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Our flight to Singapore went by very quickly and we landed at Singapore Airport which is ridiculously big and slick, complete with orchid gardens, koi carp ponds and free internet and massage chairs. Good news as we'll be spending quite a lot of time there over the coming months!
We flew on to Manila on a very full plane in which we were seemingly the only non-Filipino people. We caught a taxi from the airport and during the ride got our first impressions of Manila: just as manic as we had expected - congested traffic, mad driving, neon lights and sweltering heat! The hotel immediately felt like a little oasis with friendly staff and a big air conditioned room.
We started the next day with a big buffet breakfast that was a bizzare mixture of East and West with noodle and rice dishes and whole fish heads sitting side by side with bacon, scrambled eggs and croissants! Then we set off into the heat, walking towards the old city of Intramuros. The streets were full of people and traffic jams belching out fumes, taxis drove past beeping - hailing us rather than vice versa! The heat was scorching -
all round heat as well as the sun beating down, and we were sweating within a minute of being outside (before 10am!) We walked through Rizal Park where we were almost immediately approached by a begging child and countless men were asleep in the shade of the trees. We hailed a taxi to take us to the bus station to buy our tickets to Banaue (there is not one single bus station, all the different companies have their own). We pulled up outside to find that it was a little shack with a tin roof. We then drove on to Intramuros which is the old walled city with a real Spanish feel. We visited the cathedral which has had to be rebuilt five times after being destroyed, usually by earthquakes. We were hassled outside by lots of horse and cart drivers, but avoiding them we took the very short walk to the Fort of Salvador and then down to the church of San Augustin - the oldest stone church in the Philippines. It was so hot by this time that we had to go back to the hotel for a cold shower!
We then went to the Mall of
Asia, apparently Asia's biggest mall. It was huge with all kinds of shops and restaurants and was very busy. We saw at the mall, and throughout the day, a large number of white middle-aged balding men with young pretty Filipino women! For dinner we ate Filipino specialities of Gambas (spicy chili garlic prawns) and Adobo (chicken and pork in a vinegary salty sauce). While we were eating, a truck flew by the window - it was open-sided but a few people were riding on the back sitting on plastic patio chairs!
At 10pm the following day we went to the bus station to embark upon the mammoth 10 hour bus journey north to the mountains of the Cordelliera region. The bus was very much a bus, not a fancy coach but it did have comfortable enough seats and air conditioning (which was on full blast throughout the journey so that everyone was shivering and wrapping up in coats and blankets!) The bus left bang on time and, though initially there was what looked to be an amazing show on the TV with a fat boy in a sailor suit singing karaoke, it was soon turned off along with the
lights so there was nothing left to do except try to get some sleep.
We did both manage to get a little sleep and the journey was a lot less painful than we'd expected. We arrived in Banaue at 8am and on stepping off the bus were inundated with offers of lifts and accommodation. We found a place to stay which had views from the restaurant out over the rice terraces, then got a ride in a tricycle (which is actually a motorbike and sidecar!) to the various viewpoints around Banaue to see the rice terraces. They are a spectacular sight and we felt so lucky to see them on such a clear sunny day as when it's cloudy there is nothing to see. There were a few Ifuago tribal elders at the viewpoints in their traditional costume.
From here the same tricycle driver took us to Batad as he had offered to guide us on a hike there. The tricycle ride was a bit hairy - the roads were not made up so we were essentially off-roading in a side car, especially difficult as there had been landslides during the typhoon season, which covered the road in
various places - our driver 'Steve' was expert at navigating it though. Due to one giant landslide, we had to begin the hike a few kilometres early (as no vehicles can now get through) and it was a long steep climb! Steve walked so quickly - we were hiking up the slopes as fast as we could but he looked like he was strolling, never breaking sweat! Once we reached Batad, the views over the rice terraces were just awe-inspiring! A landscape unlike anything we've ever seen before.
After a brief rest we continued the trek on to the Tappia Waterfall, which lead us through the terraces along the walls, allowing us to see the rice growing close up. The landscape was the greenest shade of green we've ever seen (presumably so lush from the typhoon rains!) The climb down to the waterfall was steeper still, made up of huge stone steps, making us wonder whether we'd make it all the way back. The waterfall was a beautiful cascade and we went swimming in its pool to cool off. Two young boys were also swimming and jumping off the rocks - they were about 5-6 years old and proceeded
to catch frogs using sharp sticks, which they then gutted expertly and cooked on a campfire they'd built earlier.
The walk back was exhausting in the heat - climbing from the bottom of the river valley up to the rice terraces, before then climbing up another mountain. But our exertion was put into perspective when we'd reached the highest point and saw some of the villagers doing the near vertical hike with supplies - one with a pig strapped to his back and another with a big sack of rice. Once we'd taken the tricycle back to the hotel, there was a powercut, which meant no hot shower and our meal was eaten by candlelight.
We ate breakfast at our accommodation - Elly having a chocolate banana pancake (which is literally a cake cooked in a pan!) We then went for a walk through the village to the Banaue Museum . It turned out to be up on a hill so we got views over the village and terraces beyond. The buildings' corrugated iron roofs often held down by tyres, crazy electric wiring seems a tangle over the streets, often running alongside leaky water pipes!
To get
into the museum we had to get the man from the guest house next door to open it for us. It was suprisingly informative and interesting museum full of artefacts to do with the local Ifuago tribe. We then walked down through the village and across a rickety suspension bridge. From here you got a good view of lots of the houses - many of them little more than shacks, giving a real sense of the poverty of the local people and the reality of subsistence living.
Once we'd packed up we caught a tricycle up to the bus stop with all our luggage on the roof and strapped to the back. When we got on the bus and left at 5:30pm torrential rain started and the roads turned to muddy rivers. We passed lots of places where landslides had happened and even had to drive over one that had happened within the hour and blocked the road. Local people were out in the rain with spades, digging trenches to protect their homes. Other than a few stops (including what turned out to be solely an apple pie stop!) we arrived back in Manila at around 4am, where we
got a taxi to a hotel and went straight to sleep!
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Mum & Dad
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What a contrast to everything else you've done so far. Interesting transportation... was he really called Steve?! Rice terraces look amazing.