From Shepherds to The Good Shepherds Hostel

The flight to Manila took about 29 hours and despite 3 hours worth of delays the trip was decent with no mishaps. I was feeling pretty emotional at the start of the trip, happy and excited for my new adventure, sad to not know when I'll see my family next, and terrified because this type of travel feels so foreign to me (luckily the exciting scary things can lead to the best experiences in life), however there is nothing like 29 hours of transit with 4 airports and 3 planes to beat all the worry out of you and leave only a strong desire to arrive at the final destination.

Green kit kats (yes green) in the Tokyo airport and then Japan Airlines served us a dinner that included sashimi and personal hagen daaz cups.

I plan to finally try couchsurfing however since my flight arrived near midnight I figured it'd be easiest to stay in a hostel my first 2 nights. I was torn between two hostels so I figured I had just left working for the Shepherds in Ottawa, an organization that had been great to me so it seemed like a good sign to start my journey with the hostel named Good Shepherd.

I have almost no words to describe how much I loathe getting airports taxis, if there is a way around it or public transit I'll take it in a second. Sadly Manila but at least I seem to be getting better with the airport taxi situation. It felt like i wandered for ages trying to find the yellow taxis that only had about a 40% chance of ripping me off, instead I keep getting swarmed and get quoted 750php from the first person who kindly offers to lower it to 700php, and 560 from another person. The hostel had told me the price should be 500 so just as I'm about to give up o find the yellow taxi line and get end up with Elmer who was super friendly, great English (I feel guilty not knowing any of the language here yet). The good news is the taxi was 250php, the bad news is I may have promised him that while I'm here I'll try balut, something all filippinos apparently love. Google balut at your own peril.

I arrived in the Good Shepherd neighbourhood and it's safe to say I will always be able to find my way back. I'm in the red light district where the neon lights re so bright you might see us from space. I'm loving the change in scenery from sterile airports and security guards to neon lights and a row of stunningly beautiful ladyboys. The hostel seems to be prerty nice, sadly its fairly quiet here but then again it is 1am on a Monday night. On that note it's time to go fight jetlag.