Tuesday, July 3, 2007

this is outrageous

taking advantage of the last piso fare promo of cebu pacific, susie and i decided to book a couple of tickets to cebu for our upcoming anniversary. we originally thought we could go off to bantayan to enjoy the beach, but our sordid flight schedules made it inconvenient for us.

thankfully, ivan provided us a great alternative, because he once went through southern cebu's heritage trail. we researched the destinations, and decided to do the heritage route as well.

unfortunately, since the trail is not a popular tour-type thing in cebu, there aren't as much information that we can find. and since we'll be landing in cebu quite late, we want to know the bus schedules from the city to the southern towns.

i've been scouring the internet for the contact information of ceres bus liner, one of the biggest bus lines in the south, but i cannot find any. i decided to finally call up the philippine tourism authority in cebu. i assumed they would have a bunch of numbers handy for a lost tourist like myself, after all, they are the tourism authority. the conversation went like this:

me: hi, good afternoon, is this the tourism authority?
PTA person: yes.
me: i was wondering if you would have the number of ceres bus liner in cebu?
PTA person: no, i don't have it, ma'am.

i hung up the phone, dumbfounded for a number of reasons: 1. they DIDN'T have the number of a large bus liner. and they're the tourism AUTHORITY. 2. the woman who answered didn't even TRY to help me out. she didn't even make any effort to find out the number, or offer any help at all. she didn't even ask me where i'd be going, when i'd be going, or whatever.

it's all a sham, these tourism authorities. imagine if a harried foreign tourist called up to ask for help. they would have left the poor man dejected and helpless. it's really shocking to find that an office that is supposed to handle tourism concerns won't even take the time out to help a tourist.

this is all so outrageous and sad.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

baka dapat sa LTFRB ka tumawag? hehe...

Anonymous said...

hi! i just found this on the net. i'm not sure if this is really ceres, but it might be worth the try =) "if you have any comments or suggestion pls txt us at this format: CERES_MESSAGE send to 2327 for GLOBE USERS and 09178902327 for non-GLOBE USERS. Thank you and hope we can served you better." i spent the Holy Week in cebu (bantayan, malapascua, moalboal, some part of the heritage trail) and i would really love to go back. inggit ako hehe. hope you enjoy your vacation! =) ps. don't ride just any bus. make sure it's a ceres. their first trip is usually at 5AM. i'm not sure about their trips at night though. take care and have fun!

i gotta go! said...

thanks for the info, miss.adventures! :D i sure hope this works!

check back to read up on my cebu adventure! :)

i gotta go! said...

ei tutubi! my mistake for actually thinking they could be of help. bah.

anyway, we'll just be touring cebu. i wanted the contact info to just check on the bus skeds. got a bad flight, and was worried that we might not catch a bus to argao any more.

zx said...

hey where you able to secure the number of CERES liner? i really need it... pls post here :)

thanks!