8:17am, NAIA Centennial Terminal

Here I am once more in another airport. You’d think that after going through the process several times, I’d have everything down pat. Apparently, I don’t.

I made the wrong assumption that my ticket already includes the Philippine travel tax. It wasn’t so I had to pay the Php 1,620 at the counter. Luckily, I bought extra money to cover the travel tax. Unfortunately, I totally forgot about the Php 750 airport tax, so I had to use my taxi money for the trip back. To make things worse, I did not bring my ATM card with me, thinking that I wouldn’t need it.

I am going to Thailand for the weekend. This is sort of done on a whim, except that I’ve bought my ticket way back in August. You’d think that given that generous lead time, I’d have a concrete plan. I don’t.

We (me and my tennis-crazy friends) are headed to Bangkok for the Bangkok Open. Rafael Nadal was supposed to play, but due to an injury he got during the US Open, he was forced to pull out of the tour. However, we decided to push through with our tour, with or without Rafa and his famous ass. Nevermind that a typhoon just narrowly missed the country, we are off to conquer Bangkok. Or at least scour every mall for doll clothes and accessories.

My three travel buddies are actually already in Bangkok; Rotch and Rael flew in yesterday morning, Cla flew in late last night. Due to work, the girls are only staying until tomorrow evening, so we have a day to spend in BKK together. This is my first time to travel with them, and I’m guessing the next 24 hours is going to be absolutely crazy.

I have an hour until boarding and I am terribly bored and very sleepy. As with the other morning flights I’ve taken before, I did not sleep the night before because my work ends at 6am on a Saturday. It doesn’t help that there’s nothing to do here at the airport. There’s about 8 internet kioks here at the International wing of Terminal 2, but only 4 are functional. There’s a 10-minute limit for usage, and you need to login with your e-mail to use it. And it uses Internet Explorer 6. The horrors.

There are laptop stations scattered around, but it only has an outlet, some chairs. There’s no free wi-fi here, that’s why I’m using my time offline to concentrate on writing a blog entry. My laptop can detect several wi-fi signals, but most of them are secured. The only unsecured one wouldn’t let me connect properly. Boo.

The Centenial terminal is stark. It’s small — the International wing only have 6 gates. But then, it’s only used by one airline. It’s an improvement over the old Terminal 1, but they’re equally boring. Except Terminal 2 is a lot prettier and less crowded. Terminal 2 utilizes natural light and it’s quite lovely inside during the day. It looks rather dark and depressing at night though, and I shudder thinking how it’s like inside the terminal during a terrible storm.

I’m getting really sleepy now. I hate how there’s nothing much to do inside the airports in Manila. But then again, boring airports like this gives me time to write blog entries.

9:06am, Centennial Airport

Woohoo, turns out Airborne Access is free!