The carriage ride

I'm at work now, waiting for my evening class to begin, so I don't have the photos to go with this entry.

Anyhoo, I hopped into the carriage, and the driver took me around intramuros. Intramuros is an old area of Manila where a ton of the old Spanish buildings are. It was pretty sweet because it was a whole neighborhood of grandiose European architecture that was all several hundred years old. He talked about the history of the area and then we went through China town which wasn't too exciting.

The trip ended back where he picked me up. He then said, "Ok, 50 hundred pesos." Before I hopped in, he clearly said "50 pesos" which is why I took the trip. 50 pesos is about $1. I told him, "Excuse me? You told me 50 pesos, not 50 hundred pesos."

He replied "Right. 50 hundred pesos."

I said "That's $100 for a 30 minute ride. I won't pay $100."

He said "You won't pay? Alright. I'm taking you to debter's prison." Keep in mind, this guy looked to be about sixty years old and weighed about 90 lbs (that's 41 kilos). He then started to take me to "debter's prison."

After about 30 seconds, I started pondering whether to leave 50 pesos on the seat and hop out or to see where this was going. I decided to stay for a little while. He then stopped again.

"Ok, I'll tell you what. How about 30 hundred pesos?"
"That's still $60. I won't pay it."
"Ok, you're going to debter's prison."

He moved along and stopped again 30 seconds later.
"Ok, I'll tell you what. How about 20 hundred pesos?"
"You told me 50."
"Ok, how about 10 hundred pesos?"

I mulled this over for a while. It was $20 when he told me $1, but I figured that $20 wasn't a ridiculous price, and I wasn't in the mood to play the going to debter's prison game any longer, so I gave him 1,000 pesos and went on my way.