Travel Saturday
We arrived in Manila about 8:45 PM tonight. We are now in our hotel, the Manbuhay Manor. Everyone has been friendly so far, but let’s rewind to earlier today before I start telling you about now. We flew out of the Kaohsiung International Airport; it is about 1 hour south of Tainan. The airport is pretty nice, but dead. There were no lines for anything, check in, security, immigration. Even the flight was only about half full. We flew on Cebu Pacific Airlines, it’s a Filipino airline. I had a window seat, which was great when we were flying over the many islands of the Philippines at night. The most amazing view was when we were approaching Manila. Off in the distance there was a storm with a massive lightning display. The clouds flashed and bolts streaked across the sky in all directions. I had read before that lightning does not always head toward the ground like most people think, and this is indeed true! It was an awe-inspiring experience. It was only after about 10 minutes of watching this that it occurred to me that we were heading in the general direction of the storm, keeping it to our right. Fortunately, the storm must have been very far off or it was moving away from Manila, for when we landed there was no lightning, thunder or rain!
There was a hotel van waiting for us when we arrived and our trip to the Manbuhay Manor was short and uneventful. My only observations from this brief drive were all the signs were in English, people were riding scooters and motorcycles and there was a large sign we passed that said “Jesus is Lord”. Now here is the interesting part, the hotel arrival. The Manbuhay Manor is nice. It is cool, clean, modern décor, and the staff is friendly and helpful. (I took some pictures of the lobby and the room.) Part of the staff are two uniformed private security guards - who are armed with pistols! This fact is at once comforting and disturbing. In Cambodia last year every establishment had private guards, but they only had clubs and radios. It makes you wonder why our hotel has guards armed with guns. I didn’t think I should ask and I figured I would just get some run-around answer anyway. Seeing as it was around 10PM we decided a stroll around the neighbor looking for a place to eat was an imprudent idea, so we ordered room service! A fried chicken meal for 2 people was $6.50 US, which I am sure is expensive by local standards, but we didn’t care.
We will not be staying in the neighborhood very long. We have a flight out of Manila heading to the resort island of Boracay tomorrow afternoon. We will be there for 5 or 6 days for some fun in the sun. We will then return to Manila and see the sites of this ‘Pearl of Asia’, and I do not doubt I will discover why the hotel guards have guns!

Saturday Addendum
Ok, it is really Sunday morning, but this an important addition to Saturday’s travel. About 2AM I went down stairs to the lobby to complain about some noise that was driving me crazy. As I was getting dressed, I noticed there was something heavy in my shorts. In a small, side pocket on my right leg I discovered that I was carrying my pocket knife. So what’s the big deal? These are the shorts I wore when I was flying! Even better, at security in Kaohsiung I set off the metal detector and I was individually searched by a guard. How did he not find it?! If he did find it, at best they would have confiscated my not cheap knife and I would have been sad. Worse case, they would have thought I was a crazed martyrdom-seeking Christian hijacker hell-bent on taking over the plane and flying it into Taipei 101! I will keep the knife in my checked luggage from now on.

1樓
1樓搶頭香
I hope I don't get a phone call from the Pentagon, or
American Embassy in Manila or Taiwan saying they have my son
in custody!!!!
2樓
2樓頸推
Good luck with that knife thing!!!
Does it really surprise you that they didn't find it!
But I think checking it in your luggage would be the prudent thing to do now!