Unfortunately we were an hour in to our journey when Bruce (my car) overheated and broke down! We pulled into to a service station nearby and they filled Bruce up with water and we headed off thinking all would be fine. It wasn't...of course. We broke down 45mins later on the highway and we knew then that we wouldn't make it the whole way to La Union so we decided to go to Subic. Which is a nearby(we thought) town that lots of people go at the weekends.
We broke down every 30 mins for the next 6 hours!!! Luckily for us, the people of the Philippines are so nice and very helpful and kept bringing us water whenever we were stranded at the side of the road. These are some pictures of our journey.
Traffic police who stopped to help us on the highway. We weren't sure if they were going to help us or try to extort money from us!
One of the many garages we visited.
To cheer us up we played Oasis' greatest hits full blast and sang along at the tops of our voices. Something that amused the Filipinos no end. Filipinos are awesome singers.
We passed a group of guys moving some cattle. I had never saw anyone riding a cow before. Actually it was a carabao which is the type of cattle here.
The views were amazing through the little villages we were passing through. Although we were starting to get nervous about the sun going down, we didn't want to get lost in the dark.
Every time we broke down I noticed a weird coincidence. When we broke down this time I pointed it out and Jo had noticed as well! This is her pointing to it.
This is it. A little circle of scrap material sewed together to make a duster for cars. Taxi drivers always have them in their cars in case the have to open the bonnet and fix something. There was one on the ground every time we stopped...very weird. We thought it was a sign that we needed one for the rest of the journey so we took it. We did!
I saw this sign for a pawn shop in one of the towns we passed through. I thought it was funny because it didn't look like anyone pawned any gold there.
One of many random dudes who helped us out.
When we arrived in Subic the roads were empty so we had to try and refill the car ourselves. Note the pathetic little torch we used to see the radiator cap. I was going to bring a proper torch but we didn't think we would need it. Doh!
How dirty was the car!!!!
We had been listening to Girls Aloud in the car and the girls reenacted the Sounds of the Underground video when we were waiting for the engine to cool down.
See...its like watching the real thing.
This is a picture of the last time we broke down that Friday. The fella in the helmet saved us! We were totally lost and out of water when he stopped on his moped. He went and got some water for us and filled up the car. Then it turned out that he was a security guard at a nearby hotel and just finished for the evening. He very kindly turned back and escorted us to the hotel to make sure we got there. I think if he hadn't turned up then we would still be lost in Subic.
This is us with our saviour. I think his name was Ernest. He took us to the Camayan beach resort which turned out to be lovely. We stayed there for the weekend and had an amazing time. I will put that in a different post.
The next day these guys claimed they had fixed the car but it turns out that it wasn't at all and we had pretty much the same journey back to Manila as we did on the way up.
When we arrived in Subic the roads were empty so we had to try and refill the car ourselves. Note the pathetic little torch we used to see the radiator cap. I was going to bring a proper torch but we didn't think we would need it. Doh!
How dirty was the car!!!!
There are loads of these motorist assistance signs all over Subic....however as we didn't know the name of the road we were on they couldn't help us.
We had been listening to Girls Aloud in the car and the girls reenacted the Sounds of the Underground video when we were waiting for the engine to cool down.
See...its like watching the real thing.
This is a picture of the last time we broke down that Friday. The fella in the helmet saved us! We were totally lost and out of water when he stopped on his moped. He went and got some water for us and filled up the car. Then it turned out that he was a security guard at a nearby hotel and just finished for the evening. He very kindly turned back and escorted us to the hotel to make sure we got there. I think if he hadn't turned up then we would still be lost in Subic.
This is us with our saviour. I think his name was Ernest. He took us to the Camayan beach resort which turned out to be lovely. We stayed there for the weekend and had an amazing time. I will put that in a different post.
The next day these guys claimed they had fixed the car but it turns out that it wasn't at all and we had pretty much the same journey back to Manila as we did on the way up.
The car broke down loads of times on the way home as well. We were prepared though by buying 25 litres of water for the journey and filling it up with coolant.
2 comments:
Your car SUCKS!!
Hallo!!! How are you? Sorry, I've not blogged much recently either. All good here though.
Your weekend looked like fun! Nice beauty pageant too!!
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