SAY HI!....TO ALL...

[Edwin]

Chas, that was very nice of you to try to help that little girl who got sick on the bus!

Those families will all have good smelling breath now!

That is a good tip to have the right change, then you won't get short changed!

Ceres buses are good, huh?

It is nice to have people direct you to the correct bus without hassles, huh?

[Chas]

Ceres is the biggest company on Cebu and Negros. I am not sure about the other islands. I don't think they operate on Luzon, but I could be very wrong.

The buses are only as good as the driver and some are crazy. I have rarely been scared in the Philippines, but one time was when I was on a Ceres bus from Cebu City to Hagnaya and the driver was racing one other Ceres bus and a bus from another company. The passengers were shouting and screaming at the driver as he was not stopping to let them off. He would end up stopping way past where they wanted to get off. The buses would try and overtake each other going round tight bends and would force oncoming traffic off the road. Thankfully there were no accidents that I was aware of.

One trip I want to take is the bus journey from Cagayan D'Oro to Davao in Mindanao. I had understood it was quite safe for a westerner to take that trip. However since the recent Typhoon caused such devastation in Compostela Valley and I think also around Batuan (spelling may be incorrect - apologies) I have been told it is not safe for westerners as the crime rate has shot up. Maybe what I have been told is wrong. Anyway, my trip is not imminent and I will look into it again as and when or even if I decide to make the trip.

[Edwin]

Of course these guys in the Philippines driving these Ceres buses are only providing transportation. It sounds to me like those drivers were really out of control, and should have been fired from their jobs! I drove buses of all sizes for 10 years providing both transportation and narrated tours. On lunch tour that I operated we were not allowed enough time to make it happen correctly, so what I did was to listen to my 2 way radio, and if the 1st boat was on time, and the second boat was late then I could relax, but if the first boat was late, and the second boat was on time, then I was in trouble. This can be a really long story, and I almost got fired because of that my first year, but I learned how to deal with it. If my time was short then I had to push people to eat faster, and I had to drive faster, and also it was suggested that I skip some of the points of interest if I was in a bind for time, and telling guests that almost got me fired. So, I tried to be as careful as I could, I had to drive a lot faster than I should have been driving. One lady on my tour told me that the only time anyone scared her has badly as I did was when she road on a bus in South American! I kept my eye pealed and drove as fast as I could, and I hoped that I would not meet another vehicle in a bad place. Most people were happy and were not afraid of my driving as the one lady was. I have heard a story from back when the cars wouldn't go very fast, that the guardian angel got out of the car at 60 miles per hour! The funny thing is that before I took that driving job the kids all made fun of me for driving so slowly, and now they are doing the same again. I drive the speed limit on the highway, but on these bad roads I drive very slowly to save the vehicle and save the tires from rock breaks! Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and even though I am a slow and sane driver, doing that job I drove like a maniac, because I had to in order to make it all work out!