Airplanes, jeepneys, tricycles, vans, ferries, bangka boats, etc- the Philippines has a wide variety of transportation methods! The majority of Filipinos tend to stay in their own region, as travel can be expensive. However, people from the provinces often travel to Manila in search of work. My province, Northern Samar, is quite remote in terms of the difficulty and time it takes to travel to other parts of the country. There are two options for travel from Northern Samar to Manila. The first is a mesyado mahal (very expensive) flight from Catarman, Northern Samar to Manila. We have a tiny airport whose staff now knows me by name, and the runway is a large road that is closed to ground traffic from 5-7 AM four days a week in order for the plane to land and take off again. The second option is a bus ride to the port in western Samar, a ferry ride from there to southern Luzon, then an 18 hour bus ride from there to Manila! Because the cost of a flight is so expensive (a friend of mine found Manila-Australia flights for the same cost as a Catarman-Manila flight) most Manila-bound travellers take the long bus ride. All of my travel to Manila has been for official Peace Corps trainings or meetings, so thankfully the organization has covered the cost of flying and I have yet to experience the infamous bus ride! I did experience a long bus ride from Manila to La Union (the surf capital of the Philippines). A few of us visited home for the holidays, then landed late at night in Manila to travel together for a New Years vacation with a group of PCVs. The buses run hourly through the night, so we arrived at the bus station at 2AM from the airport. We expected the station would be empty at this time, but we found a crowd of 700 people waiting in front of us! Luckily there was a Jollibee (a Filipino fast food chain) right next to the bus station, so we waited there from 2AM until we were able to board a bus at 8AM. Thankfully the time passed quickly as I was with good friends and Jollibee has coffee :). Let’s just say travelling in the Philippines is a good teacher of patience! Within the province of Northern Samar, we travel between towns on vans and jeepneys. Jeepneys became a popular method of public transportation after World War II. Americans left behind military jeeps which were refurbished into public transportation vehicles. There are two long benches inside facing the middle so as to fit as many people as possible. We have one long highway that passes through the province, so if I want to travel to another town, I stand by the highway and flag down a passing jeepney that is travelling in the direction I want to go. Boat travel is common as well. To smaller islands within my province, an hour or less from the mainland, I usually travel on bangka boats. These are traditional Filipino boats with wide bamboo outriggers for balance. They usually have motors. For longer trips, there are large ferry boats. I’ve taken overnight ferries a few times to the island of Cebu in the Central Visayas. These are larger boats, and for overnight trips, they are filled with bunk beds. - To travel short distances within towns in my province, we ride tricycles or pedicabs. A tricycle is a motorcycle with a side or back car, and a pedicab is a bike with a small side car. These are often decorated and sometimes the drivers have a speaker playing music! (American music and entertainment is popular here- Ed Sheeran is huge right now. Filipinos LOVE romance, especially now during Valentine’s Day season). I took the photo of the pedicab on the right during a fiesta (more on those in a later post), a religious holiday celebrating a town's patron saint, hence the nuns. If you look closely, you will see that it is decorated with a doll head. I rode in this pedicab on another later day and asked the trike driver, "Nano an ngaran sini nga doll?" (What is the name of this doll?) First he laughed at me. But then he told me he named it Chucky. There's a saying when it comes to public transportation: "There's always room for one more." Travelling in the Philippines is always an adventure and usually does not go as planned!
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