On Thursday morning, the Agency sends me a text message saying to pick up my documents for my Friday appointment at VFS Global’s office at Ecoplaza in Makati.
The Ecoplaza building is where the VFS offices are.
Good thing #1 is that it’s not hard to find.
Good thing #2 is that there’s safe, indoor parking available — really pricey at 100 pesos for the first three hours, but a wondrous thing at an area where it’s almost impossible to find parking spots for the visiting public. (Don’t worry, you won’t need more than three hours.)
Good thing #3 is that at the ground floor of this building are a café and an area with food and beverage kiosks.
Fortunately for Filipino seafarers, manning agencies assist us with the visa application process. So all I had to do was pick up all required documents from the Agency and show up for my appointment.
Happily, they got me a 10:30AM appointment. Being a little OC, I left home early at around 7:30, got to Ecoplaza around 9:00, had breakfast at a café in their building, and entered the office that handles UK Visa Applications a little before 10:00. There wasn’t a lot of people there that day so, after only a 10-minute wait, my turn came and, in less than 20 more minutes, I was done with submitting my documents and going through biometrics. I was done by 10:30. 😀
I opted for SMS Notification which currently costs 157.50 pesos. Totally unnecessary, but I like getting progress reports about important matters. 😉