My mum is here!!

After a very early (6.30am) appointment at the doctors on Saturday morning I got ready to go and pick up my mum from the airport in Manila. She flew in at 9.15 am and I got a taxi to the airport to meet her.

The problem with the airport is that you are not allowed in there to pick someone up! It's very complicated if you are in a taxi. You have to get dropped off either in the departures area and risk your life against the coming traffic to walk down the road you just came up in the taxi (I've done that just once...learned my lesson!) or do what I did on Saturday and hopped out of the taxi near the arrivals area (taxis aren't allowed in....don't know why!) and risk your life crossing the road to get into the arrivals area.

Once inside the mecca that is the arrivals area, you have to pay 30 pesos and a hand stamp to get in to a holding pen where you must sit (if you are lucky enough to find a seat) or stand in alphabetical order according to the arriving passenger's last name. I swear this is true. You can then watch the TV screens to watch the CCTV footage of passengers coming out of the airport to find your loved one. You have to tell your family member to a long list of instructions mine were:

• Walk through the customs area and go straight through the hall to the exit
• Look for the green sign “Arrival hall extension area”
• Once outside the exit, you will be standing on the ‘arrival terminal access road’.
• Look across the road and you will see two ramps (signs point to the ’arrival extension area’) – one going down to your left, one to your right.
• Walk across the road and go down the ramp on your right hand side (because I will be standing at the letter C)
• When you reach the bottom you will be at another access road. Stay on the side of the road that you are when you reach the bottom of the ramp.
• There are barriers in place, behind which you will see lots of people waiting for friends and relatives.
• You will see alphabetically divided barriers (A-C, D-F, etc) I will be at the letter C

After all that I had to get the guard to let me cross the road to meet mum and get into an airport taxis. Phew.

Mum loved my flat and we spent Saturday doing a bit of shopping, getting manicures and pedicures and catching up.

On Sunday, we went to Mall of Asia. It's the biggest mall in the Philippines with millions of shops, restaurants, cinemas, an Imax, science centre and even an Olympic sized ice rink!

Then we went back to Greenbelt in Makati for some dinner. We went on an American chain called Bubba Gump (A Forrest Gump themed restaurant). When I was back in the UK I hated chain restaurants because the food was awful and microwaved and the service was rubbish. Manila has a more American attitude to customer service in that...well they have it!





I still haven't booked us a holiday for Easter yet but my friend Paul runs a company called Philippine Adventures which is a personal online booking agency providing holiday accommodation and adventure activities throughout the Philippines. He is now trying to find us somewhere to go over Easter that won't break the bank and has some vacancies. Easter is the most popular time of year for Filipinos to go on Holiday so I should have booked something months ago!