Planning trips are sometimes a huge pain in the ass, especially if you’re not bringing your own car and are booking some sort of public transportation.

And since I had no intentions of even attempting to drive to Baler, Aurora, I had one of the most painful experiences ever in booking seats.

To those who aren’t in the know, there are three ways that one could get to Baler, Aurora via public transport (that I know of, at least; please feel free to post in the comments below if you know other ways):

1. The Hard Way. You board any bus headed to Cabanatuan and from the Cabanatuan Central Transport terminal, you can either grab another bus or a van going to Baler. I’ve tagged it as ‘hard’ because aside from the fact that there are a couple of pit stops to Cabanatuan (which equates to a longer ride), you have to transfer vehicles. Total travel time: six (6) to eight (8) hours.
2. The Normal Way. You catch an ordinary bus straight to Baler via Genesis Transport. The catch is that you can’t reserve seats in advance so you have to be at the bus station an hour at least to buy tickets. If you’re not finicky about leg room and making a couple of pit stops along the way, this is the cheapest way to go. Total travel time: five (5) to seven (7) hours.
3. The Deluxe Way. Also via Genesis Transport, you book a seat in their Joy Bus. The leg room’s fantastic, there’s a comfort room inside (so no pit stops), there’s WIFI, they serve snacks and most importantly the bus leaves on time. But since there’re only like three trips in a day and the bus only carries thirty-nine (39) passengers, seats are very limited. You can either call Genesis or book through pinoytravel.com. Just remember to book at least a week in advance to be on the safe side. Total travel time: five (5) hours exactly. I don’t know how they did it but our travel to and from Manila took exactly five hours.

Although to be fair, I’ll own up to half of the hassle that I endured because I put off calling the bus line because I’m a natural procrastinator that way. Because we didn’t really want to ‘rough’ it and we were quite willing to shell out the few extra hundred pesos for comfort, we had our eyes set on option #3: The Joy Bus.

First of all, the Genesis Transport website is complete rubbish because not only is the schedule table not updated, none of the contact numbers there are working. At least, none of them worked when I tried calling; one was a dead number while the other one rang but it sounded like a dial up connection to the internet. I searched for their Facebook Page and found this picture.

Exactly one week before our trip, I called one of the numbers on the picture and huzzah I was fortunate enough to get connected! I reserved four (4) seats on the Joy Bus’s first trip (leaving 1 o’clock in the morning) and I was advised to make the payment in three (3) days. The line I called was really choppy so I wasn’t able to take down the bank account details so I wasn’t able to make the payment in the allotted time.

No problem, I can just call back, right? Wrong. Apparently the lines to Genesis Transport get sucked by a wormhole during the weekdays because no matter what number I called, I could not get through. Every time I got through to someone they’d refer me to another number that was either dead or will just go on ringing forever.

I chanced upon pinoytravel.com and tried to book round trip seats. While convenient, pinoytravel.com must not have their staff working during weekends because It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that I received a reply that yes, I had successfully reserved the seats from Baler but no, all seats via the Joy Bus TO Baler were taken on our scheduled date of departure.

In a fit of panic, Frederick volunteered to go to the bus station in Cubao and try getting the seats from there. No game. The attendants there advised that there really were no seats available. With no choice, we resigned ourselves to option #2 but a few of Frederick’s office mates advised that we had to be there at least an hour before the bus departure because slots get filled pretty fast.

The Friday night before our trip, Chenyl and I trudged to the bus station at midnight (which meant that we only had time for a quick dinner and a quick shower but zero sleep) when I received a random text from ‘Joybus’ asking me to confirm reservations for four (4) in their 1 o’clock trip.

I was like, what the what the what? After replying a quick yes, we hauled our asses off and left Chenyl’s house at eleven-thirty just to be sure. I tried calling the number that sent the text but, just like the other Genesis numbers, this too was swallowed by that mysterious wormhole.

For the benefit of those who’re thinking of reserving seats, I snapped a picture of the scrap of paper posted in their Baler office. Note that I have no idea if these numbers will work at all.

We got there with plenty of time to spare and it turns out that my initial reservation the week before went through, even though I didn’t deposit the payment to their bank account. Gladly we paid for our seats and they didn’t even bat an eye when I said that I was cancelling one of the reservations. Apparently there was a long list of ‘chance passengers’ waiting for any opening.

The actual trip to Baler was nice. The bus left at 12:49 AM, earlier than scheduled, and because it was a night trip, there was absolutely no traffic. Immediately the three of us were out like rocks. I kept on waking up every hour though because a.) i kept on slipping down the seat, despite the reclined position and the seat belt; the zigzags were too sharp and b.) it was freezing. I read somewhere that there were supposed to be blankets provided but for some reason there weren’t any on the trip to Baler which meant that I froze my ass off during the whole ride. No WIFI either (but the seats were better and both blankets and WIFI were available on the trip back).

We arrived at the Baler terminal at, I kid you not, exactly 5:49AM. After the mandatory cat stretch, I was pretty excited to get off the freezing bus and get warmed up a bit.

Right outside the terminal were the manong tricycle drivers and can guess what they were all wearing? Jackets, gloves and bonnets. I had no idea that it would be that cold in Baler and given the fact that I was wearing shorts (no jeans packed) and just a shirt (no jackets or cardigans either), my first thought upon stepping in Baler was:

Holy shit, this is cold.