A tale of two cities – and two airports

SHANGHAI – Back in Manila from Bangkok for a day, this writer went the launch "cocktail" in the Tower Club in Makati of the Weber Shandwick Worldwide company hosted by the firm’s president and CEO Mike Toledo. Since everybody – well, almost everybody – was there clinking glasses and talking about politics and the horrors of the just-past Typhoon Milenyo, I got to meet a number of old friends in quick succession.

Former Senator and opposition Vice-Presidential candidate Loren Legarda told me she was going to make a run for the Senate next year. So did Senator Ed Angara who said he was running for reelection.

DepEd Secretary Jesli "Jing" Lapus and I discussed the sorry state of Philippine education and his plans to try to improve the situation. He said he wished that, like the old days, education from grade school through high school and college or university was under one single department, namely the Department of Education, instead of "higher learning" (college) being entrusted to another agency, the CHED (Commission on Higher Education). This truncated set-up didn’t make sense, he asserted – and I wholly agree. Junk the CHED, I say, especially under its present unworthy and inadequate leadership.

There were businessmen, ambassadors, and government officials in attendance – with our partner in STARGATE Jose Manuel "Babe" Romualdez, Pepe Rodriguez (just back from Spain to be the Director or jefe of the Instituto Cervantes) and International Hotelier and Tower Club managing director Arthur Lopez toasting each other on Champagne (the "bubbly" never goes out of fashion), Spanish and Napa Valley wine? – which made things so lively that I ducked out and went home to sleep it off.

But a good time was had by all, and if the comments about how to save the country issued there were only implemented, our Republic would be saved. But, alas, this never happens. Our politicians simply go out and spend the taxpayers’ money on the wrong things – especially on themselves.

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Yesterday noon, I flew to Shanghai for a meeting scheduled tomorrow. Getting here from Manila is a breeze, almost like flying to Davao City or Zamboanga. An efficient Philippine Airlines Airbus A-320-200 gets you to Pudong International Airport in less than three hours (as I usually try to say, this is not a commercial – I paid for my ticket).

In short, it’s three hours getting to Shanghai, the showpiece metropolis of the People’s Republic of China, because a "tail wind" helps push the aircraft faster all the way. On the way home to Manila, the flight requires three hours and a half because the plane is bucking a "head wind," i.e. the wind is blowing in the opposite direction.

When we landed at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, a truly snazzy terminal, I couldn’t help noticing that the Chinese were working on Terminal 3, with its girders already up – rushing the additional terminal not only for the expected influx of people for the 2008 Beijing Olympics but for Shanghai’s World Expo 2010. By golly, and we still haven’t settled the problem of our tatty, squat and ugly – and grossly overpriced – NAIA Terminal 3, built by Fraport and PIATCO.

Every time we arrive at Pudong International, the spaciousness of the runways and the utilitarian beauty and efficiency of the terminal building itself impresses us again and again. By the time we had gone through Passport Control, our bags had been going round and round the Arrival’s carousel at least four times. You just grab your suitcase and roll it past "Nothing to Declare", handing your accomplished Customs slip to a uniformed lady inspector who doesn’t even bother to give your bags a second look. Incidentally, nobody checks to compare your baggage tag with the roller bag or suitcase a passenger is bringing out, so better be snappy at the carousel lest somebody else make off with your stuff. However, thieves are probably too scared to do it at the airport – although on the crowded streets of the city itself, better stay alert and keep your wallet where you can feel its presence.

Oh well. The Party big boss of Shanghai was only recently arrested for misusing Yuan 30 billion of the people’s Pension Fund (and bounced out of the ruling Politburo), so you can’t say that absolute honesty reigns here. Just as in the Philippines, boys will be boys – and the big boys, like those back home, believe they can skim off the top and get away with the gravy.

However, the above is not my point. Pudong airport is both well-built and interesting. The airport security is relaxed – they don’t seem to be worried about terrorists here.

When you go into a hotel or a department store, or a mall, no security guards pat you down, check your persona or whatever you’re carrying. No dynamite sniffing dogs brown-nose your belongings. Cars, taxicabs and minivans are not checked when they enter any driveway.

I guess terrorists know that in China, if they raise their scruffy heads, the same will be chopped off, with none of those "human rightists" bemoaning their fate, or, if convicted, they get the one-bullet salute (in the back of the head) which is the official style of execution.

In the airport’s arrival lounge, two pretty girls in cheongsam directed arriving passengers to the Mag-Lev train – the fast-train without wheels which zips you halfway to Shanghai in seven minutes by the power of Magnetic Levitation. The girls had MAGLEV sashes signifying their job – as they waved would-be commuters to the ticket booths. We took a minivan instead, and watched the sleek, silver-shiny Mag-Lev train zoom past us to downtown Pudong at 430 km per hour. I took it once and wondered along the way, how do you put on the brakes?

In any event, the expressway into Pudong and across the Whampoa river into Shanghai is four lanes smooth, and one can drive into the metropolis without a hitch. What strikes the first arrival is the fact that all the way, the government has planted attractive trees, flowering bushes, and, in short, made the route green, and impressive.

At our international airport, the two existing terminals are already moth-eaten, and when the first-time arrival (either tourist or potential investor) gets out, he finds himself immediately in a disaster area: squatter-villes, ugly polluted, traffic clogged roads, a smelly estero, and everything calculated to make the foreigner suspect he’s in Darfur in Africa, not in Wow Manila.

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Seeing two spectacular airports in less than a week is too much of a pain for me.

A few days ago, I was in Bangkok at the spacious and modern, brand-new Suvarnabhumi International Airport. Sure, it took us almost three hours to retrieve our luggage, but that airport is simply breath-taking. It boasts 563,000 square meters of floor space covered by a seven-storey high "cathedral-like" ceiling of specially coated glass-and-steel struts.

According to the blurb, the main complex contains seven floors, their space bigger than our football pitches placed side by side. It has the world’s tallest control tower, and the two runways are each 60 meters wide, one stretching 4,000 meters long and the other 3,700. At our NAIA, a jumbo jet once overshot the runway and landed in the highway. Gee whiz. The new Suvarnabhumi international airport, less than an hour’s drive from Lumpini Park in the center of Bangkok can handle 42 million passengers a year.

Would you believe: taxicabs are not permitted to take people the 25 km. route to the airport without proving their cabs are less than five years old, then they must get a certificate and tag which proclaims them "airport friendly." Some 2,000 taxi drivers have already undergone a Suvarnabhumi "training course," and 10,000 more are undergoing "training."

Now what do you think about that? Of course, if you’re military and driving a tank under the new regime, you don’t need an "airport friendly" certificate. Yet, all is normal in Bangkok. Tourist are streaming in the malls are full – and everybody’s out beating the heat in those air-conditioned chrome-plated emporia.

Here in Shanghai, with temperatures down to 21 at night, it’s getting cool already.

I wish we got real about improving our airport – but we’re still in the bahala na, makeshift era.