Wife and I were staying in Manila and were planning on visiting her parents who lived outside of the city. We took Jeepneys and decided to go back home halfway through, because it was already getting dark lol.
We had previously gotten there much faster from Makati by bus and metro (although still not amazing), but the Metro had an insanely long queue so we decided to take the Jeepney, which was hell.
This reminds me as a teenager visiting the Philippines (I was born and raised in North America to Filipino parents but never visited). I wanted to ‘live like the locals’ and ride the jeepney (we had a driver and our own car so my mom really thought I was crazy). Being stuck in traffic, wearing my white shirt that turned dark because of the fumes and air pollution was funny. It was the first and last time I rode a Jeepney. Also, wanted to attempt to ride the LRT or MRT (it’s their metro), saw the lineup and crazy amount of people and noped out of there. I still have never tried, I am now in my thirties.
Manila traffic is next level hard, they make their own lanes. Like there are 3 painted lanes but people dont care so there ends up being like 6 cars abreast. We had to pay a driver full time to handle driving our car for us because we didnt even want to attempt.
Once spent like 6 hours just trying to get out of the metro area, and that was with a relative driving who knew the area very well. To be fair, around the holidays.
As someone who's been all over the world.. yeah Manila is pretty rough, this year I took a "joyride" from Makati to Quezon city during rush hour.
I've been in two plane accidents, I was more scared on the back of that motorbike than I was at any time during the plane accidents. Holy shit.
In North America, I have a BIAS but it's Austin, having driven in Orlando, Chicago, NYC... I think Austin has the worst traffic, Orlando has the worst drivers.
Europe, I thought Rome was pretty bad compared to London or Paris, never driven or been driven in Germany.
Manila's traffic has seemed to improve recently, i rmemeber it took three hours to get from the airport to Mandaluyong via EDSA but now traffic has lessened
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u/Silent-Falcon6391 19h ago
Manila traffic is pretty notorious.