Well no, his story is far more fascinating than a fictional character and is solely his to tell A good lad, we talked (chatted) a lot in the old days.
I've moved out of London about two years ago. It has become too expensive and stressful to live in. Plus the pandemic had set me back a lot. I live in the Midlands now where I have my own place and where I can actually afford to live. Though I'm planning to move to the South again, either Bournemouth or Southampton once she's here as we have some friends there and I think she'll find my current place boring. lol No fancy shopping malls and cafes in my town.
Flight costs don't seem too bad to me... I think the problem is the COL crisis for ordinary working people in the UK means they no longer really have any "disposable income" grim times.
This report suggests otherwise and indicates a12% growth of UK to Philippines tourism trade from previous year. Clearly not at the levels of some years precovid but demonstrates a positive growthhttps://agbrief.com/news/philippines/06/11/2024/philippines-tourist-numbers-rise-to-4-8-mln-in-jan-oct-koreans-top-the-list/#:~:text=The Philippines experienced a robust,the same period last year. As indicated in herehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_Philippines For a family say of 4going back I think the cost wold be for a reasonable transit would be £6k plus depending on time of year and transit airport flight duration etc
Ten or twelve years ago the streets of Manila catered to a fairly international audience in terms of restaurants and places to go out, now in most places you have Korean corner shops, KTV places and not a lot of traditional live bands playing anywhere, there is a huge influence of Korean culture in the country now. Think fish and chip shops in Spain because of thirty years of british tourism, a lot of Koreans holiday in the Phils and work there, one of the dentists in the practice I took Ana to last summer was a young Korean dentist who had been there over a decade. The same was true in Boracay in 2023 the face of the place had changed a lot.
Yes the links I provided suggest a high influx of Korean visitor's so I guess you expect a growth in the Korean influences over the years, a bit sad really as you go to a land to visit the host countries traditions and cultures. Similarly the fish and chip brigade in Spain have destroyed areas such as Benidorm, Mellorca and the likes and made them akin to Blackpool in the sun! As a consequence on any road trips we have done we avoid and get into the real Spain the best way we can.
I noticed this as well. Back when I was kid growing up in the Philippines, most people haven't even heard of kimchi or Kpop. Now it's the craze for most local Filipinos. A lot of things have changed for me since I was a kid there. My image of the Philippines is different from what the Philippines is now.
I do like the Korean food and Kimchi but it's everywhere now a bit like Indian food is everywhere in the UK now. Ana worked in Korea in her early 20s back in 1995, she introduced me to Korean food.
Hi John, £400 for a one way flight seems high to me. Maybe OK for a single person but too high for a family!
Back in April 2019 i flew in to manila with Oman Air for £454.82 return, I have just checked those same flights in February with Oman Air would cost me £996 that is an increase in excess of 100% in just 6 years this despite the price of oil being reasonable, I wish my pension had the same increase .
I think the figures I was quoting are return flight costs... not too bad for a single guy. Anything for "a family" is expensive especially if my wife is doing the shopping
I didn't think the return tickets (Emirates) were particularly high when I took my Phils-born son to visit his brother in the UK a couple of years ago. Around p96,000 for the two of us...and that was from Clark, not nightmare NAIA.... to Manchester. As always...shop around.
I've only ever been to the Costa Blanca, specifically Javea where there was one really good fish and chip shop at the seaside, but I was always there off season as my pal was renting a villa for 6 months of year living out there and would invite me over to photograph his charity swimming adventures. But I am aware of the british tourist invasion of Spain and the cultural issues.
The airlines had COVID to cope with, that's what we are still paying for, the European airlines were heavily subsidised by goverments and as far as I can see the likes of Oman and Emirates got a lot of support from their governments too. We'll be paying for that for a long time. Also airlines make most of their money on business and first class tickets and they got a lot worse over that time period as well, in part they tried to improve the business product although most of the changes are not really improvements in my opinion (seat changes) but the attempt to improve justified a significant price increase in business class at least on my favourite airline KLM. Interestingly Air France/KLM have started routes from Paris CDG direct to Manila and these are cheaper as it's a slightly shorter detour around Ukraine and they cut out one set of landing fees at Taipei, the only thing for me is I've never flown through CDG (Charles De Gaulle) and it doesn't get a lot of good reviews. For me the MAN->CDG-MNL route looks quite good in price terms and sometimes they are doing MAN->AMS->CDG->MNL which would also be fine for me although a bit of a pain with all the changes but I've never flown Air France and not sure if I want to. I'm looking at flights right now going back out for a couple of months.