The Beginning

On August 4th, I left the United States of America for a 5 month adventure that will take me to 10 countries across Asia and the Middle East.  As much for myself as for friends and family, I am going to try to write a brief account of each day accompanied by a photo or two.  Someday far in the future when I have things like children and mortgages to prevent me from just peacing out for 5 months on a mostly unplanned adventure, I am sure I will be glad I took the time.  As I am currently in the midst of this adventure and frequently without reliable internet, these updates will be brief and probably only posted every couple of weeks (okay, it's not like I was posting updates more frequently when I had regular internet access, but never mind).  I'm going to do my best to compile an email list of people who might be interested (or bored enough at work... I'm looking at you JETs), and I will email you whenever I post a new update to save you all from the (inevitable) disappointment of checking my blog to find nothing new.  Thanks for reading, and please feel free to share suggestions, comments, or your own stories in the comments or in an email.

With that said, let me begin at the beginning.

Day 1 - Friday, August 5th

Arrive in Manila at 9:55 pm.  Pay too much for a taxi ride to sketch.  But taxi driver is nice.  He has a friend in Minnesota.  Maybe you know him.  Kevin Garnett?  :-D  Sketch hostel happens to be next door to what may be the only Starbucks in Manila (across from the US Embassy, go figure).  Karma definitely loves me.  Shower and wait for Katy who is arriving at 1:00 am.  Fall asleep watching Philippino HBO.  Katy arrives.

Day 2 - Saturday, August 6th

Wake up at some ungodly hour to Beyonce's "Halo" blaring from an unidentifiable location.  Maybe it's just in my head?  Mmmm, definitely not.  Attempt to sleep.  Woken up not long at by the sounds of what is most definitely a marching band.  Wonder briefly if I am in the Twilight Zone.  It is 6:00 am.  Eventually get up, get breakfast at Starbucks, stop at internet cafe/money changer, look up location of bus terminal.  Set off to book tickets to Banaue for the next night.  Wander Manila in several wrong directions before finding the bus terminal.  No buses to Banaue with this company, but check with Florida over that way.  Okay.  Check direction with flower lady working us hard to buy some roses.  Tell her the flowers are beautiful.  As beautiful as me?  Of course!  I think I like the Philippines.  More wandering, find Florida, ask about tickets to Banaue.  For tonight?  ....we pause.  Just a minute.  We discuss.  Decide we can totally get out of our second night's booking at Sketch Hostel in Manila.  Yes, two tickets for tonight, please.  Meander back to hostel stopping at somewhat disappointing market.  Would NOT recommend the indoor bit.  Bad smells.  Lots of stares.  Not worth it.  Back to hostel, get stuff.  Walk down very smelly Manila Bay boardwalk in search of "romantic" bit of Ermita district.  Don't really find it.  Do find Cafe Adriatico and a pitcher of sangria.  Score.  Briefly consider buying ukelele from passing vendor.  Taxi to bus terminal.  Board Coldest Bus In History Of Universe.  Seriously.  We proceed to slowly freeze as every Rambo movie ever made (how many were there?  17?  it felt like 17.) is shown and played over the speakers.  I sleep.  3:30 am.  "She's Like the Wind" (you know the one, from Dirty Dancing) BLASTS over the speakers.  Though the volume decreases, the strangeness of the song selection does not.

jeepney in front of oldest church in Manila, child on garbage pile in Manila Bay with US Embassy in the background, the pitcher of sangria

Day 3 - Sunday, August 7th

Get off the bus on a hillside somewhere in the northern Philippines.  Climb into a jeepney with our bus friends, Mel and Claire.  Mel is a Peace Corps volunteer on an island somewhere, and Claire is her sister who came for a visit.  Mel explains "top-riding" a jeepney, but then mentions that her friend nearly fell off the jeepney and mountain on this very road.  We decide that "inside-riding" is a better idea.  Judging by some of the edges we drove past... it as an excellent choice.  Breakfast in Banaue, then rent a jeepney to The Junction with Mel, Claire, and an Israeli guy whose name means "cedar" though I can't remember what it was.  We arrive at The Junction and begin the hike into Batad village.  It takes us 2.5 sweaty hours including to stops to duct tape Claire's sandals back together and many more to admire the views.  We arrive at the top of Batad and catch our collective breath at the view spread out below us before going to Rita's Guesthouse and gulping down the most picturesque Gatorades ever gulped.  We get lunch on the patio over-looking the village and terraces and then fall soundly sleep.  Wake up a few hours later.  Katy and I wander about halfway down to the rest of the village before realizing... it's FAR.  So we haul ourselves back up to Rita's, meet up with Mel and Claire, and walk over and down to Simon's for dinner.  There is a group of Korean teenagers there who disappear soon after.  We have dinner and then investigate the party sounds coming from the terrace below.  We find the Koreans, village elementary schoolers in traditional clothes, and local adults hacking the recently living pig we saw being carted from The Junction into pieces with a VERY large knife.  The Koreans do a very impressively coordinated dances to k-pop playing on someone's cell phone.  The village kids do their thing.  We watch all of this through smoke-filled air with the smell of blood in our noses.  It is by far one of the weirdest cultural combinations I have ever witnessed.  The pig bits go to their respective places, the simmering cauldron, the grill, and the burlap sack for later.  We go to bed.

our jeepney, "safety first", Katy and I on the way to Batad, the rice terraces of Batad, dancers, pieces of pig

Day 4 - Monday, August 8th

Mel and Claire reinforce Claire's sandals with more duct tape and set off for the waterfall around the next mountain in the morning.  Katy and I linger at breakfast.  I wish I could have every breakfast overlooking those rice terraces.  A local guy named Hubert tells us about possible hikes in the area, including the snakes through the mountains, passing two more villages and will eventually deposit us back in Banaue for tomorrow's night bus back to Manila.  We deliberate and decide to go for it.  I imagine we will be going along rice terraces in a reasonably level path around the mountains.  ...  After barely making it down, up, down, up, and dowwwwn to the waterfall, I begin to have visions of lying in a rice paddy begging Katy and Hubert to leave me, just leave me to die here.  We make it back out of the waterfall canyon.  I apologize to Hubert, but I just don't think I can make it to the villages.  I am going back to Rita's.  He tries hard to talk me out of it but eventually acquiesces, and we head back.  Back at Rita's, we shower and get invites to the dinner for Rita's rice harvesters.  It is ginger chicken stew and a heaping plate of rice.  Delicious.  After reading by solar powered light due to a brown-out, we head to bed early.  Some hours later Katy wakes me up and illuminates with her head lamp a rat-sized cockroach twitching finger-length feelers on the light fixture directly above our faces.  Katy is quite understandably concerned about the cockroach's ability to stick to the ceiling and what might happen should it suddenly lose it's ceiling-sticking powers.  Though the thought of sharing a bed with a bug the size of a rodent was of some concern to me, I had been soundly asleep.  I think I mumbled something that I can only hope was appropriately sympathetic before falling back to sleep.

breakfast, sweaty and ready for a swim, jungle waterfall, on the way back to Rita's before the storm rolled in and I was REALLY glad I wasn't stuck up a mountain crying in a rice paddy

  

Day 5 - Tuesday, August 9th

We wake up early and set off back to The Junction, and possibly back to Banaue as jeepneys are crazy expensive if you are not sharing one, and it's only an extra 10 kilometers along a quite reasonable road.  We arrive back at The Junction after much marveling over the views.  We get swindled by a tiny basket-making grandmother named Soledad who sells me a small basket and good luck charm necklace for 500 pesos.  After walking back the 10 kilometers to Banaue we notice similar baskets and necklaces in a gift shop for 200 pesos and 50 pesos respectively.  But she was cute, and our baskets are most certainly of better quality.  We get lunch and a room with a hot shower, though it is more like a trickle.  We wash off layers of dust, sweat, and sunscreen, repack, eat dinner, and get back on a bus to Manila.  This one has neither the Arctic air conditioning nor the movies nor the music.  I kind of miss the movies and music as sleeping is not made any easier by the added lurching of going down a mountain.

last view of Rita's lovely guesthouse, the road to Banaue, us and Soledad, the views on the walk back... much better than from the inside of a jeepney

 

That's all for now.  I'd add more, but it's past midnight, and I have a 5:55 am train to the Cambodian border.