<\/a>Last year, when we were planning for my first trip to Australia, my sister wanted me to get the fares for a round-trip Manila-Melbourne-Manila flight from Singapore Airlines<\/a>, Cathay Pacific and Qantas. I, on the otherhand, kept on insisting to fly with Philippine Airlines<\/a>, because I am a Mabuhay Miles member. It was only after a couple of weeks (yes, I’m that slow) to realize that if I’m to fly with SQ or CX, I can have a stopover in Singapore or Hong Kong. After that realization, I booked myself with Singapore Airlines, and spent 5 days in Singapore, hoarding dolls and manga<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Apart from the stopover, what I liked about flying with Singapore Airlines is their excellent service and the personal entertainment system. For a 3-hour flight, I don’t mind not having ANYTHING because I can just read my book, listen to my MP3s and bring my own food. For long-haul however, I need more stuff to keep me entertained. That’s where (in my opinion) Philippine Airline falls short.<\/p>\n

Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t able to secure seats on either Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific, or even Qantas. In desperation (as there’s only 10 days before I have to leave) I booked with Philippine Airlines. I was certainly glad that I’ll be earning almost 8,000 miles for this trip, but what I didn’t like is that PAL doesn’t have personal entertainment systems on their planes. That means a number of screens spread at intervals, showing a set of movies or programs, whether you want to watch it or not.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The first movie they showed was the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. No complaints there, as I liked the movie the first time I watched it and wanted to see it again. I wanted to go right to sleep after that, but I ended up watching Nancy Drew. After Nancy solved the mystery, I resolved to get some sleep. So I put on my sleep mask and contorted to a more comfortable position (as if that’s possible in cattle class). Just when I was starting to drift off, somebody started laughing. Out loud. And he went on and on and on. <\/p>\n

You see, after Nancy Drew and a couple of PAL commercials, some wise-ass thought it’d be fun to screen a gag show. Gag shows are funny; I like watching them. But damnit, not during a flight at 2 o’clock in the morning! The guy, who was on the same row as I am, just woke up from his 4-hour slumber and was so tickled pink at what’s happening on the screen. He enjoyed it so much that he couldn’t contain himself: he kept on laughing and laughing. Loudly.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the blasted show lasted for only 30 minutes. But alas, sleep just wasn’t meant to be. Soon after the show ended, the cabin lights were turned on and a disappointing breakfast was served. But that’s another another story for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, when we were planning for my first trip to Australia, my sister wanted me to get the fares for a round-trip Manila-Melbourne-Manila flight from Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Qantas. I, on the otherhand, kept on insisting to fly with Philippine Airlines, because I am a Mabuhay Miles member. It was only after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[92,94],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}