A bunch of us were meeting up in Tacloban for the cultural festival celebrating body paints and tattoos with parades, costumes, parties and pageants. It's supposed to be really popular and tons of people go. We'll never know.
So Jeff and I were meeting up with 2 other volunteers coming from Naga going down to Matnog. After we got to Matnog, we'd get on the ferry with the bus, ride the ferry for a while, get off in Allen Port in Samar then continue on the bus until we arrived in Tacloban. About 16 hours total. The adventure started when we got on the bus. Unless you are in a major city, there is no bus stop; you have to wait on the side of the road to catch it. And nothing has a specific time. Our friends got on the bus before us at 9PM, bought our seats on the bus and were going to call us when they were getting close. We stayed in touch with them and they were supposed to call us when they were about 30 minutes away. The plan was that we'd run out to the side of the road and flag down the bus in the middle of the night. That was the plan. Our friends told the bus driver where to stop, but since it was so dark and lack of landmarks, we didn't get the text from them until they were stopped at a gas station on the other side of the city at 12:30AM. Cue the running. We hopped onto another bus going by that was also stopping at the gas station, hoping that it was truly the same gas station and that they would still be waiting there. We got so lucky that they were still waiting for us when we got there. We boarded and were on our way.
By 1:45AM we arrived in Matnog. We got off the bus, waited in the ferry terminal and then moved out to board the ferry by 3AM. Then we waited and waited and waited. We waited long enough to see a beautiful sunrise and I couldn't help but share the phrase my parents always told me "Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning." Once the sun rose, the fisherfolk were up and ready to work. They started yelling at people on the ferry and, in turn, the people on the ferry threw money in the water for them to dive for. Amidst the yelling and diving, I fell asleep on a bench because it was 6AM and didn't wake up until I heard a coast guard member say, "Excuse me, do you speak Tagalog." He proceeded to tell us that we needed to get off the ferry because the coast guard issued a statement forbidding any boats from traveling to Allen Port and vice versa because of a typhoon approaching. "You're kidding! When will they open it again?" No answer. The thing is that we had just seen another ferry leave an hour before. The only difference what that it had been past 6AM and someone from the PAGASA (the weather reporters) was in the office.
We get off the ferry and wait in the bus for about an hour before it got too hot and smelly. Hundreds of people were stranded at the port, in addition to all of the others on their way. We got a report from the officials that the ferries wouldn't be up and running for 2 more days. But it also had the potential to open in 2 hours. No one knew. We befriended a food vendor (who married a US Navy guy from Michigan and had 3 kids with him, but now she was back in a poor, Filipino port selling snacks) and when we asked where all the people would go to wait, she said that they would just sleep outside, on the buses or inside until it was open again. Luckily, we were close enough to Jeff's house that we had the option to take a 1.5 hour jeep back. According to the news as of 1 day after the port was shut down, over 6,000 people were stranded in ports around the area.
However, what about the peso that we paid for the WHOLE bus ticket? In the Philippines, you pay per kilometer and we were only half done with our trip. On the PC budget, the refunded money makes a difference. We asked the bus driver for the money back, but he pretended a lot of things. He pretended he didn't understand, that it wasn't allowed, that he had no money on him, that we needed to go to Manila for the refund, and finally, that we needed to go to Naga for the refund. Nice try. No clerk in Naga would believe us. We asked him to call the office in Naga to confirm and he wouldn't. We knew that something was not right. After some arguing, our new vendor friend suggested we ask the PNP (Philippine National Police) for help. A common trait of people in the Philippines is an aversion to direct confrontation, so you can imagine how surprised the bus driver was when we came back with 3 PNP. We all went to the station to see the desk chief and tried to work it all out. It became a battle of repetition and will. Who could explain the story the most and who would give up first. The chief suggested that we call the Matnog bus manager (something that the bus driver never suggested) to see what to do. After the bus driver called the manager, he pulled out a giant wad of pesos from his pocket and gave us our refund. SUCCESS! Go team!
We went back to Sorsogon City and were in the middle of a level 2 storm with people being evacuated in some areas because of flooding and potential landslides the next day.
Moral of the story, always fly.
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