Yesterday we made a road trip from Dipolog city to Ozamis city in order to lodge documents with the Department of Foreign Affair relating to our visa's, I do know the road quite well but it never ceases to amaze me the sights and signs one sees. One that is lodged in my mind is an adverting for a resort, posted on the wall of a local prison!
There is a long stretch of roadworks with single file traffic stretching over some kilometres, with a few passing places controlled by flag men, unfortunately it is hard to work out which flag they are waving red or green and the motorcycles just continue on regardless, I got caught out when a bus indicated it was stopping to drop off passengers and hid one of the flag men so i met a stream of vehicles coming towards me, luckily I have a 4*4 so was able to pull onto a muddy bank.
Ozamis is a city that we normally pass through when catching a ferry but this time we turned off the main road and into a warren of one way streets with no names and virtually no where to park with hundreds of pedal passenger tricycle, A real nightmare. I had printed out a map from Google and having found a parking place Jasmin was all set to use a tricycle and I intervened as it is quicker to walk as you do not need to be snarled up in one way systems.
Coming home we picked up a police car and I mentioned to Jasmin that I had better not overtake it, so we set to follow it as it seemed in hurry, however it suddenly pulled over so we no longer had a scout to follow.
There was a lot of rain at times so I drove with headlights on so as to be seems but the locals do not seem to care, so its no wonder they have so many accident, especially when its wet and they have worn tires. we passed two crashes our self and noticed the road barriers had been damaged in many places.
The Philippines is not a pleasant place to drive, you have to be defensive and concentrate 100% expecting the unexpected.
David Ogden
Dipolog city
+639991141149
http://seriouswealth.net
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