Leave Early
We had booked on the Air Asia site but our flight was with Philippine Airlines. The plane had propellers! It took is to Manila airport in about an hour. We could see the huge sprawling city from the sky. Some areas are rich, some are really poor. Manila is the most densely populated city on earth and one we choose to avoid because of the chaos!
We had a 12 hours stop over. We had intentionally made it longer than we needed because the simple task of changing from Terminal 2 to 3 can be a real chore. There is a free transfer bus but it is not perfect. We left the PAL terminal 2 and waited outside for an hour for the transfer bus to arrive. It was packed full of people with a lot of luggage! The journey went smoothly and we knew when we arrived at Terminal 3 there was lots of places to eat in the food court area.
We opted to leave the airport as across the main road McDonalds could be found. There is a covered walkway from T3 called the Runway. It allows you to cross safely and delivers you to the expensive airport hotels. We took the runway and spent time eating in McDonalds before heading a few minutes down the street to a fancy mall.
We had a lot of time to kill and spent it all in the huge, designer mall. There was everything there. Food, cinema, exclusive shops, a casino and hotels. We dropped our bags at the luggage area as we couldn't really access the shops with them. We found the food court and an Italian restaurant, Parmigiana that had an offer on. Show your boarding pass and eat pasta for free.
This nice restaurant was too good to miss but we thought the offer was too good to be true. Although we had just eaten, we were not going to miss out on this deal. We showed our boarding passes and were taken to our seats. We chose one bowl of bolognaise and another of pesto pasta. They both turned up and looked great. We were even given a plate of bruschetta and 2 glasses of ice cold water. It was delicious and a nice change to be eating in a fancy joint rather than off the street.
Total cost zero. We didnt have to pay for a thing. How lucky is that!
We shopped and had our make up done in a beauty parlour. They demonstrated their eye bag cream on both of us and it was super weird. It made your eyes feel really tight but when they showed us the result there was definitely a difference. It was quite amazing but we have no idea what it was! They offered to sell us a small tube for a discounted £500 pounds. We decided that it wasn't for us and legged it.
We visited other shops but the casino was the place to be. We watched the gambling masses throw money away. Drinks were free- tea, coffee, iced tea, water. We enjoyed drinking a lot and watching the roulette tables. Most people came and went quickly but a few seemed to maintain their winnings.
We spent time on the upper floor in rocking chairs. Very comfortable and great for a snooze.
After 8pm there was a live band in the Casino. We nipped back to another McDonalds to spend our last few pesos and across the road to 7-11 to buy sweets for our onward journey. At 8 we watched the band who were pretty good before we had to actually get back for our flight.
Back across the Manila Runway. We had mobile boarding passes that said we could skip the check in desk but the security wouldn't let us. We needed paper ones so that they could be stamped. We went to the check in desk, arranged our bags to meet the 7kg hand luggage restrictions and were given paper boarding passes.
All went well this time. We had our bags scanned, passports stamped and sat at the departure gate waiting to leave. Just before boarding time a new gate was announced and everyone had to move! We boarded straight away, took off and we were on our way to KL. We slept!
