Manilla and Banaue

---

After leaving Indonesia we headed to Manila the capital of Indonesia. This city was not nice. It was exceptionally walm and we only had a fan room that didn't help. The poverty was awful again and on our first experience of street food a young boy came over and asked for money. When we said no he asked for some of our food. It was heartbreaking. After 3 nights we were definitely ready to leave Manila.

Our first stop was Banaue an 8 hour overnight bus journey.
The bus left on time and it even had free WiFi. By the time I fell asleep at 1am we had just stopped in some traffic. I awoke at 6am and we had not moved - its no wonder I slept so well. We had been stuck in the traffic all night. This position of sitting on a stationary bus continued all morning and all afternoon. We eventually arrived at Banaue at 6pm - 20 hours after we departed. As worse bus journeys go, this one took the biscuit.

The next day consisted of laundry, eating biscuits and looking at the view of the rice terraces.

We had travelled to Banaue to visit the 2000 year old rice terraces. They were spectacular. We had read many reviews that a popular activity was to get a guide take you to a viewpoint and then walk back through the rice terraces to town. We thought this was a great idea and weren't even put off after listening to a girl in our hostel tell everyone she had just fallen off one of the terraces. We should have been. Instead we went off and found our guide Renaldo.

The first part of the walk was very tiring going up and down steps for what felt like an hour. We eventually had a little rest next to a waterfall and then carried on walking on a flat 'footpath'. The best way to describe this 'footpath' would be to image walking on a very wet and slippery balance beam, only just wide enough for one foot, with a cliff to your left and a 50m plus drop to your right. I'm not ashamed to say I thought we were going to die.

This horrendous walk continued for 3 hours. Renaldo was more than happy trotting in his flip flops while Kev and I fumbled along in our walking boots. Renaldo helped pass the time by telling us stories about the tribal wars and how we would have died (Kev would have had his head cut off but I wasn't to worry as I would have just had an arrow through my heart). To try and get off the topic of death I pointed out that it looked like it might rain. Renaldo looked at me as if I was stupid (a look I had grown accustomed to over the duration of the walk) and said matter-of-factly 'no'.

Throughout the walk Renaldo kept stopping to take photos of us and the amazing view. For once I was not interested in this as I was far too busy trying not to be sick or you know, die.

When we arrived back into town it rained. I couldn't help but feel smug.
Walking the rice terraces was definitely an amazing experience but one I'll never do again. Ever.

---

Comments

[mum]

we're going to dieeeeeee!!!
Hahaha laughing at this so funny. Great pics. You are a tad behind though we haven't even arrived there yet, come on love and miss ya both xxx