1315
Having the “jeepney experience” as I and my little last landlady called it. Am on way to San Augustin inside Intramuros. Shall see.
Beside us at light, others doing same.
Around the inside of mine:
[yt4wp-video video_id=”4fgelnaGAEo”]
1334
Just bought equivalent of $0.60 of food at a food stall in a messhall inside the flea market surrounding Intramuros entrance area.
Had debated breakfast both for hassle and cost today, but I found this a great unexpected solution.
Booth I bought from (Pepsi isn’t mine, water is).
A not-great pic of down one end of the hall.
Just finished food. So full.
The plate idea is neat. They put the plastic of a firm plate, serve you, you bring it back and they take off the plastic and it can be used again.
A while later:
Entered Intramuros and let a little bicycle tour around it, and the guy wouldn’t go back to start the several times I told him towards end I was feeling sick and wanted to cut it short.
Then, when he got us back to start he tried to charge me three times what the cost of the full ride would be. We argued over and over, him pretending that every time I added the bills in front of him and pointed at his rates sign… to include showing that I had timed our trip on my iPhone… that, yes, the numbers I were multiplying were correct and my own iPhone proved how long it was and repeatedly pointed at the pricing list and repeating the fake cost.
I even did the slow, do point and agree on the rate, show the time on the iPhone stopwatch, multiply his rate by the length of time involved, and then him still stating the 3X the right size cost as I kept standing my ground on the fact that I could do basic fucking math.
Then, busted out the calculator on the phone and we still went around.
Meanwhile, I’d not been feeling well for a while and telling him so with his refusing to take me back so that, clearly, he could charge me – even if he couldn’t trick me out of more – a longer time than I wanted his services for.
He kept pressing me then about a tip. Despite his clearly milking me by not taking me back when I started to feel sick I had been meaning to give him one based just on the nature of the job.
Guess how I felt about a tip after this had gone on a solid 7-10 minutes.
He egged me on for a tip more. I said twice during more of this when he brought it up that I’d intended to tip him until he’d started trying to lie and cheat me.
Finally, I pointed over towards the corner and across the street where we’d started the trip and I think he mistook the direction I pointed as towards some of his fellow workers since the bank I was pointing to was over their heads, so he agreed very much and started walking with me towards that way…
…until he saw me start to cross the street instead of turn towards his friends and stopped me and I made clear we were going to go get the bank over there to figure it out for us since apparently we just couldn’t understand each other (ha). He agreed to this and then tried to steer me towards his friends, again, and again I started crossing the street and said we’d speaking to the people at the bank (two of which were armed guards outside of it).
He finally changed his tune to how oh, it was the right amount I’d said all along and here, step into this taxi you were just about to, and where’s my tip??!!!
I reminded him firmly I had been intending to give him one before he started that bullshit and shut the door on him and went my icky feeling self back to the hostel finally.
But, here are some pics and short clip:
[yt4wp-video video_id=”JVWhdU8UrsY”]
