Thriller in Manila - Travel Diary of an Adobe Trainer

Arrived on the ground last night in the Philipines for a week of Flash Lite training and meetings with mobile and Flash developers from around the region. From my previous posts, you'll no doubt remember that 2006 has seen my first overseas travel, so right now I only have Seoul to compare this place to. Well .... it's very different!

First interesting encounter was with the body temprature scan done at the arrivals gate at the airport, checking to see if passengers have a fever, and therefore a suspect for bird flu. You just walk along a corridor and they have these screens that show up the camera feed of the people walking through - looking something like the heat-vision of the alien Predator back in the jungle kicking Arnie's butt. OK, no worries Dale ... just don't eat any chicken.

Then took the taxi ride of my life from the airport to the hotel, which I thought might have been the LAST ride of my life at various points. And this was in what was deemed to be "average" traffic at 9pm at night - traffic that would have been considered gridlock back home. At one point, another taxi (that looked like it had been in a few conference calls with other vehicles) overtook us and the name of the taxi company put me in the right frame of mind - Heavenly Father Taxis. Well, I guess if you're going to go, then at least you had a head start on the passengers from the other car!

The next big difference I noticed (and this may be again due to my lack of international travel experience at all, let alone post 9-11) was the bomb detection squad checking out the taxi as it approached the hotel grounds (barracaded off some distance away from the hotel entrance). It was a little unnerving having a dude with a machine gun put his special under-carriage mirror under the car and walk around before letting you through. Then the body-frisking, sniffer dogs and metal detectors at the hotel door itself was just the icing on the cake. But to be honest, in the end it made me feel quite safe.

So today is a public holiday here, which gives me a chance to relax a bit before work starts tomorrow. Plus I'm meeting up with a colleague from Nokia later on this afternoon to discuss some of the strategies for the training this week. Should be fun!

Oh and yeah, I'm adding in a trip now to the UK for a Flash Lite readiness event in early September. If you're in that part of the world, you may have already gotten an email about it (and I know some of you have already registered so that's cool). Looking forward to meeting many Euro-Flash Liters that I have emailed and chatted online with :)