Manila Terminal 3 Philippine Travel Tax Counter

Recently went out of the country and as any budget traveler, I purchased a Cebu Pacific ticket for the family. Been doing this for awhile and I didn't mind lining up and I do know what to expect since it's a budget airline.

The problem this time was not with Cebu Pacific but the staff handling the Philippine Travel Tax counter at Terminal 3. I lined up together with maybe 50 people for about 45 minutes to pay. Then when the person in front of me reached the counter and was about to pay, the guy & lady behind the counter said "ma'am, sa kabilang counter po muna kayo bago dito". And the other counter was closed. And nobody even assisted the passengers on which counter to go first. so everyone just assumed that the long line was the line where you pay. They wanted us to all go to the other counter and line up again. WHAT FOOLS! All the passengers reacted to this and said that the other counter was closed and no one was even saying anything on how the procedure is. And the staff insisted that it was open and someone was in the other counter. Everyone said that "are you saying that all of us who's been in line for 45 minutes is lying?!". And I said, "what kind of service is this, we pay P1,620 per passenger and we don't even know where our money goes!". And they just make us line up and they take their sweet time without even considering that some passengers are catching a flight.

I hope that someone takes action on this. How can we expect foreigners to come here in the Philippines? Our airport is bad and there's no such thing as service. Our airports are not even tourist friendly and worst part of it is the staff are "typical government workers".

I wish I was able to take a photo of those two people behind the counter and posted it here.