Magandang Umaga Po: A Balikbayan Morning at NAIA, One Shuttle Bus at a Time
Magandang Umaga Po: A Balikbayan Morning at NAIA, One Shuttle Bus at a Time
A 5 a.m. text from Manila, a photo from the NAIA shuttle, and a connecting flight to Cagayan de Oro — my kids' balikbayan morning, told through the texts as they came in.
The first text came in at 5:12 a.m. Manila time, before they'd even deplaned: “Magandang umaga po from the Philippines!” — from my daughter Nica, a fourteen-hour flight and one very long night removed from home.
I wrote back the only thing that mattered to me in that moment: “Hey! Magandang umaga! Service automatically?! Awesome.” That's the part that still gets me, almost fifty years after I first left Marikina myself — you land, and your phone just works. No calling card, no payphone, no waiting. Nica had three to four bars and full 5G before she'd cleared the jet bridge.
The Red-Eye Nobody Sleeps On
They'd flown PR105 — Philippine Airlines' nightly nonstop out of San Francisco, wheels up around midnight, roughly fourteen hours in the air before NAIA comes up under the wing. Nica admitted she'd gotten maybe three or four hours of sleep the whole way. “Jian and Chesca's took awhile LOL. I don't do well on midnight flights. Next time I'll save enough for business,” she wrote, with the laughing-crying emoji honesty of someone who just crossed the Pacific in economy. Every balikbayan who has ever tried to fall asleep somewhere over the International Date Line knows exactly that feeling.
Then came the photo — the five of them already through immigration, already moving, already on the shuttle bus to their connecting flight. Left to right: Mary Ann, her alaga, Nica, Chesca holding the phone that took the shot, and Jian. The caption was as plain and as perfect as a text gets: “Taking a shuttle to next flight.”
NAIA handles international arrivals and domestic departures in separate terminals, which is why a shuttle transfer — not just a walk down a hallway — is normal for balikbayan connecting on to a city like Cagayan de Oro. It's a small logistics detail every diaspora family learns eventually, usually the hard way the first time.
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Alaga — ah-LA-ga
Someone (or something) under a person's care — a ward, a charge, a person being looked after. Same root as pag-aalaga, the act of caregiving itself. It's a small word that carries a lot of what kapwa means in practice.
On to Cagayan de Oro
I asked the obvious tatay question: “What time is your flight to CDO? Arrival?” Nica's answer had the particular shape of every domestic connection ever made on adrenaline and no sleep: “Tita Ann said 8? Going through immigration rn.” Not a confirmed time. Not even fully through the door yet. Just forward motion, and trust that the next leg would sort itself out — the same trust every OFW, every balikbayan, every homesick 1.5-gen kid has learned to travel on.
“Taking a shuttle to next flight.” — five words, one photo, and an entire homecoming compressed into a text message.
I left the Philippines through this same airport's predecessor, on a Northwest flight out of Manila in August of 1976, nine years old, headed for Chicago and a life I couldn't yet picture. Half a century later, my own kids are the ones walking through NAIA — headed the other direction, toward Cagayan de Oro instead of away from it, carrying phones that get 5G before they clear the jet bridge instead of nothing at all. That's the whole point of this site, really: not the shuttle bus, not the flight number, but the fact that the trip keeps happening, generation after generation, and someone keeps texting home about it.
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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