Victory Liner's Deluxe trips

Part of my Philippine holiday itinerary was to visit friends in Manila. But unexpected things happened and what was supposed to be a trip between Christmas and New Year for about 4 days, became a weekend in the third week of January. Pressed for time, I wanted to have as much rest as I can during the trip to and from Baguio and so I decided to give Victory Liner's Deluxe trips a try.

For the trip down to Manila, I took the 11PM trip on the bus with built-in toilet. It's a non-stop trip, so I figured it will save me some travel time. The fare was P715.00.

But when the bus arrived, it was the bus without the toilet, which was a hundred pesos cheaper. We were reimbursed the difference before the trip started.

The seats are more comfortable and there is more leg room than the regular aircon bus; there are two seats at the left and only one at the right.  There's also feet and leg support to make snoozing more comfortable.  Each passenger was given a small, cold bottle of mineral water prior to the journey; I wouldn't have bought one had I known this was part of the package.  We had one stopover and since it was a night trip, the bus was able to make it to Manila in 4 hours 45 minutes.  That's over an hour shaved off from the regular travel time!

On the way back to Baguio, I took a mid-afternoon schedule, also on a Deluxe bus.

If my memory serves me right, the bus was supposed to leave at 2:30PM.  But it left half an hour late and I think I know why: there weren't a lot of us in it.  In fact, I boarded the bus at 2:35 but I was able to get a front seat, the lone chair at the right side.  Which, come to think of it, was not a good idea because the cooler where the bottled water is kept is right in front of me and so leg room is smaller than in the other seats.  After the customary distribution of the bottled water, we started our journey at 3.

I enjoyed the view, which I have not seen for a couple of years, as well as the two movies that were shown during the trip.  The day trip had to confront regular traffic, however, and so we reached Baguio in the regular travel time of 6 hours (and 15 minutes) inspite of the fact that there was only one stopover (versus two for the regular trips).

Overall, the deluxe trip is quite a nice way to travel.  But at such a price, I would reserve it only for emergencies, or when I feel that it will do me a world of good to ride the Deluxe trip.  Otherwise I would go for the regular aircon bus which costs under P500.00 and spend the extra money on loads of other Baguio goodies.