Goodbye Philippines. .. .

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One Jeepney a 3 hour wait and one bus took us back into the city of Manila from Taal. We spent the jeep journey sat next to a local named grace her husband and one month old baby Jacob. They were kind enough to wake us to the coach station which looks like every other road in Tanaue however we still waited on that hot bit of road for 3 hours before even a sign of a coach going the right direction came along. When we finally reached Manila we headed straight to another " coach station " in the hopes of ending up in Benaue famous for its rice terraces. We broke the journey in two and spent a couple of days in Bougio to wash some clothes and watch plenty of karaoke. Also finally watched the new xmen film to kill some time before a 9:30 bus.

We eventually arrived in Benaue at 4 am and booked onto a walking tour that started at 8:30 thinking it would just be a walk in the park. We had a 45 minute jeep ride followed by a 45 minute decent down a steep mountain into batad. A village situated in the heart of the 3000 year old rice terraces carved into the mountain. This was followed by another 45 minute decent to a waterfall to swim in. However all the time descending we were aware that we had to make the trip back up hill. It was needles to say a long and tiring day, but the fact the town has a 9pm curfew aided an early night.

The next day we headed to sagada a small town North of banaue. We made the 3hr trip with a northern Irish girl called Victoria who we met in banaue.

We organised our tours for the following day then had some dinner and ended up in the only late bar playing chess with some very drunk locals.

We stated the next day with a 3hr hike where we swam in a small waterfall with a 15ft jumping point very fun. We also saw some ancient hanging coffins attached to cliffs.

In the afternoon we went spilunking on a 4 hr Cave tour going through tiny rock crevices up and down ropes through waist deep water. The health and safety was very strict you had to wear flip flops and the guide had a petrol lamp so did the tour with one hand. It was probably one of our favourite parts of the Philippines and would recommend it to anyone.

Unfortunately we had to leave the next day to go to banaue to get back to manila overnight. However we did get to ride from sagada to bontoc 1hr through the mountains on the roof of a jeep.



That is about all just waiting to get our flight to vietnam.

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