Philippine Traffic part 1

Its already been two weeks since I returned from my trip to see Ruth and its taken me about six of those days to get back to feeling normal. It took six days because I just got use to the hours in the Philippines then had to readjust, add to it the jet lag, the change of climate from two weeks of sunny and hot to cool and gray, missing all the delicious fresh fruit and food, and of course I miss spending time with Ruth. Its a lot of changes for the body and mind.


So I should finish my story because I never did write about the most important and really the only reason why I went, to meet Ruth, and I need to. But first I will continue on and write about the traffic. The traffic, oh my the traffic. I mentioned this briefly in my other postings but not in depth.

I will say this... the first two days I feared for my life and my first reaction to the traffic was this is almost as organized as a demolition derby. If a person has bad nerves or hates driving or traffic this could push him over the edge. Its that crazy. Cars zooming through intersections, motor cycles squeezing down middle of lanes between cars, buses tailgating, vehicles crossing over into on coming traffic to pass. And in a lot places in all this mass of traffic were vendors or individuals walking between vehicles harking their goods, water, peanuts, paper and other stuff.

The only time on the trip that seemed fairly quiet was on the way to Dakak Resort. Everywhere else there were cars, trucks, buses, motor bikes and what ever other transportation known to mankind. The traffic never seemed to ease up, even at night you hear horns.

OH OH OH I forgot to mention something very important that makes this seem even more insane, with all this traffic and madness there were NO stop lights and stop signs, they only exist at major intersections and are far and few between. Some streets had speed bumps to control speed but that's it. I don't even remember seeing speed limit signs, maybe they have them I don't know.

The other thing that can fray your nerves until you get use to it is the noise and the horn blowing. To the person not accustomed to this you think everyone is mad at each other for cutting them off. Not so as the Filipinos would say. Horns blow for many reasons, to let some one know you are passing, you are are stopping, to go around, horns blow to pick up passengers, constantly horns are blowing but not one finger was raised and not one notice of road rage or anger. Even at the intersections with no traffic lights, everyone converges, crossing traffic continues until a driver creeps up enough for the traffic to stop and then they go. Even here no anger or fingers saluting were noticed.

Believe it or not though after a few days you start to relax and realize that this is as safe or maybe safer than in America, I am serious, I will get to that later. And I also sat back and reflected how socialist and unfree America is. Here is a country with so much traffic, few stop lights and signs, speed limits that aren't posted and yet I did not see one, NOT ONE, accident or fender bender. NONE! Even in the newspaper only one traffic death was reported and it was because a policeman was trying to give a ticket to a taxi for stopping in a no loading zone. The taxi not wanting a ticket drove off and ran over the policeman. So it just proves that many of the tickets issued in America are not for safety but strictly REVENUE! I will also add to this comment later.

to be continued.....

Gotta GoGo!!
Carey Masci