Travelling a lot you are bound to meet lots of different kinds of people, and you end up hearing many interesting stories. During my last trip to the Philippines I met a guy from the US who had quite a funny story to tell. It was probably not a fun episode for him, but it was quite entertaining listening to his story. The guy was in his late 20s and had been staying in the Philippines for about half a year when I met him at a bar in the Ermita area of Manila.
Anyways, he told me that a few months earlier he had gotten into quite a bit of trouble with the police in Manila. It was just a normal morning for him, he said, walking down the street tired and with a bad hangover to try to find a decent place to have breakfast. Probably while trying to remember what really happened last night he ended up bumping into a parked car by accident breaking one of the side mirrors.
The driver of the car came running over to him really angry and frustrated. Unfortunately for both of them, the American guy didn’t have enough money to pay for the damages until over the weekend when he would get more money in his account, this happened on a friday morning. The driver wanted around 10,000 peso for the damages, not a whole lot of money really. They had a long discussion and in the end they agreed to meet on monday so that the American guy could pay for the damages, or so the American guy thought at least.
After having his breakfast he went back to his room to relax, but just a few hours later the police came knocking on his door. He told me he got pretty scared, didn’t really know what to do, but he didn’t really have any choice in the matter either, the police wanted him to come with them and so he did. They told him he was being arrested for running away from an accident, for some reason the car driver had gone straight to the police instead of waiting till monday.
He told me that he had gotten really worried at this point, seeing himself being put into a horrible and dangerous Philippine prison, and that was probably why he wasn’t thinking too clearly. What he did was really stupid at least.
On the way to the police station the police car happened to drive by the American Embassy, and when the police car stopped cause of traffic he made the crazy decision that making a run for it was his best option. He kicked open the door in the middle of the road, jumped out of the police car and started running accross this wide road with heavy traffic towards the American embassy. The police were pretty shocked and he said it took a while before they actually started to follow him.
He actually did manage to get to the Embassy without them catching him though, and entering the Embassy he had to jump over a little fence to avoid the Embassy guards that also wanted to stop him. The Philippine police couldn’t enter the Embassy, so they had to wait outside while he was talking with the guards at the Embassy that managed to catch him after a while.
He was allowed to enter the Embassy building showing his passport, but since he was not working for the US Government, he was not allowed to stay. He ended up being thrown out of the Embassy and arrested once again, this time heavily guarded with handcuffs on.
To make a long story short he had to pay a big “fine” cause of all the crazy stuff he did, both the car driver, the police and some other car drivers whos cars he had bumped into on his crazy run wanted money. He only had to spend one night in jail, but the Western Union visit in handcuffs before he was released must have been both very expensive and embarrassing. I hope all is well with him now and that he’s not sitting in another jail somewhere in Asia.
Tags: American, bribe, Crime, embassy, Ermita, jail, Manila, police, story
In the time ive spent in the Philippines and the bad press it gets regarding foreigners being killed,deported or arrested. In the majority of cases I would simply say “stupid things happen to stupid people”. The average person going about things as normal will not be bothered by anyone simply because nobody is that interested. Yes they are glad your visiting the Philippines and proud that your visiting theyre home but also they are more likely to protect you or take care of you if something went wrong. Problem is did this American freak out from paranoia from things he has read about? As I think its important to share the balance of information.
I’ve been to the Philippines several times over the last 3-4 years, probably stayed there more than a year total and never had any problems with police, immigration or local people, no problems at all really. I think he probably freaked out cause of things he’d been reading about before, yeah, or from other stories he has been told. It’s not like they will give you a prison sentence there just for accidentally bumping into a car, as long as you pay for damages obviously, but he was worried about that for some reason.