l'aventure

my friend lay asked me to come with her to the mbrs lines ticket office at north harbor yesterday to buy a ticket to boracay for our friend heidz. as there's nothing else to do at home after work (i finish work at 2pm), i eagerly accepted.

after a long, lethargic bus ride from ortigas, i met lay at stop and shop. she treated me first to a cheeseburger at jollibee, seeing how spaced out i was. one cheeseburger and three glasses of ice-cold water later, i was ready to go. ;-)

to get to north harbor entails us to ride a jeepney to divisoria, then get on another jeepney just after tutuban that passes through moriones in tondo. the jeep will then drop us off in front of the gate leading to piers 8 to 12. (the mbrs ticket office was in pier 8)

for reasons totally unexplainable, we encountered traffic at the top of the flyover going to legarda. oh, well. i guess it's another case of what i call senseless traffic--lots of jeeps with little or no passengers at all crowding the stretch of legarda up until mendiola, waiting for imaginary passengers. grrr.

recto was no different. in there, however, concentrated volumes of smoke and fumes from the countless jeepneys pervaded the atmosphere, making it difficult to breathe. it's a totally new experience for me, though i've ridden the jeep to divisoria before (that one doesn't count, though, coz it wasn't traffic at the time). at any rate, we got off the street just before reina regente and walked the rest to the next jeepney terminal. there are people everywhere--kids playing on the sidewalk, kids begging, people rushing to their destinations, more people selling their wares from the sidewalk, and even more people just hanging around. "itaktak mo" by joey de leon was blaring from the speakers at different intervals. ooh, the place was so crowded, noisy, dirty, and the divisoria "scent" permeating the whole scene. this may sound strange and please don't think i'm being sarcastic here but i was actually enjoying everything. i don't know why myself, but i just do.

it was a bit scary when the jeepney finally dropped us off at the gate to piers 8 to 12. i'll just put it this way: there are just too many "temporary settlers." we decided right then and there to ride a taxi after buying the ticket.

the walk from the gate to pier 8 was surreal. there were trailer trucks and container vans everywhere, forklifts, kargadors etc. (i even saw a guy urinating on one side of one of the trucks parked on the sidewalk! eep! but then again...) it's like being transported to a different dimension.

the trip to pier 8 took an hour and a half. we only spent ten minutes in the ticket office. ain't it just.

thank God we got a taxi immediately.

thank God the driver was nice and kind and didn't mind it at all that he had to drop two passengers off at sta. mesa and san juan.

the taxi ride back home was nice, too.