Heading Home

When we returned from Sagada, we had a couple days in which we mostly spent packing our luggage for the return trip. We had used cheap second hand luggage to bring many gifts (pasalubong) with us with the intention of leaving them there. However, I had forgotten that I had bought a large chunk of kamagong wood on my previous trip eight years ago that I hadn't been able to bring home due to weight restrictions. So between that and all the food gifts we were bring back to give to friends and family, we were having to shuffle things around so that all the bags made weight. Included in those bags were five new brooms (walis) that someone had hand woven while we were in Sagada. They cost about 250 pesos or $4.00 U.S.D. each. On the right is one of the ones we had bought many many years ago and as you can see, nearly worn completely out. They are superior for cleaning wood floors than typical domestic brooms and our main floor is all wood flooring. My only complaint is that the handles are so short for someone like me who is 6'2" so to use one I have to stoop way over. Fortunately I still have kids in the house who do most of the sweeping.

Bags packed, we traded our rental van from John Wayne with a different one coded for the day we would be in Manila, a restriction implemented to easy the congestion, and set off down the mountain for the lowlands. As we usually do, we made a stop at the base of the mountain to a town where my wife's father was from and is now buried. He died when she was only 10 years old and so I've only seen old photographs of him. I sometimes wonder what he would have thought of me.

My wife's father is buried in a simple crypt but there are more elaborate ones nearby. This one was enclosed by wrought iron windows and doors like the one you see above and even had a bench along one wall for sitting while mourning the dead. It even had a shattered crucifix Jesus lying on the bench, probably deposited through the window by a passerby.

Back in the van, we headed towards Manila which is in the distance in the above photograph. Mercifully my BIL went on the expressway toll road so we made good time. Our first stop was to visit the food stand of one of my wife's uncles (brother of her father) who passed away since our last visit. We met the wife who shockingly had bad dementia and so we mostly talked with the kids who were running the business now. Life goes on even when we don't.

Our next stop was to visit the cemetery where the deceased uncle was buried which was very unique from my perspective. It was in a three story building in the middle of suburban Manila. Above you can see the stairway to access the various floors which were full of dozens of nooks on each floor each with hundreds of places for storing cremains.

The nooks all looked similar to this one above though they had different stone colors. There was others here and there mourning their deceased and leaving behind flowers. It is different than what I am used to but makes sense in a country with a third of the population of the U.S. crammed onto islands with a land area about the size of Wyoming. Land for cemeteries is hard to come by. 

By now it was getting to be late afternoon so we made our way towards our next to the last stop which was dinner with a maternal uncle of my wife who also lives in the U.S. but was in Manila on business. On the way through very heavy rush hour traffic, I saw the above guy selling what appears to be bonsai trees at a traffic light. I have seen lots of performers and others selling all manner of food but seeing someone selling bonsai to people in vehicles heading home after a day at work was a first for me.

Our final stop was the airport for the red eye flight back home. I could do an entire post on the process but have done so several times in the past and won't. She short version is that with over 70 ticket agents all working to check in passengers for the exact same flight, it still took us nearly an hour to get our bags checked. We only had three other passenger groups ahead of us in line but it still took nearly 20 minutes each group to look up the flight, print boarding passed and deal with the check in luggage. It is just Filipino inefficiency at its finest. However, I was happy to see that the 17 different stations to check documentation between the curb and the gate had been reduced down to just a handful. Last time, once you got to the gate, you were not allowed to go anywhere without having to be scanned through a magnetometer again and you weren't allowed to bring any food or drink through the scanner either so we had to sit there for several hours hungry and thirsty boarding the plane. This time they a group of gates beyond the final magnetometer and at least one store that sold food and drinks so at least we could enjoy our last couple hours hydrated and not starving. We also didn't have to pay the export tax to leave the airport, the first time in all the years I have been coming to this country. Progress is happening but it is slow.

Our 15 hour flight to the U.S. was a mixed bag. Due to a plane change, I had to sit across the aisle from the rest of my family. However, by the luck of the gods, it appeared that the only vacant seat in the entire flight was right next to me. This allowed me to tilt my seat back and actually rest my head against the side of the seat beside me and I was able to sleep for nearly 5 of those hours. We landed in Sea-Tac without issue and I thought of blogger friend Margaret likely still asleep not far away before we boarded our final flight to Chicago. There is nothing like being back home on home turf when it comes to dealing with airports, parking lots and traffic. 

One humorous anecdote before I finish this travelogue. Midway has an economy parking garage where I was able to park my vehicle almost a month ago where it would be out of the weather. Both my daughter and I took a picture of the sign on the pillar which informed us we were in row "I". Now a month later, we walked past the rows E, F, G and H but couldn't find "I". Instead it jumped right to "J". What the heck? I even pulled out my key fob and tried to get my car to make a noise but it wasn't in range. After a few minutes of going in circles, it hit me that despite having a picture of the sign that we were both referencing, even though it looked like an "I" it actually might be an "l" or lower case "L". So we turned around once more and walked by G, H, J, K and indeed found L and my car which started right up and had air in all four tires. We picked up my wife and other daughter and some five hours later, were finally home.

While this is the end of my travelogue, I have hundreds of pictures that weren't used that might someday be used when ideas for posts are short. But for now, I will likely return to normal blog fodder for awhile. Thanks for coming on this journey with me.