Bus ride a touch of luxury

TRAVEL

Marfuka is a fictional character who enjoys a good yarn. He tells stories that capture his life from when he could remember as a small boy to his adult life now closing in on the 60s. There is a twist though as some of these accounts can be tweaked as he juggles reality and his own imagination on what life should be. 

IT is the early part of the morning in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea.
Four sportsmen and two officials – a coach and a team manager – form a small team, are busy filling in travel documents to enter the Philippines.
It is advisable to get to the airport via the international airport carpark above. Passengers then cross an overhead bridge to access the terminal. There is the other option of getting dropped off on ground level but access through that point can become a bit tricky.
The travel documents include their passports, airline tickets and information on accommodation at their overseas destination.
PNG Passport holders now do not need a tourist visa when travelling to the Philippines in 2024. They can stay in the Philippines for a short period of time (30 days). The year is 2016, and Marfuka is the team manager.
The closest he got to getting into the Philippines was in 1999 when he was in transit on his way to the South Pacific Games in Guam. He was travelling in a different capacity that time.
Transit because he changed aircraft. A stopover is at least 24 hours or overnight between flights, which is an opportunity he had never had to get out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
But Marfuka recalled the transit wasn’t such a good experience as he had lost a camera in his luggage on that particular trip. That had taught him a very important lesson – avoid packing any valuables in your baggage that you check in. If you do want to, you must ensure that your suitcase or travelling bags are securely locked.
It is a better option to carry the valuables as part of your carry-on luggage.
Marfuka’s team files into the departure lounge. The coach leads the small team. The manager takes the rear. This is to ensure that if an athlete has issues with immigration, then there is a team official still in the queue and available to assist with clearance.
They clear the local immigration requirements and await the boarding call for the Manila flight.
The coach is an experienced international traveller. He had been on a similar training camp trip in 2015. He has travelled extensively; his trips including to Beijing, to the UK, Australia, parts of the Pacific region. So Marfuka would be relying quite heavily on his guidance.
As he finds his seat in the aircraft and settles in for the flight, Marfuka recalls the Filipino television series Dulcie Amore and Forevermore which had become quite popular in PNG.
Dolce Amore is a story about Serena (Liza Soberano), a rich, sophisticated, and beautiful Italian bella, and Tenten (Enrique Gil), a poor and hard working Manila boy who will do anything for his family, and how their worlds collide as they search for identity and love.
Forevermore also featuring Gil and Soberano as the main characters had aired the previous year. It was filmed in several parts of the Philippines but most notably Sitio La Presa. The place is actually Sitio Pungayan, an upland barangay in Tuba Benguet province. This is now becoming a popular tourist attraction near Baguio City.
A barangay is a small territorial and administrative district forming the most local level of government in the Philippines.
Marfuka was now going to experience Baguio, the city at which the team’s high performance training would be conducted for the next two weeks. Baguio, also known as the City of Pines, is situated at an altitude of appropriately 1,500 metres above sea level.
The team arrives in Metro Manila, which is at seas level, and make their way to the bus terminal for the bus ride to Baguio. It is a five hours and 25 minutes’ flight from Port Moresby to Manila.
The terminal is at Pasay where the team boards Victory Liner bus, which is a four-to-six-hour drive, to Baguio. Other travel options are by taxi or private cars.
It costs P730 (Pesos), on these buses, which is approximately equivalent to K50 a person. This also depends on the class level one wants to travel on – hence the higher the class, the dearer the rate.
It is a very comfortable ride on luxurious seats. Luxurious because Marfuka’s own journey home from Port Moresby is quite the opposite. Using our public transport, it involves jostling for space, then cramped like sardines in a tin, on a pot-hole riddled road. You can throw in dusty conditions of the trip for good measure.
You have to also contend with those fellow passengers whose great love for tobacco and cigarettes makes it almost impossible for them to consider the others in the vehicle.
Then you have those who are intoxicated with alcohol that bathroom breaks for them adds to the unnecessary stops that prolong the journey and certainly one’s stress levels.
Marfuka makes a mental note that if he ever gets into a position where he able to influence decisions, he would do his utmost best to get a similar passenger service like the Philippines set-up for the people who travel the Hiritano Highway, which connects onto the Trans Highway of Gulf.
Passengers file into the Pasay bus terminal and line up in a queue to buy their tickets to whichever destination they wish to travel to. No unnecessary persons except genuine travellers are allowed into the bus terminal area.
There are other ports they can begin or end their journeys. The last time Marfuka made this trip in 2023 from Baguio, he made it to Cubao. From there he took a taxi to the Manila Airport to make the flight in time. If he had instead got to Pasay, a route he was more familiar with, he would have missed his flight.
Quite a high risk journey in retrospect, Marfuka recalls. He could have missed his flight and that would have really complicated matters – an experience that every traveller must avoid at all costs.
But gladly he made it but he vowed to never repeat a similar run. A better option is to overnight in Manila and catch the flight out next day.
The bus drops off and picks up passengers on the way, a 250 km trip between Manila and Baguio. Mid-way the Victory Liner buses (there are others as well) stops for bathroom breaks which also serves as an opportunity get something to eat and drink. Eating and drinking are not allowed on the buses. It is a very orderly travel.
Marfuka has made the trip to Baguio three times including the 2016 visit.
According to latest statistical estimates Baguio City’s metro area population is pushing towards 400,000. Yet Baguio is considered a small city with a land area of only 4.9 square kilometers.

Baguio strawberries
Baguio is famous for its fresh strawberries. The city is quite popular with the tourists because of its weather conditions. It can become colder than what those who come from the tropics are used to. In fact, when Marfuka made his first trip to Baguio two things kept coming to mind.
The first was the climate reminding Marfuka of the Highlands of PNG, especially Aiyura in the Eastern Highlands where Marfuka spent two memorable years of his young life. The next was the Forevermore TV series – where strawberries and La Presa were two of the most notable features of the romantic drama that evolved around Xander and Agnes, the main characters. After the two weeks training camp the team closed their stay with a trip to the Baguio City Market.
For two weeks the team routine was to wake up in the morning, do an early morning session at the Teachers Camp athletic track. Then after breakfast rest and prepare for the afternoon session.
Marfuka’s responsibility was to get to the major shopping centre in Baguio and get breakfast. He would make another visit as a dinner run. They bought electrical appliances to cook for themselves to in order to stretch their budget.
SM City Baguio is popular shopping mall which has a floor area of 176,073 square metres, and is the largest in the North Luzon Region. It now has 400-plus shops on six floors. Of course it pales in comparison to the SM Mall of Asia in Pasay, Manila, which is the largest shopping mall in the Philippines and sixth largest in the world.

Very Papua New Guinean
Marfuka was going up the elevators and spotted a group of young men who looked “very Papua New Guinean”. They were quite excited to see him too by their reactions as he would have looked “very Papua New Guinean” to them as well. When one is away from home for sometime you get excited when you see a fellow citizen.
He went down and met them. They told Marfuka they were tertiary students studying in Baguio. They were in the aviation sector – studying to be aircraft engineers, electrical specialists for aircraft or pilots. There were six of them.
Marfuka jokingly floats a comment that they must come from good families to be able to afford international studies. Or were they scholarships holders from a programme driven by some visionary persons who saw the value in good education for the young people?
Who could that Papua New Guinean be, Marfuka wondered. The answer was that their education was funded by the Enga Provincial Government, an initiative of Governor Sir Peter Ipatas.
Certainly a visionary leader indeed who knows that spaces for tertiary education are scarce in PNG.
There are more young people passing out from Grade 12 every year and not enough educational institutions to capture the increasing numbers. So you look overseas and put some of those district or provincial SIP (services improvement programme) funds to work for a worthy cause – further educating the youth and keeping them occupied until the huge unemployment issues are fixed. Wherever that happens.
Marfuka wonders where these young men are now. They may read this piece and if they do recognise this as mentions of them they could contact this newspaper. Marfuka’s also made a mental note that if he ever was placed in a situation whereby he had the influence he would do his best to emulate what the Enga Governor was doing.
The next day the sporting team was to board the taxi to the bus terminal to make the return trip to Pasay for an overnight stay.
They would then board another international flight this time bound for China.