Above: Filipino buses are equipped with some of the best safety features. I guess this one is the dash-mounted collision avoidance system.
After breakfast of muesli topped with mangoes, I took a tricycle to the airport for my flight to Manila. The Cebu Pacific flight left early and got us into Manila early too. It was a relief as I couldn’t afford any delay as I had a prebooked bus soon after.
I worked out that I had enough time for lunch at the airport. The taxi queue was a worry when I saw it coming out from the terminal. Despite the queue and bad traffic I made it to Victory Liner’s Pasay terminal with about 20 minutes to spare.
We left at 1300 and the 9 hour journey to my nightstop Solano was painless. The first hour was just battling through Manila, then we were on the expressway for about 2 hour after that. Then it turned rural and narrow. With two rest stops and plenty of Tagalog comedy (which I didn’t understand), the journey was pretty painless.
A horrible thought dawned on me during first 6 hours of the journey. As all places en route apart from San Jose were very small, I thought that Solano might not have a hotel. It wasn’t a town listed in my guide book. I thought that I might have to spend the night in an eatery (the ones that sell cup noodles with hot water from a flask).
As it turned out, Solano even had a McDonald’s and a hotel called “AM/PM” where the bus driver kindly dropped me. I took a decent room for PHP600 then went out for supper at Jollibee (a local burger chain) before retiring.