I have arrived in Manila! It took 27 hours of time to get from my house Sunday morning to the hotel Monday night. It is 1am here and I am about to leave for the office, because the office here works at night in order to work during American day-time hours. What a crazy world!
A couple of quick thoughts about my trip. First of all, the flying was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Business Class for the longest leg certainly helps, but even on the flight from Tokyo to Manila the plane had a lot of empty seats so I had four seats all to myself.
The airport in Tokyo was like all other airports (besides the writing in Japanese) except for one thing–in the ladies’ room, one of the stalls had a toilet in the ground instead of the one I am accustomed to. If anyone knows why this is so please share! I walked past that one to the normal toilet, but am dying of curiosity.
Finally, my hotel has excellent coffee, which is great since I will probably be needing copious amounts during my short stay.
More later!
They had the hole in the floor toilets in Kenya when we were there back in 1980. (Yes, I realize that was a lifetime ago.) It was called (by my friends) “an Asian cho.” (“Cho” is, I think, Swahili for toilet; I hope it isn’t a socially unacceptable word.) There were many “Asians” living in Kenya then, mostly of Indian descent. Anyway, the friend I was visiting had been living in Kenya for a couple years at that time, and she actually preferred the Asia cho. She said she found it more comfortable to squat. YMMV.