Philippines has been the first overseas and exotic travel since the Covid-19 pandemic. We flew to the Philippines with Turkish Airlines. The energy crisis triggered by Putin’s war in Ukraine soared the flight tickets. The cheapest tickets I managed to buy to the Philippines cost 640 Euro. Unfortunately, we had a very long layover in Istanbul, more than 12 hours. Turkish Airlines, 5 stars airlines, provided an accommodation in Istanbul. It was free of charge. We had to apply for an accommodation at Turkish Airlines desk in the Istanbul airport. We visited Hagia Sophia and had a nap at the hotel. Unfortunately, Istanbul is so big city that it took a lot of time to get to Hagia Sophia. We were not able to go inside the Hagia Sophia.
It took several hours to get to Cebu with a short stop over in Manila. At the airport in Cebu, it turned out that I had not completed the formalities. The Philippines government requires an electronic e-Travel document, which is proof of Covid-19 vaccination. E-travel must be issued online before departure to Philippines. Thanks to very helpful and polite border guards officer we applied for e-travel at the Cebu airport. The officer made his computer available to us and helped us to fill out the online form. The e-travel is only bureaucratic whim. We traveled in Philippines by ferry, domestic flights, shuttle buses etc weeks and nobody wanted the document.
We took a domestic flight from Cebu to Puerto Princessa. Finally we reached our first destination – Puerto Princessa. It was very long journey mainly because we had very long layover and 7 hours of time difference. We left Warsaw on January 23 and reached Puerto Princessa on January 25.
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