TravelStream™ news feed for member fatduck on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/fatduck en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:46:14 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1217980800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1217980800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1217980800/tpod.html Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:46:14 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Taipei, Taiwan

After a week of diving in Sabang, two months of Australia and a morning in Tung Chung Hong Kong, I arrived in Taipei. Perhaps the reader wonders what I was up to. About scuba diving I usually find very little to write. Unless attacked by undersea creatures, the experience is beautiful to undergo, but doesn't lend itself to being related. In Australia, there is some problem of censorship. It's not the blocking of internet sites, like in PDR China, but speech isn't free. Internet access outside of Sydney regularly costs a small fortune ($5-10 an hour), as does everything else. Value for money in Australia is very poor. Unless you have a relative to visit, a job to do, or an absolute phobia about going to a country where everyone doesn't speak English, all but a dozen countries on the planet are better value.In Tung Chung I visited a 19th century Chinese fort, built to try to suppress smugglers of British Opium. The cannons are still there, in concrete casements. They aim at 50 storey apartment complexes. A school was built inside the walls at one point and later abandoned. If you've read about the Opium War 1840-42 it is interesting. If you've not, it would be rather lame.This is how I got into to Taipei. For this was the first time I've decided to go guidebook-free.After a long day of travelling from Adelaide to Sydney to Hong Kong to Taipei, it was not difficult to catch the bus to the Taipei main station and then the metro to the station near my chosen hostel. The customs people didn't care that I was importing more than my statutorily authorized quantity of alcohol (which is just 1 L). The man who gave me a free map didn't seem to care that I wasn't staying at his hotel nor taking his private car into town. The clerk who took my T$125 ($4) in a freshly dispensed T$1000 note didn't mind giving me the change with my bus ticket. No one cared that I brought all of my enormous bag on the bus - except me when it started to make my legs numb. Everything in the Taipei main station was wonderfully signed and it was no trouble to get to the right train. Paying for a token was easy with the Chinese/English token machines. The crowds weren't overwhelming on the train. At the stop - Guting Station - finding my exit as instructed in an email from my hostel was a breeze. Walking 150 meters along the streets I drew with my hand drawn map, and consulted by Google Maps was equally facile. While walking I noticed that the city smelled remarkably good. It was hot out but those odors of rotting gutter were conspiciously replaced by fragrant spices from nearby restaurants. No one was at the hostel (the reception had stepped out for a moment) but even the telephones are easy to use. Throw in a few dollars (they are 29 for 1 Canadian) and dial a number. Just like at home. Someone answered and shortly the reception arrived to let me in. South Australians sometimes say "Too Easy" instead of you're welcome or the NSW "No Worries." So, when Heather, who checked me in, said thanks as I paid, it would have been too easy to say "you're welcome" the South Australian way if it wouldn't have been too confusing. The more I travel, the more my sense of humor becomes erudite and difficult to relate to others.Eight Elephants is a small hostel and soon after arriving I'd met everyone there. Half of them are students of Chinese or somehow employed in Taiwan. The rest are itinerants like myself. Dinner was a bowl of noodles and beef soup. Shortly after, I collapsed into a 14 hour sleep, induced to such depths, no doubt, by what had been some 30 hours in transit.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1212136440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1212136440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1212136440/tpod.html Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:58:04 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Virac, Catanduanes, Philippines

I decided not to climb the volcano of Mt. Mayon after all. It seemed like too much effort. Instead I thought that it would be more fun - and a lot easier - to spend a few days at a resort on the Island of Catanduanes. It's off the North East coast, and sticks out into the Pacific Ocean. The South Eastern side is known for great surfing and snorkeling. It takes just half an hour from Legaspi, despite a little detour, to get to Tobaco (Part of the road had been buried by landslides from Mt. Mayon's last eruption in '06 and we had to make a small detour because it still had not been cleared). From Tobaco, ferries sail to Catanduanes. I took minivan. Unlike a bus, minivans fill with passengers at the city terminal, and don't stop every kilometer to pick someone up. They are much faster. But they are also small, and the driver insisted I buy 2 tickets. With my bag, I take up two Filipino sized seats. Next to me sat an old grandmother without any teeth. She was fluent in English, and we got to talking about cell phones (I picked up a SIM card for 65 pesos ($1.60) and it came with 50 free text messages). She said that it is a good thing to have an old cell phone, because "If you have a new one, you can die." "What?" I wanted to know? She said that if someone robs you - because they see you have a nice phone - and you resist, "they'll kill you." Was she speaking from the wisdom of ages, or dementia-induced fear?While driving to Tobaco, I texted a Catanduanes island resort about room availability. They replied that they had rooms for 300 and 400 pesos. And a brother, Edie, was near the island's port town of San Andres; "would I like a ride?" "Sure" I replied. They sent me the driver's cell number. After twenty minutes, I thought I should ask what it cost. A free text message is a free text message. The reply came back"1000 Pesos." Probably a good thing that I got this as a text message. I sent back something to the effect that I'd rather get there on my own (I haven't paid 1000 pesos for anything yet - Even the 18 hour trip on buses only cost 850). The boat ride was uneventful, but we had cellular service most of the time. An hour into the ride, Edie texted me to say that he was in the port of San Andres waiting. I replied again that I didn't want a ride, and that I'd get to the resort myself. We came into the port after 3 hours sailing. Edie was there waiting for me. There was only one foreigner on the boat. Somehow, he found me. I told him that I'd twice said that I didn't want a ride for 1000 pesos. But he said it was okay, because I didn't have to pay now. I could pay later. I didn't give this option much thought, but it would have been useful if I'd planned to skip out on my bill. But I have no experience doing that, and there is only one way off the island, so my odds wouldn't have been good. I told many people about this offer. The lonely planet guidebook calls it "the easy way" to get to the resorts of Puraran. A hotel manager laughed and said that the ride could have been done by tricycle for 1/10th. Another hotel manager said that I should have reported the people who offered this to me, because the prices are fixed. A tricycle driver told me that he thought the resort had lost a customer. But the only other tourist whom I met on the island told me that she thought it was a good price. Instead of being taken for a very expensive ride, I took a jeepney to Virac, the capital of Catanduanes. It was on the way to the resort of Puraran. The inside of the jeepney was full of people, so I climbed up on top. It made what is usually a cramped and unpleasant drive a lot more exhilarating. The roads were mostly empty of traffic, and were concrete paved all the way to Virac. We didn't drive too fast, so the wind in my face was tolerable. Sometimes I had to duck branches which overhung the road. People we drove past waved at me. The air was fresh and the views were magnificent. At Virac I ignored the mobs of tricycle drivers, and walked six blocks to the biggest hotel in town. They gave me a very clean room with only one cockroach. We played a game for a time until he escaped the wrath of my sandal. The restaurant on the rooftop was very good and I sat up there until right before sunset, reading and trying not to listen to omnipresent US contemporary music. After dinner I went for a donut, and walked around the water front. As many times before, the youthfulness of the Philippines struck me. Some call it the baby-factory of Asia. There were (how) many kids playing in the twilight; playing catch, swimming, sitting around chatting and virtually everyone of them took a look at me. Many of them said "Hello" "Hi Joe" and "What's your name?" - the first three things they are taught in school, it seems. In a more prosperous city, this waterfront would have been spotted with terraces and cafes, and the most pleasant spot in town. Instead the buildings mostly consisted of corrugated steel and wood shacks. I wonder if this has something to do with the bad weather that drops in every season. After the 1000 peso nonsense, I had decided to avoid Puraran resorts. But I needed somewhere else to go. The front desk staff struggle with English, so they suggested I talk to the manager. Joe has long black hair and a lisp. But his English is fluent and we talked about nearby resorts. He suggested Twin Rock, which was so new that no one had its phone number. It was reputed to be owned by the governor of the island. I was queasy about going a long ways with a big bag, so I looked it up online. A phone number that dated back to before the last devastating typhoon was on some website. However, the computer cafe owner, who spoke fluent English and was generally very helpful, told me it was no longer in service. Whatever. I'd go anyway.I found a tricycle driver named Boy, who has an 11 year old daughter. He spoke English fluently - he was taught by Alaskan missionaries - and we negotiated a deal where he would drive me back to town at a reduced price if the resort was full or not open. I gave him 50 pesos up front to buy a litre of gas. It is somewhat related to mention what the newspapers are saying about fuel prices. Three top Manila papers are written in English. The general consensus is that gasoline has been going up at the rate of 1 peso a week. The rises are punishing the wages of drivers. Transportation prices are been strictly regulated by government decree, and there is talk of raising the rates. This has been proposed before but nix'd because of public protest. It was also reported a few weeks back, that jeepney drivers make 100 pesos less per day than they did last year, because of the rising price of fuel. I can't remember exactly what that meant to their income %-wise, but I think it was near 1/3 of their daily take!When I got to Twin Rock, after 35 minutes on a gravel road (driving the 9 kilometers distance at a jogging pace), the resort was open and they had a little cottage available for me to move into!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211983080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211983080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211983080/tpod.html Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:11:21 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Legaspi, Philippines

Mt. Mayon is a perfect looking volcano. It is cone shaped and perpetually smoking, and looks really impressive on the horizon. When it erupts, it pumps out a flimsy black rock; a pumice stone that crumbles easily and its black sand is everywhere. It is effortless to carve. The Spanish made the best of it and used it for the bell towers and facades of their churches. The results are nice but after some years, hard to discern. The rock doesn't show relief well. The church at Daraga is such a church. Its age is difficult to appraise; with crumbling rock and rusting eaves, it seems centuries old, but the eaves are clearly new. The stone carving isn't sharp and it surprised me with very Classical motifs around the base of columns on the front facade. Little angels, like ones I've seen on Greek temples in Turkey, smile at visitors.I had not actually known how to get to this church. Frequent readers may remember that I am very averse to asking locals for directions - in my global experience generally a passer-by can't tell me the difference between up and down. But here, in the Philippines, I have relaxed this aversion, because of both sloth and need. At my hotel, I couldn't get good information about how to get to this church. The staff did tell me which jeepney to take to get to the tourism information office in Albay. I found it, and I told the driver "Albay." He took just that amount of money from me (the cost increases by distance travelled), but he never told me where to get off. When I did, and he came to the end of his route, I was in Daraga. I bought a bottle of water from a shop, and the shopkeeper, who was fluent in English, was helpful with my inquiries."Which way to the tourism information booth?""Take a jeepney.""I just did.""It's 3 kilometers to Albay." He pointed in the direction I'd just come."Which way to the church?" At the time, I was looking for the ruin at Cagsawa."That way" and he pointed in the other direction.I decided to try to walk. After a hundred yards, a worker at a coconut-flesh drying operation pointed me in a perpendicular direction. Some way along was the church of Daraga. I climbed stairs to the top of the hill it is perched on. Many children smiled, waived and called out at me as I passed them. A woman at a shop flirted. At the church, a seminarian and a van of his companions ate on a step. Some children played basketball nearby - it's the Philippine national sport - and while I walked around the front of the church, a tricycle pulled up. Kevin and Danny climbed out.I met them when I asked Kevin to take my photo. At first I thought he was a really ugly Filipina, but in fact he is just a man in drag, also known as a 'Lady Boy.' I have mentioned this breed before but I find it so intriguing. It is very much not practiced in Edmonton. Filipinas are generally attractive. Perhaps that's why so many foreign men come here to marry. At first I thought "women" like Kevin were a severe blight on Filipina beauty. Here and there I see women with paunches, knobby knees, receding hairlines and big shoulders, who don't look that pretty. But then I realise they are men. One worries that a man can be "sorrowfully disappointed" after a drunken night on the town when he finally realises he's brought home a lady-boy.However, perhaps I've not noticed them all. Apparently, the drag beauty contests here produce more attractive and feminine "women" than ones with real women! I have been told that the Avil Lavigne look-alike contests around Fiesta time are something else. I bet! They tell me to come back then to see them.Danny said he was in town on vacation to visit his cousin, Kevin. It seemed plausible at first. Later Danny complimented my "beautiful eyes" and I began to doubt the story. But they were nice and gave me directions to the Cagsawa ruins. "Take a jeepney" they said.The site administration charges 10 pesos to 'get in' but there's not much more to see of the Cagsawa ruins on the other side of the gate. Some may pay the 10 pesos for the privilege of being hassled by half a dozen teenage girls who are all selling post cards of the ruins with the volcano in the hinter ground. The Catholic church that is "the ruins" was rubbed out by an eruption of Mt. Mayon in 1814. Three dozen souls went to heaven that day. All that survives now is the bell spire and some of the pillars of the nave. Most of the girls left me alone once I passed the bell tower, but Charlo-anne, aged 10, would not be discouraged. She kept saying "take picture" to me. I couldn't decide if she wanted to take my picture, or for me to take her picture, but I guessed the former. An Irish guy with his Filipina were getting their picture taken by one of the teenage mob. Charlo-anne also replied "no understand English" to nearly everything I said so there wasn't much point my asking what she meant. But there is no school until the 2nd week of June in the Philippines, and Charlo-anne styled herself as a "tour guide." This was one of the few other things she could say that I could understand. The other was that she recently finished grade 4.I climbed up onto a dyke of volcanic sand to get a better view of the area. Mt. Mayon is rather dangerous - two years ago it erupted and debris spilled down the hillside, killing a lot of people. Now there is danger zone where few build, possibly ten kilometers from the cone of the volcano. But from the dyke, I could see evidence of much more recent ruins than the church. Shells of concrete cinder block houses and buildings stuck up from rocks and black volcanic sand (Local workers pile up rocks of this type from the river bed in their trucks and haul it off somewhere). Some brave - or desperate - farmers still lived nearby. Two men plowed a rice paddy with an ox not far from me. A creek ran along the other side of the dyke. Charlo-anne climbed up too and kept up with her "take picture" routine. She twirled her little girl purse around her finger on a string, and it went flying down the side of the dyke. It was retrieved.It was a great panorama but after a while I'd had enough of the "take picture" stuff. I went to see the remains of the Philippine National Museum. It used to be next to the Cagsawa ruin, but it is now something of a ruin itself. Since an eruption in 2006, it's being re-located elsewhere. There was nothing for me to see, so I bought a fried banana and headed back to town. That evening, I thought that I should make a decent attempt to try the regional culinary specialties. There is one restaurant advertised, "Waway" which makes that sort of eats. I walked through an increasingly brutal part of town to get there. First, I passed the market stalls, where people buy street food. The next street had a lot of hair stylists and parked tricycles. Then I passed a mosque, where the only other guys in the city with beards hang out. Next was another street of salons and internet cafes. All the sidewalk blocks were irregular and many were cracked.Then, a main street. The traffic wasn't heavy but the lanes are narrow so a pedestrian has to be careful in the many parts with no sidewalks, or when vehicles are parked on them. It was probably an important street once. The train from Manila used to come here, and there are a few hotels in this now remote-feeling area. I went into one for directions - I was to simply continue along the road - that hotel was pretty nice. Outside of it, a tricycle driver waited for a fat fare. He wanted 4x the going rate to take me to the restaurant, 500 meters away. He wouldn't budge in his unreasonable price, so I figure he didn't care. Another hotel, the "Albay Hotel" was a shattered-glass, peeling-paint, boarded-up ruin. A kid was playing nearby in the gutter with a shovel. I passed the old train station. The tracks were completely grown over; the grass was higher than the platforms. A troop of kids played with palm leaves in the main hall. It looked like a scene from _Lord of the Flies_. Nearby, a man shamelessly relieved himself. No one seemed to care. The restaurant had been hard to find because the staff parked a gigantic jeep in front of the sign. The building itself it looked like another upscale house. Inside, I was the only guest, for the hour I remained there. The food was all on display in woks behind a glass pane. There was beef tail. Beef intestine. Shrimp fins (just from the end of the tail). Pork liver. Beef fat. White Balls of something. Squid heads. I chose the least-offensive looking pork dish "bicol express" and a plate of vegetables that looked like a curry, but were in a very bitter sauce. There was a stack of fried food too, and I chose a spring roll, the best part of my meal. I didn't like it all that much. I was even more disappointed to find out that once I got back to the market, because all of the fried banana stalls had closed up for the night. I guess I can't always have it my way. But, to top off my evening, I ate cotton candy - like the brat I am - and watched the new Indiana Jones flick for $1.75 in an air-conditioned big-screen theatre. It's not all bad!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211797800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211797800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211797800/tpod.html Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:34:13 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Legaspi, Philippines

Running out of cash on hand, and no ATMs within a few hours' drive, I decided to move on from the Philippine Cordilera to Bicol. I rode on a cold, freakishly cold night bus to Manila. From the city's bus hub in Cubao, I caught another bus on to Naga, some 18 hours' drive from Banaue. I made sure to eat a bare minimum, and I practiced my 'Bus Zen' despite endless hours of fuzzy speaker soft rock from 60s and 70s US studios. Naga wasn't that great, but I stayed for only one night. I didn't even want to do that, but I can't handle more than 18 hours on a bus. Naga's city center has lots of westernish food joints and people hanging around. Beggars came uncomfortably close while I used an ATM. I also found evidence of perhaps the most oppressively finicky administration of a Catholic cathedral. There were at least 20 notices on the back of old coca-cola signs, stuck all over the grounds. They said things like "no loitering" "no blowing of horns" "no parking" and so on, to an extent that makes Germany's abundance of signage look rather reasonable in comparison.I spent three hours on a cramped bus today. Every standing passenger glared at me because my bag took up a seat. Legaspi (alternately spelled Legazpi) sprawls out at the Southern side of the enormous Mt. Mayon. It's a stand-alone, perfectly cone-shaped volcano. Best of all, smoke constantly puffs out of its acme. Shopping malls are amazing places. Multiple songs and flashing lights assault the senses, dodging people while trying to chose one of many westernish food joints can make one forget that a smoking volcano is only a a few miles away. I could have been on the other side of the pacific in Los Angeles. The music comes from around there. One can also find Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, etc, there. The movies in the theatre come from around there. As do the contents of the counterfeit dvds on sale. The paperbacks in the second-hand bookstore may have been shipped from there by the kilo. So too perhaps the (design of) goods in other stores I didn't visit. Perhaps it's all Chinese-made, like there too. The video game machines in the arcade may have been shipped from there, after arcades went out of style in North America. Perhaps the only incongruous store is one called "FLICKERS" that sold juiices and smoothies, but only because its sign looks vulgar. Outside a fellow swept the street. Considering the cracked concrete, lots with nothing but dirt and mud along one side of the mall, and an open storm drain/canal nearby, his goal appears hopeless. But the streets around the mall weren't littered with rubbish. Legaspi is a city of 180 000. Looking North over Legaspi from Kamputukan Hill, at the its' Southernmost point, it looks like half of the city is in squalor. Because there usually isn't much to see, and also because I get too much unwanted attention, I often don't stroll through slums. But I've come a long ways and it seems silly to not go a little bit further to get to a good view. Kamputukan hill isn't accessible by vehicle because the road is closed, due to harbour construction. The owners of the hill also have erected a sign saying that it belongs to the heirs of so and so, and they've put a barbed wire fence around the base of the hill. A substantial number of other people have built a slum around the barbed wire fence. From the road by the wharf, there is a small entrance in a tall pink wall that hides this little city. There are no cars, because there are no streets. Possibly also because no one can afford a car. There are concrete walkways between the bamboo and corrugated steel buildings built on dirt; none seemed to have more than a single story. Hanging above the walkways are all manner of wires and well-worn tarps, and I had to bend over often. There were a good cross-section of ages represented on the streets. Many of the buildings were open, or one could easily see the people sitting around inside. People sat and stood around, and kids played at whatever until they noticed me and gawked or said "Hi Joe." It seems like I heard that a hundred times. I have the impression that in Legaspi there are very few foreigners (despite its mall). There must be substantially fewer in this slum. Although I am really getting annoyed at the great numbers of people who say "Hi Joe" to me, in this context I turned and waived, or sometimes said 'hello' back, but without actually stopping. On decidedly foreign turf, my usual aloofness didn't seem acceptable. Aware of where I was obviously going, a middle aged man on crutches sort of pointed the direction of the way up the hill to me. Five children, perhaps aged six to nine, ran behind me up seventy concrete steps, to show me the best spot to get over the barbed wire, but none of them followed me further up the hill. The view was extraordinary, and worth the little climb. Mostly I was worried that after I had passed through the slum, someone would get the bright idea to try and rob me on my way out. Perhaps it is a growing awareness of class consciousness, or the arrogance of relative wealth that makes me worry for my safety among citizens of a lower class. But I'll phrase it this way. When Brad Pitt walks through a mall, lots of people say hello to him. They'll talk about running into him perhaps all day, because it doesn't happen often. But no one thinks that he's carrying a fortune on him. If he was, robbing him would net tens of millions of dollars, so perhaps more than a few people would take a stab at him. Like the famous Mr. Pitt, in an area where people live on a few dollars a day and the fish they catch in the Pacific ocean, and someone wealthy looking comes through who may be carrying a lot of money, people may get ideas. He may not feel so safe. From the Kamputukan hilltop I espied another way out of the slum. Like the way in, on the different way out, lots of people said hello to me. I even got a few high-fives, but thankfully no one got any ideas. I'm thinking about climbing the volcano tomorrow.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211627040/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211627040/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211627040/tpod.html Sat, 31 May 2008 09:53:24 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Cambolo, Philippines

Some of the people I met before coming to Banaue reported that it was a bit sketch. They didn't like the feeling of the town. Interruptions in breakfast by tricycle drivers who want to take me to "the viewpoint" has been a definite annoyance. As has been the odd loose dog in one restaurant or another. But when S_ approached me while I was drinking a beer, and offered his guiding services at half the price of those from the tourist office, I didn't shoo him off. Instead we discussed a plan to hike through the mountains. The next morning, we were on our way. S_'s cousin drove us to a drop off point forty minutes out of town. The best rice terrances are found on the mountain behind Banaue. They are made of stone and are about 2000 years old. They are only accessible on foot. Our plan was to walk around the mountain, through four mountain villages: Pula, Cambolo, Batad and N_, and meet the cousin on another road the next afternoon. At the drop off point, it was immediately obvious that I could not have done the walk without S_. Not in two days, anyway. Perhaps in a week. There were two paths at the drop off point, each equally well travelled. One led to God-knows-where. The other wound through the various mountain spurs back and forth, until three and a half hours later we reached Pula. The way was mostly downhill, and began at a agreeably cool temperature. S_ told me what not to touch, what was okay to touch, and what was edible. In one case, one don't-touch plant was also edible: don't touch the leaves, but the core of the stem of younger plants is edible (but really bitter). I stopped to look at flowers, bugs and views. The forest is protected from logging (and loggers face jail time) but we saw substantial evidence of logging anyway. Two hours from our start, we could hear a chainsaw revving up somewhere.At Pula I was again very glad for S_, because three hours of the walk had been downhill. The last half hour in particular had been a very steep downhill, and had I been walking up it at the end of a two day hike, I would have been cursing to no end. We may have lost 1000 meters of elevation in all, of which 400 meters had been in the last half hour. My ears popped a few times. For simply knowing on which end of the trail to start, S_ was worth every peso I paid him. Like Tam-an, I visited the other day, Pula is something of a scattering of houses. Only a few people were there when we arrived. It was a lot hotter at the bottom of the valley and I hid from the sun under a thatched roof for a few minutes and chickens pranced around me. S_ was off to find out if the store was open, but it was not. The owners were somewhere. There wasn't anything to see we couldn't see elsewhere along the trail so we continued along. While the first leg had been a mountain path, the next was mostly on the precipices of rice terraces and irrigation canals. That was how I came to find myself hanging off of the edge of an irrigation canal, with my feet dangling in the air. After all, one can't easily hang off an irrigation canal if one wasn't on one first. One has to be careful with one's footing, to not slip and fall. But when I stepped on a rock that itself slipped off the irrigation canal, with a bit of the side of it to boot, carefulness seems irrelevant. I have absolutely no memory of the slip. S_ said that the only sound he heard was the slip of the rock. One second I'm walking along; the next, hanging on. Somehow my body got my arms across the canal and got a hold. I pulled myself up, and it wasn't hard because I was only carrying 5 kg in my backpack. The water in the canal was useful to clean up the cuts I received. After a big dose of liquid band aid and a few minutes to dry, we were off again. We moved more slowly afterwards, and had lunch in a "bus stop." These structures are spaced every hours' walk along the trail, and look just like the concrete and corrugated steel bus stops that can be found along Philippine highways. The term is used somewhat ironically because I think everyone wishes a bus actually did run along the path. At one stop we encountered an old man wearing a construction worker's helmet, a sweater and little shorts. His calves were enormous, as were his wide, paddle-shaped feet, that made his figure look something like the Lord of the Rings character Gollum. His misshapen and rotting teeth only added to the similarity. He carried a pointed walking stick and a piece of nara wood that was useful in carrying rocks. S_ offered him a piece of bread. He took it, but said he would have preferred tobacco. S_ said he was 80. S_ had a bag smaller than mine. He brought fewer spare clothes, but he'd filled the bag with two loaves of white bread, which he passed out to people we passed. He liked mayo on the bread. At least twenty people benefited from his generosity; most of them were children. One boy of six or eight had been chewing something like bark when we met him, to ease his hunger. S_ said that most of these people lived on rice and sweet potatoes, and being so far from a city and a road they never get to eat bread. Amazingly, Banaue's bread is actually baked in Bagio, nine hours' drive away.I bet the teeth of these mountain people are much better for it, but I didn't say so. S_ grew up in a mountain village near our path, and he's got pretty good teeth, but he cleans them often. This also keeps his mouth from having that bloodied look that most betel nut chewers have. Lots of these children shouted "Americano" at me because I'm clearly not Filipino. S_ appologised for them, and said that they just don't know better. I'm sort of offended, but I suppose it doesn't mean very much. The Arabs decided to call all white people after the French (franji, I think) and the Chinese have this habit of yelling foreigner (laowai) at foreigners. I guess this is typical. Even in Edmonton, we point out unusual people, like Spandex man. S_ said these Filipino kids will learn better someday. That might be something new. Along hillsides we saw the odd pair of seemingly abandoned sandals. S_ told me that it is dangerous work to be off by oneself. Mountain farmers take off their sandals while working on the hillside for better stability on the soil. We could see numerous places where there had been landslides, particularly where there had been attempts at cultivation. Farmers who cut down trees destabilise the soil. S_ said, before one criticises them, these people are dreadfully hungry and do it to plant corn and sweet potato on those unstable hills. They are the ones who lose their crops in a landslide. Worse, if one of them becomes sick or injured, no one may come in time to help. It happened to S_'s mother twenty years ago. It started to rain very hard and we brought our rain jackets out. My gear stayed dry, but my shoes were soaked from the water on the grass that dripped down my shins every time I stepped and touched it. At a "bus stop" I took them off and hiked in sandals. At first annoying, after a while sandals begins to have advantages; particularly in wading in mountain streams. It had become very hot, and the water in those streams was very cold. A few minutes soak in freezing water can really nicely cool the heat and ease pain of sore legs. We sauntered into Cambolo around 4 o'clock. S_ still had the energy to go swimming and catch fish for dinner, while I was able to barely gather the strength to shower myself and pass out for a few hours. We ate stir-fried vegetables and played with adding more and more chilies to our soy-sauce. I flipped through a "Cowboy and Indian" magazine donated by the local nun from Connecticut. Shortly thereafter I passed out.The next day (the 24th) was more of the same, but there was a lot of uphill. We saw a waterfall that was so powerful it made its own waves. We waded in its freezing water. I was running out of sunscreen so I covered my legs in rice-paddy mud, which was alright and kept me burn-free and cool, but every local wanted to know what was wrong with me. The rice terraces of Batad are indeed beautiful. We hiked all the way around them. We stopped often in mountain streams for me to cool off. It hit God-knows how hot, and at one point I became very dizzy with heat. I didn't fall off of any terraces but I sampled a wild chili and that was almost as bad. At the end of our hike, we passed two dozen people who had just been let off by the local jeepney, and they were carrying a week's worth of suplies home from the Saturday market. They had loads of stuff, and at least a few hours to go. They must be very fit, or very used to pain. From the last path back to the road, we saw the local school. S_ used to have to walk there and back, two hours each way every day. Sometimes they got stuck at school, when it rained too hard, and the paths were not passible. The kids would have nothing to eat and had to scrounge around the hills for whatever forage they could find. We made it to his cousin's tricycle at the roadside just as the first afternoon raindrops started to fall around us. We had been evading rain clouds all afternoon, and they pummelled us with raindrops during the hour's drive back to Banaue. S_ piloted us along wicked roads; once I had to get out and help push. We passed a few stuck vehicles, and I imagined imminent landslides. But we made it back: I was definately rattled after the ride, and the hiking. S_ said no one would believe me, that we hiked 43 kilometers in two days. But we did.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211466420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211466420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211466420/tpod.html Tue, 27 May 2008 03:42:33 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Banaue, Philippines

After spending a day doing nothing more than sitting on a terrace reading and drinking beer, it was time to do something. The local tourism office offers guides at $25 a day. They can take a person around the rice terraces to local villages. But their cost is a path too steep for me to climb. So after not finding the way to the village the other day, I wanted to try again at finding my own way around. I planned on doing a relatively modest eight kilometer rice terrace circuit in three hours. My first stop was in the Ifugao village of Tam-an. It was easy to find. The other day I met Jon from the UK, who told me how to get there. He gave me specific instructions on how to find the bones he'd told me about. When I get to the village, I was to talk to the pregnant lady at the first house I came to. Ifugao villages are not the organised affairs many of us are used to, like ones with clearly defined lots and houses oriented more or less in the same direction. Ifugao villages often follow the contours of the hill they are built on, but houses are packed together wherever one can be built. The population has exploded as of late, and there are many more houses than when the area was designated a world-heritage site. Houses are encroaching on the historic rice terraces. There is not enough space for them. Irene, aged 17 and approximately 6 months pregnant, was the first person I saw in Tam-an. She invited me into her house and showed me the various souvenirs she had for sale. Little paddles for serving rice with the rice god carved into the top were $2, but I didn't want to carry one. After I admired her wares for a few minutes, she offered to show me "the bones" if I was prepared to give a donation. There were others, but she chose her great grandfather Magiano. She hauled a 50 kg rice sack out of a back room. The contents seemed to be about the size of a semester's worth of science textbooks. Inside the rice sack were Magiano's bones, carefully wrapped in colourful cloth. She showed me the one remaining tooth in his skull, and we admired the pile of bones together. Her great grandfather was a Mumbaki - something of a shaman - and the donation I gave of $2.50 would go to purchase a chicken to sacrifice for having opened up his package of bones. After a time she re-wrapped them and I continued on my way. I didn't actually know the path to the Poi-tan village, but I used the skills I've learned from the Outdoor Network on television to follow the most well-trod path through the rice paddies. Two boys, aged about six, were coming from somewhere carrying sacks of bottles on their heads. I guessed they were coming from Poi-tan, as there are no other villages in that direction that I knew of. Their path led to another part of the Tam-an village, where Milas and her daughter Razorose (my spelling) greeted me. Milas was carrying some strange green vegetable to her house. She wanted to know where I was going, and when I said Poi-tan, she said that I needed a guide. I didn't want one and said so. She spoke excellent English, so we talked for a while. It turned out that Irene is one of her many siblings. She is 27, and has four kids. She was very surprised to find out that she is older than I am, but like everyone else, she was fooled by my beard. Of course, she backtracked and said that I have a young face. After ten minutes it was time for her to continue with her chores, but she gave me relatively helpful directions on how to get to the irrigation canal that led to Poi-tan. I followed them and the most-worn paths, until I reached the canal. It was thicker and much more functional than the other one I followed the other day. That's to say, it moved water. After fifteen minutes, I was completely by myself. Jungle above me, rice terraces below, it is the sort of place that keeps me on the road. After ninety minutes, I espied a village of substance and guessed that it was Poi-tan. I found a well-worn path which generally led toward it. In places, it was nothing more than a few stones in a gap in very tall grass. I passed two girls aged maybe five and seven, and one asked me "what's your name?" I told her and asked hers. Betty then pointed to the way she came when I asked for Poi-tan. A few minutes later I was in the village. Like other villages in Ifugao province it is irregularly shaped. It looks like it's been spilled down the crest of a hill. It's a bit of a Banaue tourist stop, but I was surprised to meet two travellers also from Edmonton. We looked at the village stone together. It's about five feet high and 18" diameter. There is some mythology to it that I couldn't quite follow, but local lore says that after it was erected, the villagers noticed that when the stone got wet, people got sick. To keep people healthy, they built a shelter over it. No word on whether this actually kept people from falling ill though. The Edmontonians offered me a ride back to Banaue, and I couldn't help but accept. They had hired a jeepney to get to Poi-tan by the road on the other side of the valley. On the way to the road, we came across a gathering of people. A pig was being dragged, squealing, out from somewhere to the centre of the gathering. One of the Edmontonians spoke Tagalog and found out that someone's bones were being exhumed, and his family and friends were celebrating. After a number of years in the ground, it is Ifugao tradition to exhume the dead. But I'm not sure if they all end up in rice sacks like Magiano. Like at fiesta, four men held the pig's limbs, and a fifth cut its throat. Its squealing gradually died down and its blood dripped into a pan below its neck. That blood makes a certain Filipino delicacy. Contacts of mine in the Peace Corps say that it isn't a must-try.I wondered if the event had something to do with Ifugao spiritual traditions. Howevever, my friend the Ifugao expert from France told me later that this wasn't a traditional sacrifice. Mumbaki don't kill pigs like that, she said. They use a spear through the rib to save blood, and only make sacrifices in at dawn or at sunset. This slaughter was at noon. Instead, the event was just a celebration to that the exhumed wouldn't be forgotten. If you ask them, the Ifugao are completely Catholic. But they seem to hold on to some of the old ways.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1210242480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1210242480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1210242480/tpod.html Tue, 27 May 2008 03:26:17 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Manila, Philippines

The next thing to do, after changing my flights to stay longer in the Philippines, was to get permission to stay as that long. This time, walking was out of the question, for the destination was three times farther than the Cathay Pacific head offices. A short jeepney ride (at 17 cents) took me to the Light Rail system (LRT), which I rode to the stop "Central" (for 35 cents) nearest the immigration building. Since having had breakfast some time before, I had to pick up a snack. On the walk from the LRT, I found a waffle stand, and bought a hot dog wrapped in a waffle. It tasted just like it sounds.The immigration building was watched by security guards. The third entrance was the one which I wanted; inside was a hive of activity. I found the correct window, and the clerk printed off a document which said that I wasn't on any black list so far as the Republic of the Philippines was concerned. It cost $75 for the expedited visa with a same-day pick up, but since I want to get out of Manila to avoid the congestion and pollution, it was absolutely worth it. I just had to kill time until 3.30 to pick it up. The Immigration building is in a district of Manila called Intramuros ("inside walls"). This is the oldest part of Manila, built by the Spanish and reputed to be very beautiful before mostly destroyed in WW2 by fighting between US and Japanese armies. There is a grand old church with a throng of peddlers outside, the relatively affluent residence of the Archbishop, photos of it marred by the hundreds of wires hanging above the streets, a Lateran (Catholic) boarding school, one slick high school, a building of the University of the city of Manila, and a newspaper office. Outside of these buildings and many others are plaques informing visitors of the history of the buildings or lots where buildings stood. There is also a whole lot of slum.If only the rich/poor dichotomy were interesting. The old walls are in place still; one can walk about them. They were built to withstand cannon balls, in the 17th/18th century style, and are consequently dozens of meters thick. They also seem to be rebuilt; they don't show war damage so much as other buildings do. The Church of the Augustinians is an empty shell of stone and concrete, as are more than a few other sites. Some badly decrepit buildings are inhabited. Kids were playing with crates. A youth shouted to me an offer of a lady, and pointed to the young lady next to him who smiled at me. I smiled back, as one must do to be polite. Some other men were playing a game like pool, but with plastic like the tops of to-go coffee cups. Others played chess with blue and white bottle caps. Someone was sleeping in a hammock under his water truck. Other people were up to their daily activities. Shopkeepers waited under signs in all degrees of dilapidation for customers. Scores of men on tricycles offered me tours. There were only a few armed guards, dressed in the uniforms of the Spanish when they ruled the Philippines 110 years ago. I took no pictures of those buildings or those people; there are people on the streets and it would have been embarrassing for all of us.And yet on the outside of the walls is a crisp (and, that day, empty) golf course, with closely cut greens and lush green grass. Netting had been installed around portions of the walls where golfers are most likely to put the balls on them. Some of these spots are treed and from the looks of it popular places for locals to nap. Although marring the landscape there must be practical benefits to the nets. I don't imagine that Filipinos like to be woken by calls of "FORE" any more than anyone else would. At the North West corner of Intramuros is the old Fort of Santiago. The guard at the entrance, Arnold, who also took my ticket let me take his picture (armed guards tend to have functions other than simply guarding, as in other places. Here, they open doors, take tickets, clean up, try to sell stuff; they seem much more like uniformed, armed employees). Fort Santiago had much more the appearance of a garden than a fort. Full of greenery and gardeners at work, the odd artillery piece or pile of shells seemed more like decoration than historical artifacts. Only in the most remote corner, where the national hero Jose Rizal wrote his last ode to the Philippines in a jail cell before being martyred by the Spanish in 1896, did Fort Santiago have the semblance of a fort. Now, they've put the poem everywhere in this shrine. It's on mulitple walls, in multiple languages. It's done in metal around a room. It's even inlaid in wood on a floor. Another armed guard, fluent in English, passed me two pamphlets and told me of the importance of the national hero Jose Rizal. He was an early Filipino nationalist in the history of the development of the independent Phillipine nation. Streets are named after him everywhere (including the next street over from the internet cafe I'm in now). Inside the museum are Rizal artifacts; a coat he wore, his set of surgical tools (wasn't nearly every revolutionary also a poet-doctor?), paintings of moment in his life and execution, and along one wall a collection of perhaps fifty of his sayings, in five langugues. I took a copy of this interesting one to share with you."We have seen that the countries which believe most in miracles are the laziest, just as spoiled children are the most ill-mannered. Whether or not they are lazy because they believe in miracles, we cannot say; but the fact is that the Filipinos were much less lazy before the word miracle was introduced into their language." wrote Rizal on August 31, 1890, in the journal La Solidaridad. I am particularly impressed at this self criticism. One would never see such a thing in a country, say, like China. However, you may find it ironic to note that the Tagalog word "trabaho," which means "work," is also a gift from the Spanish. Later I walked down a street which is one that hosts a number of quality hotels, suggests a certain guide book. I wondered if it was the Manila equivalent of Ko San road. Had I not found my remote lodge online I would have stayed there. Part of it was interesting. It was highly busy and the far end was a dreadful slum. Where people are so poor, I fear for my safety a bit. It turned out to be okay, but two youths bathing with a bucket in a puddle, offered in English:"Want bath? Want Shower?"I don't usually step out in front of cars but something told me this was a special case. Of course I wasn't hit, and I made it to the metro system just before it began to rain. By the time I got off, it had let up a bit, but while walking back to the lodge it got progressively stronger. I couldn't find a jeepney that was definitively headed in my direction, so I continued to walk. Along the way a woman offered me a condo, and I looked just long enough to notice she stood outside a salon. Which had a price list on the window. The price of a trim was 50 pesos ($1.25).How could I resist?I think that is the cheapest haircut I've ever paid for. I had to wait while woman's haircut came to an end. The people there seemed amused that a foreigner had dropped in. As it is, the only foreigners I've seen outside of my hostel are older caucasian men walking hand in hand with Filipinas. There were a few women sitting around inside. They wanted to know a bit about me. One who was sipping a coffee said that another thought I was cute, and wanted to know if I was available. When someone asks on behalf of a fifty year old woman, I always have a girlfriend conjured out of somewhere. They wanted to know if I had friends, and if I could introduce them, or at least get some contact information for them. I asked the coffee sipper if she was married, she just said she didn't have kids. We all got a kick out of that. Except later she said that she did, and she had been joking the whole time. She doesn't work in Qatar anymore, so that she can be with her family. We traded some words in Arabic. The ladies all had a great sense of humor, and thought it was particularly funny when I told them my age. I have the impression that they think every white man is over fifty. With a rare few exceptions, I think they all are. My stylist was thin as a rail, and had a chic feminine hair cut, a layer of foundation, and two lumps under his shirt. He also did a great job and my hair is as short as it would be had he used a razor, except he did it all with sissors and it doesn't look like a razor job. Later I noticed there is some demand for gents like him; one salon further along the same road (Quinno ave) had a paper want-advertisement for a "Gay hairdresser." I've noticed lots of such ads: "waitress: 20-25 and personable" "salesgirl 20-22 with experience" and I even heard these sorts of advertisements on the public metro which played some radio station. They don't seem to have Human Rights Commissions here.I escaped the downpour.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211262120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211262120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211262120/tpod.html Mon, 26 May 2008 07:02:23 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Banaue, Philippines

After waiting for the assembly of officials outside of the Sagada city hall to end, I found out that the roads to elsewhere were open again. They had been closed for two days because of landslides. I stuffed myself into a jeep bound for Bontoc. Sixteen people fit inside; ten more rode on top. At Bontoc I visited a museum of Ifugao history; the Ifugao are the local native people. The museum is run by a catholic nun. She is very proud of the collection of artifacts they have amassed, and since I was the only visitor when I arrived, she told me of how the museum came into the collection. Many items date from pre-Spanish times of trade with the Chinese in the middle ages. They were kept as local heirlooms. Then, as Ifugao province made the shift into the modern age, the artifacts were sold to the museum by families who needed money to send their children to school.From Bontoc I caught another jeep to Banaue. As we drove we could see where there had been landslides, hastily cleared away. The views were stunning - when I could see out the windows between shifting bodies. Turbulent streams cut at the bases of the valleys. The lower parts of the hills are coated with ancient rice terraces, still under cultivation. The tops of the higher hills remain jungle. They are reputed to be some of the most species rich jungles on the planet.On my first full day in Banaue, I wanted to get a sense of how big the place is. I walked three and a half kilometers from town to "the Viewpoint." It's all uphill, along the road in from Bontoc, and can't be walked too quickly because of the relatively thin mountain air. At the viewpoint are a bunch of shops for tourists, a traditional Ifugao house, and a number of Ifugao elders, sitting around in their traditional costumes. They are in their seventies, but look like they are in their hundred and seventies. Years and years of working in rice fields has permanently hunched them over. A French researcher who interviewed them told me how their lives have been changed by tourism. They sit there because at their age, there is not much else to do. They wear their local costumes because that's what they've always worn. They play the nose flute because they're bored. They don't ask for money to have their photos taken. But it just comes to them. One old Ifuago woman said she sometimes goes to sit around there to get money to buy betel nut (it's chewed for a 'dizzy' spell). True to the researcher's story, while I was there, two US tourists took their photos after getting nods for permission, and put 100 peso bills in the hands of these older folks, who didn't ask for a centavo.In Banaue, it is sunny in the morning, but it routinely rains in the afternoons. I was caught in a bit of a sprinkle and noticed that a little shelter up the hill from the road I was following. I went to sit there to enjoy the view, and avoid the rain. After twenty minutes of serenity, three local kids found me. One shouted out an announcement that a foreigner was around and people could come and see his beard. In fact I'm not sure if that's what he said, but I did hear the word 'announcement' and shortly four more young people showed up. The three boys who found me first were playing with something on a string, which they would wind up and then spin on a string between their hands. They stopped for a second, and showed me that they were spinning beetles which they had tied up by their hind legs. When spun quickly, the beetles open their wings and buzz. I told a fellow traveller who thought that this was cruel. I am undecided. The beetles were undoubtedly more interesting than a worn out tyre one boy was also rolling around. Poor kids get bored too. Anyone remember what Gordie Howe said about being young and poor? Yet another traveller said that at least this is better than playing with the bones of ones' dead ancestors. But that story is for another person and another blog.I gave up walking uphill at the third "view point" I came to. At every bunch of souvenir shops, someone has put a sign that says "Viewpoint." I had been thinking of walking on to a village opposite the valley from Banaue. I thought this had to finally be the cross over point that someone had told me about. I walked down on the fringes of rice terraces and came across an older woman weeding a rice paddy in preparation for planting it. She had a wool hat that she had stuffed with fern leaves on her head. She said it kept her cool. I asked her which way it was to the river. In flawless English, she told me how to get down to the river. When I told her my plan to get to the other village, she said that it wasn't possible because of a waterfall around the corner that I couldn't see. My mistake was not going past the waterfall before trying to walk across the rice paddies to the village. In fact, there was a 4th "viewpoint" that I didn't reach. The older lady suggested I follow the irrigation canal back to the road I came from. It is a thin concrete wall that keeps water flowing around the valley whenever landslides haven't ruined it. But there are lots of landslides so I don't know if it ever really does its job. At places it is only 2" wide, but I think it averaged 5" and wasn't so difficult to walk along for 20 minutes. As the road snaked downhill, I eventually came to the end of the canal. Another farmer working in the field gestured that I follow a bamboo water pipe up a hill to the road. I didn't get the walk I wanted, but it was probably for the best. Three minutes after I got back into town, the daily afternoon downpour began. It knocked out the power and the rain didn't come to an end until well past dark. But I had good company, cold beer, and a kerosene-lit covered terrace. What else can one ask for?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211241600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211241600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211241600/tpod.html Thu, 22 May 2008 04:34:39 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Sagada, Philippines

For once I was not the only traveller in the restaurant last night. I met a number of people who hadalso just arrived in Sagada. We discussed meeting to go caving. That's one of the few things to do around here. Drinks and stories were shared and the night seemed long, until someone sagely reminded us that most hotels lock up early. Sagada shuts down shortly after sunset. An Australian and his girlfriend were locked out of their hotel, but with a bit of banging a fellow guest woke up and let them in. I was luckier; my hotel closed only five minutes before I got back, so someone was still there to let me in. These mountain towns have nothing going on at night, particularly because Videoke, the noisly every loved Philippine pasttime is banned. Townfolk live with the hours of sunlight. One traveller I met managed to occupy himself for almost two weeks in Sagada. Superficially I wonder how anyone wouldn't become terribly bored spending so long here; but after a few minutes of pensive, lethargic, delayed conversation with him, I realised that substances can play a role in keeping Sagada interesting. There is a rumor here about an expat who supplies the town with certain baked goods... perhaps that is why the people are so pleasant to get along with, but laid back to the point that in restaurants one must go to the counter to get service. We met at the Masferré restaurant the next day at 10, as agreed. It's the other good restaurant in town. It was raining extremely hard and the Australian was the last to arrive. With every roof in town being made of metal, the rain brought something of an omnipresent roar. He said "So you don't want to go caving today, then?" and was pretty shocked when we all said that we still wanted to. In fact the rains were being caused by the tropical storm Halong which was wreaking havoc on the coast. But at 2000 meters, all we were experiencing was dumbfounding rain. It is pretty easy to get cave guides. One cannot go caving without them. We went to the town hall-police station-tourist office and asked for guides. We were told that because of the rain, we may not be able to see the whole of the caves. But it cost 800 pesos ($20) for up to nine people, and we were seven, so for $3 each and not much else to do we decided to go anyway. After forty five minutes walk, we reached the biggest cave. Under its shelter our guides lit kerosene lamps. Both of them were fairly young men; Mikoy is 19 and a student of tourism in Bagio. He studies between seven am and six pm. Between seven and ten pm, he works in a bar for 25 pesos an hour, and that is not considered a bad wage. This weekend he has vacation, so he is leading us on the visit. The rule is that the slowest in the group goes first. Slowly we descended, under the bright light of kerosene lamps. Soon, there were no traces of daylight. I had taken off my rain gear because it was dry, but before I knew it we were beneath a flock of bats, whose guano fell intermitently. I didn't want to dirty my raingear on both sides, so I left it off. Soon, we came to an underground stream. We took off our sandals, to get a better grip with our bare feet on the sedmentary rock. The water was not too cold. Little by little we descended with ropes, one by one through the difficult spots. One of the guides dropped his lamp into the water and it went out. With only one lamp, we stayed put where the water was only ankle deep, to wait for him to make the ascent with an LED light to get a new cotton bulb, so it could be re-lit. With two lights going again, as bright as they were, the cave was so big that they barely cast shadows on its walls. Everyone stayed fairly close to the guides, and when I strayed a bit, the scene reminded me something of Rembrandt's paintings, with one bright light source and elsewhere darkness. Sometimes the light shone on water that dripped like a shower from places in the cave's ceilings, which soaked everyone. At the stream, the water was running at a level much higher than usual. But with the water came a haunting, spectral beauty; white water flowed from everywhere. We kept going until we reached a rope which was used to climb down a fall of three meters. At the bottom, there was only one rock to wait on, which was full with four people on it. The route continued under a small waterfall whose volume was perhaps three litres of water per second. At that certain point my group decided to throw in the towel, and reascend to the surface. On top, we continued to be soaked by the incessant rain. But it had been a lot of fun.Later, we learned from a waitress at the log cabin restaurant, that four years ago, at the precise spot where we stopped, three people drowned. The water level had been high, and they decided to go anyway. One woman fell backwards off the rope and hit her head. Her friend, and then the guide went after her. The three of them were swept away and drowned. The fourth person in their party spent the night in the cave and only the next morning went to get help. The bodies of three victims were found two days later, much further down the cave. By the time we heard this, we were all well out of danger. I had a hot shower (my first since my arrival in the country), a glass of wine, and was sitting around a fire with the rest of my companions in the log cabin, plotting activities for the following day if the roads remained closed because of the day's landslides and internet remained down. Never yet had I been stranded in a remote town, because of the forces of nature.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211205000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211205000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fatduck/travels_-06/1211205000/tpod.html Wed, 21 May 2008 01:33:09 -0400 Putzed my way from Istanbul towards Cairo. Wandered through the Balkans with my Bro. Vietnam, Laos, China in 2007. My never ending travels continue with my arrival in the Philippines in May 2008.

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Sagada, Luzon, Philippines

Two days in transit. That's what it took to get from Vigan to Sagada. If one had good roads and any sort of vehicle, perhaps even a golf cart, the drive would take two hours. If it were the German autobahn, it could be done in 45 minutes. An earthquake in 2005 ruined the bridge on the most direct road between them, and it has not been rebuilt. No one in Vigan could tell me how to get to the ruined bridge anyway.On needlessly long drives, I frequently dream of being a civil engineer with a budget to make the roads more efficient. Efficiency is the opposite of hassle. Hassle is inefficiency. It is ridiculous to expect efficiency, but I had six hours to daydream from Vigan to Bagio, and the following day eight hours to daydream to Sagada, all the while squished in an over packed bus with at least 80 other people, sitting on an achingly hard and narrow seat. A woman I met in Sagada remembered me from the bus, and thought it was funny that I was so bent over the whole time. This was a certain slapstick irony which I also could appreciate. Of course it is always worth it, particularly when it only costs $12. But I'll skip anything more than this cramped narration of those days.Because of the level of technology in transportation in Philippine cities, smog is the norm. The motorbikes and jeeps all run on 1944 era engine design, which is not 2008 air-friendly. Yet there is not much traffic in Sagada, so the air is fresh. Naturally Irony wouldn't permit me to realise this right away. The entire bus ride I detected a faint odor of fish, and as fate would have it, I was sitting above three gigantic buckets of sea creatures which were being transported to the mountain town. The bus drop-off point also seems to be a dumping point for slew water, so at first whiff Sagada isn't so friendly. But luckily, it was raining and I didn't want to get soaked while getting my bags organized, so I ran off to the first hotel I saw. Fresh air welcomed me.Although I heard that the bus to Sagada is usually packed, many people were coming for a wedding. In a small town like Sagada, where everyone has lived there since pre-history, the groom was everyone's relative. I was reading in a cafe, drinking arabica coffee and reading a book on Philippine history, when I began to hear a noise that sounded a lot like banging pots and pans. It went on and on, for more than an hour. Eventually I had enough of the cafe and went outside, to see two hundred people watching a dozen older folks hunched over, beating on what looked like bronze frying pans. Later I learned that these date to pre-Spanish trade with the Chinese, who traded these sorts of gongs to proto-Filipinos in the days of the Ming Dynasty. This was part of the celebration. The woman who thought it was so funny I was crunched up on the bus told me that the whole town was celebrating her nephew's wedding. I met her and four of her friends in "Echo Valley," an exceptionally serene place when no one is testing the echo. It is surrounded by pine trees and features limestone cliffs below the narrow foot paths. At the best view point, a person could slip and hurt themselves badly: a plaque in memory of Italian faces some ancient hanging coffins on the opposite cliff. A google search of his name and Sagada confirms the danger. In fact the approach to Echo Valley is through a cemetery. It climbs a hill and isn't actually very notable. As I entered it some workers were struggling with the vehicle gate, and one couldn't help but greet me with the frequent "hello Joe" that so many Filipinos say to westerners. Nik, a writer, told me what this means - it's a reference to US GIs who used to be all over Luzon - and that non US citizens can say "Hindi Joe" (I'm not Joe) and then "Akoy ay [name]" (I'm [so and so]). I said this to this man (named Ryan) who, with his pals, laughed heartily. It may be that I am the only fellow in the entire Philippines with a beard, but Ryan remembered me well enough to shout my name two days later when we passed on the street. I pass this on as a reference of how pleasant Sagadans are. The real highlight of my first day in Sagada was the Saturday night buffet at the Log Cabin. With reservations, guests are treated to a feast of feasts - fresh local and Asian dishes with a European twist, as prepared by a French chef. My favourites were dishes of mince pork and mango, a mango chutney with hot chillis, a garden salad with mountain strawberries and flowers, Indian fried bread, pork curry, and a rich dessert cake with enough cups of arabica coffee to keep me from getting a good night's sleep. It was marvellous; the best I've eaten in who knows how long. The company was great: I describe them in the next entry.
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