the chaos I had imagined after reading Lonely Planet Philippines and a variety of Web sites. It was all very smooth, and nobody even asked to see Tanaka's documents.

I wandered outside, trying to remember where Shelly had said to meet her. I ended up calling her -- and padding the pockets of a guard who loaned me his cell phone. The damage: I paid 2 bucks for something that should have cost just a few cents, but it was easy and probably worth it, at least once.

After a quick Shelly and her driver, Bobby, collected us at the parking lot and whisked us home. It took me an hour to get into sleeping mode, but at least it was a restful night. Shelly finally woke me up at 10:00 this a.m. She took part of the day off and we spent it having lunch, figuring out what to have for dinner and shopping. I went for a swim in the afternoon, and then determined around 5:00 that there was no way I was going to be able to fix dinner....jet lag had begun to set in. Shelly fixed a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, and I was out by 7, only to awake at 11, 2, 3, 4 and 5:30, all perfectly logical times for the jet-lagged body!

Tanaka seems to be adjusting well, though there's construction on three sides of us, and the noise is making him kind of skittish, with lots of hiding under the bed and in various corners. He hasn't eaten much, but he's drinking plenty, so I suspect he'll come around.

Updated October 17. Now I know how much that $2 phone call was really worth. One dollar is worth about 54 pesos. That 108 pesos I paid for the one minute phone call could buy several packs of AA batteries, 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds!) of cucumbers, 1.25 kilograms of lettuce, 3 kilograms of imported onions or 2.5 "Snacker" meals at KFC. Suffice it to say that, in a country where the average laborer's wage is between 200 and 400 pesos a day, I overpaid.