northern philippines

from manila we took a night bus to the town of banaue...the bus ride wasn't much fun at all...too air conditioned, everyone was covered up in blankets, wearing long sleeves, etc...except me, because i forgot to take my malong out of my pack...i was miserable most of the night, and wasn't able to sleep...and because i wasn't able to sleep, i was aware of all the weaving back and forth the bus was doing...i was soooo car sick...i went up front just in case i needed to ask the bus driver to pull over, and ended up sitting up there for quite a while...i ended up feeling better and got to watch a beautiful sunrise...while i was sitting up there i looked over at the driver a few times, i couldn't tell how awake he was...and i also realized that the bus didn't have a working speedometer!! sometimes it felt like we were going pretty fast, but who knows...
banaue is known for the rice terraces surrounding the town...they're beautiful...filipinos call them the eighth wonder of the world, and they are pretty impressive...i think layna and i would have appreciated them even more if we hadn't trekked through (and up and down) farming terraces in nepal...the rice terraces in the philippines were built 2000 years ago, (by hand obviously) and produce once a year...rice is a really labour intensive crop, if i haven't mentioned that already...we walked along the road leading out of town, there is a series of viewpoints along the way...at one of the viewpoints we played with some local kids for a while...we even had a handstand contest with them...i lost, miserably...they were super cute, entertaining us by showing us how they could do cartwheels and handsprings over each other...banaue reminded us a lot of several of the villages in which we stayed while trekking in nepal...it's a cute little town...lots of great hiking in the area as well...
from banaue we went to sagada, another mountain town...to get from one to the other, we rode two jeepneys...the first was a 3 hour ride, the second only one hour...normally i wouldn't mention this, but it was great because we got to ride on top of both jeepneys!! a lot of fun, AND great views the whole time...the roads weren't always great though, and several times we were tilted at an angle that could've sent us straight down the mountains...every year the philippines has problems with landslides, (particularly during rainy season) and we saw evidence of several recent slides...the slides sometimes wipe out entire villages...even with the constant fear of a landslide, riding on top of the jeepneys was amazing...being able to look out over the mountain range was amazing...absolutely beautiful...it's a good thing i was sitting on my pack the whole time, as the ride was pretty bumpy!!
there are rice terraces around sagada as well, though that's not the primary reason to visit sagada...the main reason to visit sagada is for the coffins...first, there's a burial cave on the way out of town...the first time i tried to find it, i missed the turnoff, and ended up walking way too far...which was okay, because the view of the valley was gorgeous...when i did get down to the cave, i got to see over 100 coffins stacked up in the entrance...some are said to be over 500 years old...the other coffins to see are the so called "hanging coffins" of echo valley...they're not really hanging, i don't know where that name came from...i couldn't tell for sure, but it looked as though there were steel rods hammered into the cliffs, and the coffins were perched on those...howeva they are up there, they've been up there for a while...the original colour has gone away from most of the coffins...most of them are that grayish, non colour...the coffins in the cave were that way as well...next to two of the hanging coffins i saw chairs tied up...just in case, i guess...another coffin had fallen at an angle, and the lid come off...underneath the coffin was the pile of bones that had originally been in the coffin...kinda creepy!! i read that some elders are still put in coffins for the cave or cliffs, but apparently this is rather expensive...it requires the sacrifice of quite a few animals, to appease the gods...sagada is on the top of one side of echo valley, it's a really small town...there is a lot of hiking around the area, people don't stay in town because of the town itself...the weather was absolutely fabulous while we were there, and i took one afternoon to just walk to the next town down the road...it was only 7km each way, not very long...along the way (which was really really quiet,) i saw several more panoramic valley views...AWESOME!!!
from sagada we went to baguio...baguio is home to camp john hay, which used to be an R&R camp for US military personnel...now it's a park, golf course, hotel, etc...baguio was the total opposite of sagada...it's busy and crowded and a whole lot bigger...that being said, it was still fun to walk around...there were lots of people selling stuff on the street...i can't get enough of the battered and fried hard boiled eggs!! one of the few specific things we saw in town was the cathedral...our lady of atonement cathedral? something like that...anywho, it wasn't the cathedral itself that impressed me so much as its schedule of masses...there are multiple masses, every day of the week...sunday and wednesday there are at least 8 services!!! after baguio we knew we were going south, so we checked the ferry schedule from manila, and figured out that we had an extra day to kill...since baguio was cheaper, we decided to stay there an extra night...i took the opportunity to eat more eggs...hee hee...