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Published: November 30th -0001
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The village of Batad has no road access whatsoever, meaning that an approach on foot is the only option. We took a jeepney from Banaue to Batad Saddle, on the ridge overlooking the village. The 15km journey took 1.25 hours, with the final stretch up the hill from Batad Junction to Batad Saddle possibly the worst piece of "road" I've ever been on in public transport. It was bad enough for the human passengers but the chickens, trussed up and stuffed under the benches, must have been highly unamused.
From the Saddle, we followed a path down into the valley, first stepped, then rough stone, and finally a dirt track. We could see a few rice terraces on the way down but the main ones only came into view once we were approaching the cluster of guesthouses uphill from the village.
The rice terraces in this area are hyped (by the Philippines) as the 8th Wonder of the World (I think they were excluded from the shortlist for the recent New 7 Wonders of the World voting because they weren't in good enough condition - not that any poll where Christ the Redeemer and the Colosseum come out above
Angkor Wat should be taken seriously anyway). Created from the hillsides by the Ifaguo tribe about 2 millennia ago, they're certainly an impressive feat of engineering. We took the opportunity to wander through the terraces, using the walkways at the edge of each terrace and clambering down the stone stairs at either end of the levels.
However I didn't find them as spectacular as those I saw in Yuanyang in China (though I have no information about the age or extent of the ones in Yuanyang). No doubt part of this was due to seeing the Yuanyang terraces when they were flooded.
Our guesthouse contained a large group of Filipinos from Manila, travelling in what we were told was normal Filipino style. This involved cramming more people into a room than might be considered conventional in the West, and bringing all their own food which they then cooked using the guesthouse's facilities.
The Philippines is similar to India in that no-one ever seems to have any change, a situation exacerbated by ATMs unhelpfully giving out PHP500 notes. In both Banaue and Batad, our guesthouses ran tabs for their guests simply to avoid having to find change for
every individual transaction.
Our night's sleep was broken, first by the guesthouse dogs having a barking frenzy at about 4AM, then the sun rising about an hour later, then most of the other guests rising soon after. We had limited transport options for getting back to Banaue, one of which was to catch a jeepney from Batad Saddle. A sweaty but not too strenuous climb got us up there, where we learned the jeepney sometimes didn't run on a Sunday, and this was one of those Sundays where it wouldn't run. This was more than a little frustrating, as we'd asked 4 different people how to get back to Banaue, and none of them had mentioned this possibility. We then traipsed down to Batad Junction and were lucky to pick up a jeepney from there, though we did get a special foreigner price that was even more of a rip-off than the one we'd been given on the way up. It was a measure of how slow our progress was that when one guy wanted to get off, he simply opened the back door and jumped off the jeepney rather than tell the driver to stop.
Back in
Banaue, we were treated to a torrential wet season downpour, similar to one we'd had in Batad. It seems as though the rains have arrived late this year, according to local people, and indeed we've been fairly dry so far.
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adrian
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timewarp
Thanks for the acute observations, verbal and photo, and dry humour. Good to see places that I did not reach in these countries. Planning to see China, entering via Trans Siberian Railway (cheap if starting from Moscow and have the time). Is travelblog calendar skewed or is Malaysia in (quite) another time zone? Last posting dated 28 July, viewed 28th August!