Hanging in the Bontoc Museum, a map of the Ifugao and Mountain provinces of northern Luzon, Philippines

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Eight

It’s safe to say that the-cave-and-coffins mountain town of Sagada (“sah-gah-dah”) wasn’t my favorite part of this epic sojourn, but the drive from Banaue to Sagada was pretty darn fascinating.

Along the way, I learned very little about what I saw (and am in fact still researching now) but as a person practiced in the art of observation, I can attest to the fact that the mountainous regions of northern Luzon can be a drop-dead gorgeous trip through time.

The only drawback? The sorry shape of the one major road to, in and around these parts, and the fact that it probably won’t be finished before 2018.

Banuae Public Market, the heart of town

The market in Banaue (“bah-now-way”) is the heart of the action, where entertainment includes a brand new gym, drinking sugar-fermented liquors and chewing betel nut. The latter, the fibrous nut of a skinny, palm-like betel nut tree, is dried, wrapped in betel leaves and chewed like tobacco by (seemingly) just about everyone in Banaue; called momo, this drug of choice provides a near-hallucinogenic boost of arecoline, stains lips red and slowly rots the teeth of the citizenry, young and old. It’s cheap lipstick for the ladies, an energy boost for rice farmers, and a horribly insightful glimpse into the early roots of dentistry.

Banaue Public Market is where you come to gaze upon produce porn (this soil isn’t just ideal for rice), book a tricycle ride, change dollars to pesos, and purchase charity-donated clothing that’s being re-sold. It’s got a couple of scruffy Wi-Fi cafes; a few electronic shops that don’t look at all like they’re selling stuff that fell off a truck; a handful of random dry goods shops selling penny candy, cigarette lighters and Pringles; and a few bakeries selling birthday cakes with technicolor icing.

It’s also home to the comforting Sanafe Lodge & Restaurant, which feels like a friendly person’s house which just happens to offer great views and a delicate chicken curry. One of Noni the Van Driver’s favorite spots, this is where we sat out on the back deck — overlooking rice terraces, a high school and a rope bridge — and had one of our tastiest lunches of the week. If you’re headed up Banaue way (even despite my tales), this clean, calm, rustic spot might just be your best bet for local lodgings. 

Banuae’s Rice Terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site featured on the Philippines’ 1000-peso bill

The nearby Banaue Rice Terraces are the grandaddy of Cordillera Mountains attractions, spiked with a freeway’s worth of faded UNESCO signs. No one I’ve asked — not even the Philippine Department of Tourism — has much information to offer on them, but I didn’t exactly get a chance to speak at length to a rice farmer or visit an agriculture school. Collective opinion (online, anyway) suggests that these 2,000-year-old stair-steps were painstakingly hand-dug out of sheer necessity in steep terrain where flat land runs scarce. 

Then why, you may ask, would one choose to farm here? Well, it’s hard to get to (obviously, she drawls, her voice fairly oozing with sarcasm), making it hard for your enemies to find and kill you, and the soil here is iron-rich and loamy, perfect for growing just about anything. All you have to do is stop into the public market to look at the sexy vegetables tended ’round here, and you’ll get the idea in a heartbeat.

(The enemy thing may require a more dramatic presentation.)

The two-fold irony of this elaborately terraced landscape? Rice isn’t exactly super-nutritious — it’s just a starchy, sticky belly-filler throughout the scattered landmasses of Asia. Since new-fangled harvesting machines have yet to be created, rice still has to be farmed by hand, all while stooping shin-deep in muddy water. Some elderly women up here are literally bent in half from decades of terrace toil, shuffling their feet and presumably asking younger folks to get stuff for them off high shelves. 

And when Ifugao tribesfolk can no longer tend rice but still need to make a living, choices are few. This is why you’ll see a lot of elderly people clustered by rice-terrace viewpoints, clad in traditional tribal garb; you can take their photos, with or without you in them, for a barter price. The 82 year-old Ifugao gentleman pictured above smiled with few teeth and milky eyes beneath a fancy feather headdress, suggesting that he pose in front of the rice terraces where’s he’s lived his entire life. I’d never paid someone to take their photo before, and was a bit uncomfortable — until he shared that he met General Douglas MacArthur in Banaue during the Second World War, and beamed with the glow of a young man’s memory.

Life on the Chico River, up in the Mountain Province, where rice is grown in flat beds

Winding ever upwards on a still-unfinished, sometimes-scrabbly road where few people travel, the Ifugao Province gives way to the Mountain Province. Rice terraces become increasingly gentle, undulating at lesser angles until they lie entirely flat, hemmed in by stones and farmed with the help of water buffalo.

Where the brown Chico River meets the blue-green Siffu River, the blend is stark and quick. The Chico River irrigates the western half of the Mountain Province, and is criss-crossed in places by elaborate bridges or wide stepping stones. 

The best thing about having someone else drive while you’re gaping at this waterway: you won’t careen off the barrier-free roadway when you hit potholes, rubble or fallen boulders. 

Near Bontoc, capital of the Mountain Province, some things are still done the old-fashioned way

The fairytale quiet of the past bumps right up against the construction-site melee and close quarters of Bontoc, the capital of the Mountain Province. An oasis in reverse, it’s a riot of sound, color and machinery, a sprawl of rubbly modern life on either side of the mud-brown Chico. Water buffalo graze next to building cranes and scaffolding covers semi-high-rises, while overstuffed storefronts crowd each other where the road snakes and narrows.

Wedged at the back of a parking lot beside a vividly-painted community center, the Bontoc Museum was created by Belgian nuns who saw as far back as the late 1970s that local tribal life could be trampled by the march of progress.On display are photos, artifacts, costumes and miniature model houses of the area’s major tribes — Bontoc, Ifugao, Benguet, Kalinga and Apayo — as well as the life-size re-creation of an entire Bontoc village. The stories told here are compelling and foreign and violent and even sometimes worth a chuckle.

However, the museum ultimately amounts to a slightly dusty preservation of cultures by outside oppressors, a time-capsule created by missionaries who came here seeking to upend these tribal lives. 

Flat rice beds outside Bontoc, Mountain Province

 _________________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Ten

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

Coffins stacked at the mouth of Lumiang Cave in Sagada, Philippines

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Seven

The journey to Sagada (“sah-gah-dah”), a lushly green, diesel-choked and crowded Mountain Province village about 90 minutes north of Banaue is stunning, winding and pretty much paved, save for that last gutted bit up the hill to town.

It’s famed for its large network of caves, as well as area residents’ unusual practice of hanging their dead relatives’ coffins from the faces of cliffs.

Sadly for me, though, neither was as exciting as it may sound. 

But dog packs barking into an echoing valley, paired with chickens squawking, couples fighting and drunken soccer match-watching did make for a heady brew of a sleepless night. 

Though you may not have heard of it before, trust me: Sagada has been discovered. Hordes of tourists from the Philippines, China and Europe have long since descended upon this formerly sleepy mountain hamlet, and it’s working sort of hard to keep up with demand. 

Undeniably lovely scenes from non-cave, non-coffin-related Sagada

Toward the top end of the town’s main street, there’s a tourist office where you have to register your presence, and freelance tour guides linger here looking for work. Hard to say how you tell a good guide from a bad one, but as with much of the rest of the Cordilleras, learning your way around requires a measure of trust mixed with a willingness to be annoyed, confused and/or uncomfortable.

JD and I were introduced to our briefly-bestowed tour guide when we picked him up by the roadside at the northern edge of town. Israel, a 33 year-old local who’s been a Sagada tour guide since he was 14, couldn’t have been less enthusiastic about his job, but I did learn one fascinating detail from him: while treating me to my first glimpse of the town’s famous hanging coffins, he shared that area farmers, who spend their lives focused on the Earth, see this form of burial as a way to finally dwell closer to heaven.

Just a few of the hanging coffins of Sagada, shoe-horned into limestone cliffs

More coffins, these made of stone rather than wood, are stacked up at the mossy, jagged limestone mouth of Lumiang Cave (see the first photo in this post, above). Displayed without any boundaries or protection, these coffins bear a sign asking visitors not to open them or “get anything inside.” 

Lumiang Cave, where Germans read coffin-side, and Filipinos wear helmets to walk downhill

Though Sagada is built atop a network of almost 60 caves, Lumiang is one of only two caves that are popular with tourists. Along the woodland path to Lumiang, JD informed me that Noni had mentioned to him just that morning, in passing, what to expect at Sumaguing, the larger of the two caves.

Sumaguing apparently takes about three hours to explore, requires your own headlamp or lantern (unless your tour guide provides these, which ours did not), is extremely slippery, and at one point, is filled with four feet of freezing cold water. None of these details were written on our travel agency itinerary, which mentioned only that we’d have a chance to see the local coffins “as well as explore some of the nearby caves.”

So, having slept only barely the night before at the Banaue Hotel & Youth Hostel (and not doing well with slippery conditions even when I have my $#@% together), I gathered my rule-breaking gumption and opted out of the excursion. While the more-awake JD strapped on his headlamp and went spelunking, Noni took me back to our lodgings for a catch-up nap.

I’ve been to many a cave in my time, and certainly wouldn’t discourage you from this experience if it’s your thing; however, when I later learned from JD that guides are allowed to stand around and smoke inside the cave while tourists go a-wandering, I felt especially pleased with my choice.

Sumaguing Cave – photo by JD Andrews of earthxplorer

Reconvening a few hours later (now sans-Israel), Noni led JD and I to the cliff overlooking the most famous of the hanging coffins. Just past the late-1800s Church of St. Mary the Virgin and through its adjacent cemetery, it began to rain softly and we found ourselves impatiently stuck behind an achingly slow march of Chinese and Filipino tourists, tip-toeing along a mildly hilly, hard-packed woodland path criss-crossed by pine roots. 

The cemetery beside the Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Managing to dodge the herd and pull ahead, we soon achieved our goal of a view from way across a gorge of a few rope-hung wooden coffins dangling from a sheer rock face. What Noni failed to mention at the time was that a nearby path leads down into the gorge and right up to these coffins. Therefore, our photos — and the whole experience — was a far cry less than spectacular.

Telephoto close-up of the Hanging Coffins of Sagada

For our one night in Sagada, home was the Masferré Country Inn & Restaurant, which is steeped in log-cabin, lace-curtain mountain kitsch. The dining room is generally full of tourists, the menu is seemingly extensive, Wi-Fi stretches all the way to the guest rooms, the beds are spare yet soft, and the lack of air conditioning is offset by a little balcony.

The food is okay (gristly chicken in the adobo, tasty organic eggs, sweet mango, and spicy bread rolls called floss, which are topped with fish flakes), but service takes forever — until you stand up to leave — and every other thing listed on the menu isn’t actually available. Furnishings throughout the inn looked like they were scavenged from garage sales in the 1970s, and in my room, both the one clip-on reading lamp and the shower head were broken. 

The upstairs hallway and my guest room at the Masferre Country Inn

But the real Catch-22 of the night was that balcony, which looked out at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, a jumble of houses and an ash-pool where the inn burns its trash. With about 300 feet between the balcony and these adjacent homes, my only choice between nighttime air flow and none was an almost constant soundtrack of country music; a soccer game blaring on a TV, accompanied by the drunken cheers of devoted fans; and just past midnight, an arguing couple screeching at each other in angry Tagalog.

It was pin-drop quiet ’round 1am, but by 2am a pack of dogs thought it great fun to stand on the cliff just beyond the church and bark into the echoing valley, over and over and over. At 4am, local roosters began to crow, at 5am a baby awoke inconsolably crying, and that was then I decided to think of sleeping as something people did elsewhere.

The view from my room at the Masferre Country Inn

Fortunately, Masferré isn’t the only place to stay in Sagada. There are a few concrete-block, multi-story hotels on the other side of the street and a handful of guest houses. There are also (at this writing, in May 2013) a lovely pair of mountain lodges being built way back on the road just as you enter town; to date, though, no one I’ve asked seemed to know what these are named or when they might be finished and open for business.

It’s also not the only place to eat. About a 5-minute stroll down the main street, the Yoghurt House restaurant is popular with backpackers and prices are very reasonable. Waitresses, who have to cover two floors on foot, are rushed off their feet, so don’t expect dinner to be a quick affair; also, in the kitchen’s frantic haste to feed you, some listed ingredients — like curry and shrimp in curry-shrimp noodles — may be missing.

But the homemade yogurt with fruit and jam is reportedly lovely, the cheese twists are very welcome after a day of schlepping, and they have a delicate way with pasta. Be sure to pick up a pack of homemade cookies for 1000 PHP, as they make a good snack for the ride back to Banaue. 

A dinner of Singapore curry noodles, fried cheese sticks and calamansi Juice at Yoghurt House

If you’re into coffee, know that coffee-growing and roasting is big in this mountainous area. A popular place to try is Bana’s Cafe & Resto, just a minute’s walk from Yoghurt House. Coffee from here or one of the dry- goods shops in town makes an ideal souvenir from the Philippines, coupled with the colorful purses, scarves, backpacks, shoes and wallets from nearby Sagada Weaving.

Left, cats eating off a plate on the deck at Bana’s Cafe, and right, scarves at Sagada Weaving

The Masferré Country Inn is named for Eduardo Masferré, a Sagada local who between the late 1930s and mid-1950s photographed  the ancient customs, culture and people of the Mountain and Ifugao Provinces’ indigenous tribes. Eduardo died in 1995, but his photography graces the inn and his gallery/studio remains nearby. 

Noni and JD entering the small Ganduyan Museum

One of Eduardo’s granddaughters, Christina Aben, leads a rote, inflection-free and nonetheless absolutely fascinating tour of the small Ganduyan Museum in the heart of town. On its antique second floor, the Ganduyan Museum features a slew of artifacts from the local Igorot tribe (Ganduyan is the original Igorot name for Sagada), providing an intimate glimpse of the daily, status-driven lives of this tough and highly-skilled farming community.

Among many other things, I learned from the small, dried-apple Aben that Igorot tribesmen managed the arrogance of Spanish invaders by growing the Spaniards’ tobacco, keeping it for themselves, neglecting to pay taxes on their own land, and chopping off the heads of their oppressors.

Bumper sticker spotted in Sagada

Aben wouldn’t allow me to photograph her nor record her voice, but suffice it to say that when she shared this centuries-old information with all of us, it was clear she was deeply proud.

And I couldn’t help agreeing with her.

__________________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Nine

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

I started the year with only one firm travel goal: 

Visiting South America for the first time.

Tomorrow, I’m off to meet that goal in the long, skinny country of Chile!

On this week-long trip, I’ll be visiting the Atacama Desert, the coastal city of Valparaíso, and the wine valleys of Casablanca and San Antonio. 

I’ll be the guest of LAN Airways, a tour company called Santiago Adventures, and a couple of unique hotels.

And for anyone who’s chuckling/leery/terrified at the thought of me going on another press trip so soon after the Philippines: so far, planning and communication surrounding this trip has been seamlessly organized.  And bonus, the entire time I’ll be in Chile with my esteemed travel colleague, Blane Bachelor (with whom I journeyed around the Samaná Peninsula of the Dominican Republic in 2010), an actual travel PR rep will be along for the ride, making sure the trip goes as smoothly as possible. 

Chile’s Atacama Desert

In the Atacama Desert, we’ll be staying at Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa. We’ll explore the Tatio Geysers and the Salar de Tara’s moon-like landscape, do a little stargazing, and learn about ALMA, the world’s largest astronomical observatory, which will open to the public in 2014. While in this High Andean area, I also hope to see vicuñas and discover yet another scientifically-undisputed 6-inch alien.

We’ll spend a half-day in each of two wine valleys, both near the capital city of Santiago: the well-established Casablanca and the emerging San Antonio. I’ve never had wines from either area, so I’m looking forward to some tastings. The cold-weather Casablanca is an ideal area for growing typically-Austrian white varietals, while the ocean-breezy San Antonio focuses on pinot noir, chardonnay, syrah and sauvignon blanc. 

We’ll also spend a couple of days in Valparaíso, staying at the art-filled Hotel Palacios Astoreca. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this colorful hillside city is undergoing an urban renaissance, with a new fine arts museum, new cultural center and a graffiti mural project. I’m looking forward to seeing the home of famed poet Pablo Neruda, and to eating a great deal of Latin American seafood. 

Map by worldatlas.com

____________________________________________________________________________

While I’m in Chile, I’ll be sharing photos of my adventures on Facebook and Twitter…

And when I return, I look forward to sharing tales of Chile here on Travels With Two!

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

Welcome to Batad, everyone

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Six

The Batad Rice Terraces are the big-ticket draw in the northern Philippines. A UNESCO World Heritage Site in a bowl-shaped valley, this emerald-green landscape is an astonishing feat of ancient engineering.

But while getting to the Cordillera Mountains of Luzon can be arduous (please see A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Parts One-Six), it’s the relatively brief journey from Banaue’s main road to the terraces themselves that’s actually more of a challenge.

The good news? If you manage to get here all in one piece, you’ll be rewarded with an experience so moving that it could possibly restore your faith in humanity.

Well…except for the country music. That part’s just bizarre.

The Batad Rice Terraces are popular with 20-something European backpacker couples. If you don’t believe me, climb into a sturdy vehicle, head up the Saddle – a long, steep, not-quite-paved excuse for a road to Batad’s trailhead – and see how many sweet, young, deodorant-free kids from France, Turkey, Belgium, Germany and/or England you come across in the first 10 minutes.

Local kids from Banaue hopping a ride on the back of our jeepney

All of Batad’s visitors used to have a 40-minute walk up the Saddle, back when it was more of a dirt path. These days, jeepneys and vans can make the trek, while tricycles (tricked -out combos of motorbikes and covered sidecars) are still an iffy choice; they’ll tend to drop their passengers at the bottom of the hill, leaving them to tackle the switchbacks alone. If you’re lucky enough to be in a larger vehicle, it’s a good deed to stop for these poor souls and give them a ride.

The Batad trailhead begins at a clusterf*%k of a parking lot/market, where hikers can hoard provisions, narrowly avoid stepping on a chicken, climb a crowded lookout tower or just get the heck going. Kelly the Tribal Tour Guide led JD and I down a flight of 412 mossy steps and we hit the mud-packed, woodsy and pebbly slog to rice-terrace glory. 

Batad’s clusterf*%k of a parking lot/market

We passed the site’s UNESCO sign (see above), some small groups of Japanese and Chinese tourists, a few village locals listening to music on hand-held cell phones (earbuds aren’t really a thing in these parts), some Koosh-ball-looking flower pods (see below), and makeshift vendor huts hawking various trinkets, wood carvings and hand-woven fabrics. Some of these huts featured “comfort rooms” (read: outhouses), but you can do a little better for bathrooms at the restaurants down below. 

Koosh Ball-looking flower that grows on a tree found only ’round these parts

It’s about a 20-minute downhill walk to the start of the village, where you’ll have to pay 50 PHP to a high school girl in a wooden hut for a ticket to see the terraces. Eateries here take credit cards, but you’ll need cash for your tickets.

Do you absolutely need a  guide here? Maybe not, as the route is sort of clearly marked for some of the time, and your goal is simply to keep to the paths, stones and stairs. But terrace-edge drop-offs are perilously steep, and aside from one crazy mid-terrace staircase, there no railings; having a guide show you around Batad is the next best thing to signing a waiver.

Where Kelly led, I was sure to follow

On the day of our visit it was muggy-hot and overcast, the greens all plush with a velvet glow. Batad’s gajillion terraces tend to tumble in waves, and a few times I had to stop myself from irrationally tipping forward, leaning toward the softness. 

Mountains and rice terraces: green, soft, wavy and lush

Instead, I managed only to slip off  the rock-lined rim of a rice bed, my foot landing deep in the muddy muck. Fortunately, my messy shame was brief: Kelly led me to a splashy little irrigation stream, which felt just lovely in the sweaty heat.

Me and my trusty Keens atop Batad

The valley’s bowl is spiked with tin-shack houses, some alone on grass-cushioned spines, others embedded in bright-roof clusters. There are no vehicles, no radio towers, no high-rise buildings. 

It’s an age-old scene that could easily transport you from modern life to an era that pre-dates machines.

However, one thing makes this time-travel impossible: if someone cranks their stereo at the center of the valley, the sound echoes everywhere, in the round.

The bowl-shaped valley of Batad

Which is how JD, Kelly and I ended up standing side by side, high atop the ancient rice terraces of Batad, listening to “Forever and Ever, Amen,” country star Randy Travis’ biggest hit from 1987. 

There was also some Dolly Parton. And some Dixie Chicks. And a little Brooks & Dunn, too.

See, according to Kelly, young Filipinos love them some American country music. And cheesy movie ballads, too. And young Batad locals, in particular, don’t care that you might not want to experience their ancient surroundings in the spirit of…ancient surroundings. 

JD and I thought this soundtrack was strange, and even a little hilarious. But when they busted out this classic from our high school days, we sang along in earnest as we strolled beside the rice, a perfect blend of old and merely vintage.

We opted not to hike to a nearby Tappia Waterfall, but instead to stair-step our way to the valley floor and climb back up one side. Many chickens, dogs and middle-aged men in tank tops later, it was starting to drizzle, and lunch seemed a grand idea. We had just made it to the covered deck of Rita’s, a restaurant at the very top of the village, as the skies exploded in rain so forceful it even shocked the locals.

The terraces disappear and appear again, from the deck at Rita’s

One minute, you could see the terraces, and then they vanished in a curtain of cloud. JD and I picked our way through some bone-in chicken adobo and garlic rice, chatted up a young British couple on leave from their jobs on a Manila-docked charter yacht, and watched a group of Filipino tourists suit up for the return hike in a bunch of plastic bags.

Not all raingear is created equal

The way back up was steep and muddy and long, and for me, unexpectedly traumatic. A wedding was being held in the village that night, and gruff teams of men were bringing in three large pigs, hog-tied upside down on long, slim logs. These pigs screamed in terror, their snorts and squeals echoing far beyond the path, long after we’d managed to get past them.

Stunned by their pain, I felt tears sting my eyes and blinked them back. I’m no poker player, though, and the guys knew I was upset, hovering wordlessly beside me. I walked ahead a ways, collected myself…and haven’t eaten pork since that day.

We finally reached the bottom of the 412 steps to the parking lot/market, a route marked with a sign that reads: “Shortcut.”Once again clear-headed, I chose the long way, a stairs-free squish through mud and rubble that, once conquered, delivered us just about straight to a market-stall bench.

Kelly congratulated us for our efforts, we thanked him for his guidance, and then we sat quiet and smiling, watching a heavy-lidded little girl try not to fall asleep on her mother’s shoulder. We totally knew how she felt.

And we couldn’t help feeling a little bit proud of ourselves.

 ___________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Eight

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

The Tam-An rice terraces below the Banaue Hotel

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Five

Thanks for hanging in with me this far, folks. For your trouble, you’ll get to see some cool photos of rice terraces and a tribal village.

That is, the reasons anyone might actually travel all the way to the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines.

Also ahead? A summary of my correspondence with the travel agencies (because it turns out there were two) that planned this trip. 

That is, before they disappeared mid-trip, never to be heard from again. 

Anyone can walk down the stairs behind the Banaue Hotel (“bah-now-way”), wander through/along some stunning rice terraces, over a rushing stream, and go visit Tam-An Village where Ifugao (“if-oo-gow“) tribespeople preserve some of their ancient traditions. You might get a little lost and the paths are sometimes slippery, but the signage is decent and the whole journey is less than two hours round-trip. 

However, it was lovely to have Kelly the Tribal Tour Guide accompany us, as he shared some details we might have missed. For instance, turns out rice terraces are only green in April and May, slowly turning brown throughout the summer and fall. Hungry snails move in to the rice beds when the shoots are young, and farmers must pluck them out by hand in order to save their crops; as a bonus, the farmers use these snails for food. 

Tam-An Village and its rice terraces

Tam-An itself is a strange hybrid of desperately poor village and tourist attraction. Villagers dress in Western-style clothes and consume modern junk food, but still farm the rice terraces by hand and maintain a few traditional Ifugao raised huts with thatch roofs, interior fire pits and handmade baskets for safely storing live chickens at night. If you want (for some unknown reason) to see the cloth-wrapped bones of ancient Ifugao ancestors, that’s on offer for a nominal fee.

Scenes from Tam-An Village

The heat and humidity around the rice terraces, even with brief shower of rain, was enervating. By the time we returned to the hotel, JD and I were collectively a sweaty mess, while Kelly had little more than a fine, misty glow about him. We were given a few minutes to clean up before we were off on another adventure, this time with a different driver. 

The road to the astonishing rice terraces of Hapao was almost hilarious, a logic-free mix of paved surfaces and abject rubble. And remember that bridge being built over the Guihod Pool? That’s on the route, too. The Banaue-Hapao area seems to be getting ready for more visitors, but no one seems to know when the road might be done. In the meantime, it’s not the most comfortable ride you’ll ever have.

The lookout over the rice terraces of Hapao, though, might offer one of the best views you’ll ever see. I climbed out of the van and full-on gawked at this yawning blend of gorge and valley, a wavy-line patchwork of every green in existence. Somewhere along the centuries, Hapao farmers started to build their houses right by their rice terraces, eliminating the need to schlep heavy bags of dried rice up the steep hillsides to the road. I gazed out at this scene for what felt like an hour, and if Kelly hadn’t mentioned the word “lunch,” I might still be standing there now. 

The rice terraces (and a jeepney full of school kids) at Hapao

Said lunch was atop a Banaue-area mountain, at the Native Village Inn & Restaurant. All smooth-hewn wood and rice-terrace views, this quiet idyll is where I wish we could have stayed. Sadly, the lack of reliable Wi-Fi would have been a deal-breaker on a press trip, and the sleeping quarters — seven small Ifugao-style huts with fenced-in hot showers set outdoors — might not have offered much more comfort than the Banaue Hotel.

That said, I found the peace and beauty there extremely relaxing, as I sighed out the dining room’s windows at a sea of greens. The chicken adobo was rich and spicy, the service polite, there were young cats to play with, and a macaque monkey in a great big cage was eating what appeared to be an entire cabbage. Clearly a hangout for visiting Europeans, the library of left-behind paperbacks was a mix of titles in German, Dutch, French and Finnish.  

The Native Village Inn, high above Banaue

The day had felt like a small miracle: we saw some beautiful things and learned interesting things about them.

But midday exhaustion hit me like a freight train, what with only three-some-odd hours of sleep on the van the night before. Once back at the Banaue Hotel, I lay down for a quick nap…without setting my alarm. Eight foolish hours later, at just shy of midnight, I awoke.

And boy, was I bummed. 

But I used my time wisely, carefully studying the revised itinerary I’d received in Manila to re-familiarize myself with the plan for the days to come. And that’s when I noticed that we were scheduled to leave Banaue and return to Manila on the same day that I was due to fly home to L.A. 

I did a quick math problem in my head:

“If a van is leaving Banaue for a 10-hour drive to Manila to catch a flight there at 10pm, and there are places where the road barely exists, a metric ton of city traffic, and it takes 40 extra minutes to drive to the airport and approximately 2 1/2 hours to go through security three times (see: U.S. State Department Warning – Philippines), what time should the van leave Banaue in order to make the flight?”

The answer is:

“The day before the flight leaves.”

Sunrise from my room at the Banaue Hotel

Just after (an amazing) sunrise, when JD was finally awake and we’d both been suitably caffeinated, our missive-drafting began in earnest. The email we ultimately composed and sent to all of the emergency contacts listed on our itinerary was twofold: an offer of assurance that we were safe and enjoying the rice terraces and all, but an expression of irritation and confusion at the lack of logic, attention and concern exercised thus far in the planning of our trip. 

It turned out that two different travel agencies had been responsible for said planning, using a couple of Philippines-based contractors; one of these contractors employed Noni the Van Driver and Kelly the Tribal Tour Guide.

Responses from the main travel agency rep, based in Colorado, yielded the following:

-Finger-pointing at the ad/marketing/what have you agency for not providing them with detailed information about our specific needs/expectations as travel media, or a request for any sort of planned activities in Manila. 

-A suggestion that the beauty of the “Banau” [sic] area was sure to make up for everything.

And in a single response from the secondary travel agency rep, based in Manila:

-Assurance that a swift change would be made to our itinerary, bringing us back to Manila a day early and booking us hotel rooms there for an extra night. 

-Echoed finger-pointing at the ad/marketing/what have you agency for a lack of detailed information, in agreement with the main travel agency.

-Assurance not only that they hadn’t been asked to plan anything for us in Manila, but that this was “rightly so.” 

-We were asked to remember that this was a culturally-relevant but remote area without flight service and we should have adjusted our expectations of comfort.

This secondary travel agency rep asked for specific information about the van, in order to follow-up with the tour company and adjust the “luxury” description. We complied, sending along a written description and JD’s van photo. I inquired as to the type of vehicle the rep had taken when visiting the area, as I felt this would be helpful information for my future posts and pitches.

Neither JD nor I ever heard from this travel agency rep again. We would later get confirmation from Noni the Van Driver that our itinerary change had been made. 

That second morning in the mountains, our email session complete, we gathered our backpacks and piled into a jeepney with Kelly (and yet another driver) to set off for the Batad Rice Terraces.

This would prove to be the single most spectacular experience of the trip. 

The rice terraces at Batad

 ___________________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Seven

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

The Banaue Hotel and Youth Hostel

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Four

It’s not as though a 10-hour nighttime drive ever sounds like a good idea. I mean, maybe if the route is so hideous it could turn Lot’s wife to salt — but that’s not really an issue in the mountains of the Philippines.

The Cordilleras are gorgeous. Full of gorges, even.

What I’ve come to understand about not really sleeping for many hours in a van ill-suited to the task under dark of night is that while this was designed to be a money-saving option, it served more as a test of character.

My award? Getting to stay at a government-owned hotel/hostel hybrid that hadn’t been remodeled since its initial creation…in the 1970s. 

The ride to Banaue (“bah-now-way”), the largest town in Luzon’s Ifugao Province, was a series of roadside bathrooms, fleeting impressions and lasting indentations. I had to pee no fewer than three times, but each time, Noni the Van Driver wouldn’t take me seriously until I asked a second time. He understood what I was asking, it’s just that he’d sort of forget as we entered the pitch-black reaches of each new town. It was like taking a road trip with a guy who has amnesia, except that he’s the only guy in the vehicle who knows where to find the bathrooms. 

And the less said about these impromptu rest stops, the better. In a Philippine gas station loo (as in many other parts of the Earth), there are a few things you can’t count on: toilet paper, a toilet seat, a flushing mechanism and/or running water. Thankfully, JD had a bottle of hand sanitizer at the ready, for which I will always be grateful. 

In between the occasional hours that I was able to sleep, I’d be awoken with a start by a big bump in the road or a seatbelt buckle in one of many places a seatbelt buckle should never, ever be. When awake, I’d sit up and squint out the window like a hopeful astronomer seeking signs of life; I caught occasional flashes of ornately painted houses and low-hanging trees and free-range dogs and pergola-topped basketball courts. Even if I couldn’t really see it clearly, the Philippines appeared to be going on without us, just outside the van.

And then the sky decided it was morning, rousing itself from sleep with a glowing swath of peachy sun and oh my God is that a whole long mountain range over yonder in soft blue shadow? And are you kidding me, is that a rushing river down there in that plunging gorge, lined with 1,000 lush, green, tangly plants per square inch? Is that a freaking waterfall at the top of that jagged peak?

My first major glimpse of the beautiful Ifugao Province

JD and I looked at each other without expression, silently mourning the thought of all we’d missed the night before.

Noni wound us way up into the mountains, around hairpin turns passing ramshackle wood-thatch-and-tin houses with yards full of chicken families and scruffy puppies, the tumult occasionally broken by deep-green valley views. It could have been Peru, said JD, if not for all the palm trees.

Just another roadside structure in the Cordillera Mountains

It wasn’t long before we reached a ridge spiked thickly with signage, and Noni turned the van into a dipping-down driveway. At 9 am in the morning, we’d arrived at the Banaue Hotel & Youth Hostel right on time. (Sort of.)

Miles from charming, the BHYH is a looming stone fortress from the outside, while its high-ceilinged, dark wood, shabby couch interior is steeped in strange, musty smells and a summer-camp-mess-hall vibe. The wackadoodle glass-cup chandeliers are a cross between gaudy and delightful, and the women behind the front desk wear traditional Ifugao tribal skirts of hand-loomed wool, brightly-striped in patterns that belie their social standing. During my stay, these women were more than happy to tell me all about their outfits, but neglected to tell us about the refreshing pool out back; fortunately, I found it days later, while going for a wander.

Wackadoodle chandelier meets lovely, refreshing pool-with-a-view

Upon checking in, we were asked if we’d be willing to share our rooms with strangers, but we shut this down like the hatch on Lost. Wi-Fi here (which costs about $3 US) was available only in the huge lobby, so as far as we saw it, our rooms would be for sleeping and reading and not taking turns for bathroom time with backpackers and extended families. 

Both of our rooms featured several single beds, their pale-pink satin coverlets and fabric-wrapped headboards dark with stains, the furniture scuffed and dusty. The dimly-lit bathroom had a shower with kick-ass water pressure, but all the cheer of a hospital. Nothing in here had been new since long before Ferdinand and Imelda had been run out of the country.

Those aren’t shadows on that headboard — those are stains. And in the absence of air-conditioning, that fan was my best friend

The one redeeming feature was almost enough to save the whole experience:

The view from our balconies was of this.

The Banaue Rice Terraces, as seen from my room at the Banaue Hotel

Sadly, joy was fleeting.

No breakfast had been listed on our itinerary, and we quickly dismissed the idea that this had been an oversight. It had made perfect sense to our trip planners to have us sleep in a van all night, then not provide us with anything to eat the next morning, prior to a day of hiking. We headed to the enormous dining room, busted out some pesos,  scarfed down some spongy, half-cooked eggs, and slurped down coffee spiked with tear-away packets of Coffeemate (because milk is for sissies). 

The gilt-edged logo on my coffee cup caught my eye: the Philippine Department of Tourism.

Why, yes. Of course.

The hotel’s dining room looks much nicer than anything they serve there

Basically, aside from the view and the pool, this joint is a mountain-bound gulag that was quite possibly a big deal when it opened in the early 1970s. Now, however, it’s the kind of place you end up in because TripAdvisor has given it 3 1/2 stars and you mistakenly think it’s the only game in town. 

The hotel from the side, for your viewing pleasure

Returning to the lobby, we saw Noni talking to a skinny young guy, their voices at the universal pitch of kerfuffle. Said young guy, Kelly, would be the only proper tour guide we’d have on this trip, and for only the next two days, at that. A 25- year-old Ifugao tribesman who walks a strong line between Western ways and ancient traditions, Kelly was slightly dismayed by our arrival at the hotel because, according to his itinerary, we were a day late. 

Noni broke the news to us that there’d been a mix-up, and instead of being able to nap for an hour, we’d have to leave right away for a morning of rice-terrace hiking and village-exploring. JD and I decided in that moment that when we got back, we were going to put together an email for all of our contacts on this trip, and give them a piece of our quickly-fading minds.

In the moment, though, we gathered our gumption and followed Kelly downhill to the tribal village of Tam-An.

Rice terraces enroute from the Banaue Hotel to the Ifugao village of Tam-An

________________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Six

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

A sleepy carriage driver and horse at midday in Manila’s Rizal Park

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Three

I easily found JD, my travel companion, in our Manila hotel lobby: he looked just like his social media photos, minus a hat or a dolphin.

Within moments of meeting him, I was relieved to find that he was a bonafide grown-up with a sense of humor. Since he and I would be together almost constantly for the next seven days, it was nice to feel right from the start that we’d stand a chance of not causing each other bodily harm.

The trip itself, though? That still remained to be seen.

After a calamansi juice at the hotel’s deli, we shook our heads in disbelief over our abandonment, lamented our mutual failure to question our Manila itinerary, and agreed to make the best of the day. 

It was by now 1:45 in the afternoon. A three-hour city tour was available within the next 15 minutes, but I’d soon discover that there was just one (more) wrinkle: I would first need to pack up my things and check out of my room. 

Not only had our trip’s planners arranged to save themselves the cost of a night’s hotel room for each us by sending us overnight into the mountains, but they’d also stiffed us on a private resting/dressing area at the hotel for nine hours. But we were assured by the front desk that we could store our bags there, then later on, schlep them downstairs to “the little locker room in the basement.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, genuinely surprised. “Um, since we have to wait here at the hotel until 11pm tonight to meet a ride to our next destination, would it be possible instead to use the locker rooms in the spa?” 

“Oh no, ma’am — use of the spa is just for guests.”

Well. All righty, then. 

By the time I returned to the front desk with my luggage, our tour van had arrived. Already aboard were two pairs of American white people on holiday, all of them staying at a civilized-looking Marriott: a charming 30-something gay couple from New York, and from Pittsburgh, a Catholic mother in her 60s with her 40-something son. Everyone initially assumed JD and I were married, but thought it much more fun that we were travel bloggers; JD and I, who had just met within the hour, heartily agreed.

Call me soft, but it was a lovely experience to learn actual facts about Manila while hopping in and out of a deliciously air-conditioned van. We peered at the gated homes of Manila’s approximately 37 wealthy people; learned that the Ayala family, one of the richest families in the world, is the main landholder of Makati City and at the helm of one of Asia’s largest manufacturing corporations; and we visited the emotionally moving white-marble sprawl of the World War II-commemorative Manila American Cemetery. We explored the faded, garden-rimmed beauty of Fort Santiago, the main tourist highlight of the (otherwise shabby, as I had discovered earlier) walled city of Intramuros; took a brief, shade-free stroll around the city’s largest green space, Rizal Park; gawked at the Mall of Asia, the third-largest shopping mall on Earth; and from the doorway at afternoon mass, peeked into the chandelier-hung splendor of the 1571 San Augustin Church.  

Scenes from a 3-hour tour of Manila: the American Cemetery, Rizal Park, Fort Santiago, the Pasig River, and San Augustin Church

But all good things must end, and we eventually returned to the cozy, welcoming glow of the Mandarin Oriental.

In desperate need of a shower after our midday sojourns outside the van, we schlepped our stuff to the basement with little fanfare, shoe-horning ourselves into the narrow locker rooms at what turned out to be the gym. Post-shower, I slipped on the wet tile floor, banged my head on my open locker door, and summarily decided I was clean enough. Too tired to do any more exploring in a neighborhood where a single block is many blocks long, JD and I headed upstairs to the hotel’s Chinese restaurant for what turned out to be a strange combination of foods. (For instance, should Mandarin duck crepes really be spread with mayonnaise?) 

And then it was 7pm. My $25 worth of Wi-Fi access was up (while lucky JD still had hours’ worth), so I pulled a novel out of my suitcase. Only four more hours to sit in the lobby and wait for our ride. 

Surrounded by middle-aged businessmen in golf shirts and prostitutes in shiny shoes, I stuck out like an REI salesgirl in my hiking pants and hoodie. My book barely held my attention, JD was engrossed by his iPhone, and I steadily drifted down onto the lobby couch until I was curled in a fetal position, snoozing away. Soon after, apparently, a manager came over to point at me and ask JD if he was with me; the poor thing chose to say yes. The manager informed JD that I wasn’t welcome to sleep there, and left him to rustle me awake.

So there I sat on a faux-velvet sofa, upright, groggy and staring for hours, plugged into podcasts in order to block out the sounds of working girls laughing at the (unnecessary) jokes of men they’d rather not get to know. 

And then, as if a mirage on two legs, the van driver finally appeared. A paunchy man in his fifties with a small smile, a splay-footed walk and a thick thatch of still-black hair, Noni set about gathering both us and our luggage. At last, our “luxury van” had arrived: our semi-salvation, our rolling room for the night.

Out at the curb, Noni pointed out a van — white, unmarked and nondescript. It looked not unlike the one in which we’d toured the city just a few hours before. But when the side door opened, the difference was clear: these seats weren’t well-padded, didn’t recline, were barely wide enough for us to lie on sideways, and didn’t give us the option of tucking in the seatbelts.

And my favorite detail? No one had thought to pack blankets or pillows for our 10-hour overnight journey to Banaue (bahn-ah-yoo-wee), way up in the remote Cordillera Mountains…where we’d be expected to go hiking the very next day.

It turns out, Virginia, there is no such thing as a “luxury van.”

My bedroom for a 10-hour overnight drive to the mountains – photo by JD Andrews/earthXplorer

We’d have spluttered with indignation if only we’d been more awake. In that moment I pictured the young marketing/what have you rep relaxing at a seaside beach bar, laughing at the (unnecessary) jokes of strong, healthy young women who would require no assistance with their coral-reef floating and whatnot. And then I pictured making him ride in the van, while I grabbed my bags and went home to Los Angeles.

But I did my best to stuff down my hostility and climbed onboard, spurred by my strong desire to see ancient rice terraces and find a great story. But pulling away from the hotel and hitting the streets, we’d soon realize the van didn’t have much of one other important thing:

Shocks.

And so began the night’s adventure.

_________________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Five

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two

A shaggy tangle of shopfronts in the heart of Intramuros

Continued from
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Two

The idea of going to a city as huge as Manila and not exploring it for fear that a terrorist attack may or may not happen at any unspecified time or place (but probably won’t) is, well…foreign to me.  Yes, I could have waited a few hours for my travel companion to wake up and accompany me, but at 8 am it was already 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and I was eager to experience the capital of the Philippines.

Surely, this is what the Philippine Department of Tourism would have wanted…if only they seemed aware I was in their country.

After breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental (where I indulged in a sugary, cheese-topped roll called an ensaymada), I returned to my trusty laptop to craft a morning plan. Within a few minutes, I had studied a city map of Manila and determined that the surrounding Makati District was a commercial area full of office buildings, glitzy shopping malls and yet more hotels. Choosing to explore farther afield, I found two potentially interesting Manila attractions to visit (the historic walled district of Intramuros and the world’s oldest Chinatown) and pored over the Wikipedia entry on the Manila’s light rail transit system (LRT).

Skyscrapers loom above residential Makati, as glimpsed from my room at the Mandarin Oriental

Downstairs at the hotel’s concierge desk, I asked where to catch a jeepney to the LRT station at Gil Puyat. The kind and tiny man blinked a few times, then furrowed his brow. “Oh, ma’am…really? This is how you wish to travel today? Do you like to be pressed into people like a sardine in a can? And the jeepney, it is very dusty, very crowded. And whoooo…so hot.”

Again with the hot, I thought. 

I assured him I’d only be out for a short time, just enough to see a little of the city then return to meet my trip companion. However, his plaintive tone had already drawn the attention of several other front-desk staff, all of whom agreed that I would be better off either 1) taking a cab, 2) rolling around town in a hermetically-sealed hamster ball or 3) simply not leaving the hotel.

But I was determined, and I walked a whole block away to a jeepney queue beside a Petron gas station. The most popular form of public transportation in the Philippines, jeepneys are mashups of military vehicles, industrial-strength aluminum sheeting, and surplus Isuzu engines from Japan. Each one is a riot of color and style that reflects the spirituality, passions and personality of its driver.

Basically, the whole jeepney thing makes Manila feel like there’s a Mardi Gras parade on each day. 

Jeepneys: that’s what’s happening

A jeepney queue is the kind of organized chaos that requires a spirit of conquest. While a jeepney’s route is painted on its sides, you should still feel free to pause at its back door and bark out your desired stop to make sure you’ll be headed the right way. If you’ve picked the right jeepney, hop on board through said back door, take a seat and be prepared to squoosh in; jeepneys aim to fill to capacity, and there’s rarely room for…room. 

The jeepney filled and unfilled with people both young and old, some dressed for work, others for school. I got plenty of first glances, but never a second one; as in many other parts of the Earth, Filipinos don’t seem to engage with each other on public transportation.

A jeepney ride costs about 8 Philippine pesos (PHP),  the equivalent of 40 cents in the U.S., and you should pay within a few minutes of taking your seat. Using the smallest possible amount of cash or coinage, either hand your money directly to the driver — who will reach back over his shoulder to take it — or proffer it, without speaking, to a neighboring passenger who will pass it for you. Your change will be handed back the same way, but in reverse.

Within a few minutes of watching others and then doing this whole shebang myself, I was zooming and halting, flying and stopping along busy Taft Avenue, sucking diesel fumes and wincing against blaring horns, surrounded by a blizzard of cars, trucks and mopeds. Weirdest thing? I loved it. The heavy air, the stained concrete, the jumble of colorful storefronts whizzing past — it felt bizarrely exhilarating.

I asked the utterly humorless driver to call out Gil Puyat, my desired LRT station, and he complied. Hopping off, I landed amidst a melee of acrid smells and cryptic street foods; it was only one block to the station, but in that space I passed 2,000 ways to serve chicken and a sea of trash.

All LRT trains run on an elevated track, so all its stations (including Gil Puyat) are upstairs. There’s always a pat-down/purse-check station, apparently designed to keep gun-toting spree killers and other terrorists from plying their trade amongst the trains, and your fare — generally less than 13 PHP — can be paid with cash or credit.

There are several female-area cars on all of Manila’s light-rail trains

Relinquished at the stifling Central Station, I deduced from my hotel front-desk city map that I had a few blocks to walk to the walled city of Intramuros. Four long, largely treeless blocks of beat-down sun and constant traffic later, I began to see the beauty of the hotel having offered me an umbrella; people were using them all around me, safe from UV rays and potential whining. 

Intramuros was thankfully interesting, if not especially lovely. Originally a Spanish creation in the 1600s, this historic district has grown shabby and faded in the centuries hence. Vegetation seems apologetic for its inability to stand straight in the withering sun, intricate paint jobs peel like sunburned skin, and the main objectives of the area are to direct you towards the shade for a halo-halo (Tagalog for “mix-mix,” this is a shaved ice, cream and red bean parfait sort of dessert), or to steer you into scruffy streets to be solicited by 300 rail-thin, barefoot drivers of bike-and-carriage combos called tricycles.

Scenes from Manila’s historic district, Intramuros

I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to ride, so I walked and walked. Sure, I considered buying a specific map of the neighborhood, but that would have been too easy; better to wander and have no idea what’s going on, I thought, let it settle over me like a visual blanket. Shopfront signs jumbled into hanging wires and basket-penned chickens and fruit juice vendors, lushly weighted vines of bougainvillea dripping from windows, walls and roof edges. Graceful towers rose high beside palm trees in the distance, and mystery moisture pooled beside dust in the cracking streets.

Formerly elegant parks stretched grassy and shadeless by ramparts and cannons, and achingly poor trinket sellers lined the entrance paths to the walls themselves. Cats and dogs lay flat on the ground, too hungry to beg, and wasn’t that City Hall across the street? And one of the city’s famous Bonifacio monuments, a Stalin-esque patchwork symbolizing Philippine resistance to Spanish rule?

Amazing.

A Bonifacio KKK resistance-party monument beside Manila’s City Hall

There was just one problem, though I hated to admit it.

It was hot. 

I’d been out for two hours by then, and I was nearly wiped out. Chinatown? Yeah, no — not bloody likely. The most blessed scenario imaginable was getting back to the hotel, where I could 1) connect with JD or 2) face-plant on my bed. 

In front of City Hall I caught a jeepney (with an even more humorless driver) to Taft Avenue, bought a peach iced tea from a convenience store cold-case, then admitted defeat…and hopped in a cab. The hotel had given me their business card in case of an emergency, and this I handed to the cab driver. He studied it on both sides, handed it back without a word, and took off like a horseman of the apocalypse.

“Where you wanna go?,” he shot over his shoulder.

“Um, could you slow down a little?,” I squeaked, suddenly pinned to the back seat. Silence from up front, where he seemed to accelerate. “I want to go to the hotel on that card. The Mandarin Oriental. On Makati Avenue.”

“Okay, but Makati Avenue is long street.”

“Yes…but I just want to go to the one hotel. The Mandarin Oriental. There’s an address here. It’s a block from the Petron jeepney stop.”

“That reminds me, I need to get gas.” He turned the wheel sharply to the right, cutting cleanly across two lanes of oncoming traffic and pulling hard into a residential-area gas station. Gripping the door-rest, eyes wide, I waited for my organs to resettle. A burly gas maiden appeared from nowhere, a tattoo of the Virgin Mary wrapped around her neck, and by the time she filled the tank I had formulated a plan to flee the car and try my luck elsewhere. But just as I opened my mouth to say goodbye, the driver took off again, like a bullet.

This guy could have been a grand prix star on the European racing scene, and despite my terror, I lamented the waste of his talents. He took hairpin turns with two fingers, danced through lanes like Fred Astaire, and pulled far ahead of all comers. In what seemed like record time to enter a state of insanity, we hit Makati Avenue and again he asked, in a huffy tone, “So…which is hotel for you again?”

And make it snappy, already

Seriously, dude? With a deep breath, I once again fished the business card from my purse and handed it to him without a word. He studied the fan symbol as if seeing it for the very first time and exclaimed, “Ohhhhhhh, the Mandarin Oriental! Could have just said that! It’s a big hotel, you know.” 

Slowly closing my eyes, I pictured a meadow full of unicorns, slaking their thirst at a lemonade pond. It did the trick, and I committed no homicide that day.

In two minutes, with great fanfare, he had found the hotel’s driveway. He took my pesos and quite possibly a year of my life, but I couldn’t deny he had returned me alive to the only home I had in this overwhelming city. Onward and upward.

Wooshing into the air-conditioned lobby, I was greeted by smiles and surprise from the front desk staff, who were relieved I’d returned to the fold. I weakly waved, stumbled up to my room, and after one of the top 10 showers of my semi-young life, checked my email.

There was this message from JD:

“Hey Melanie, what are you up to today? I’m going to take a tour at 2pm.“

Through my thick haze of heat stroke, I smiled with a happy sigh. A tour. How about that? Like, seeing stuff, but from an air-conditioned vehicle. Simply brilliant. I replied to him in the affirmative, said I’d meet him downstairs, and the day was off and running. 

At just shy of noon, this wise stranger and I had 11 more Manila-bound hours on our hands.

___________________________________

To be continued in
A Philippine Comedy of Errors: Part Four

Share and Enjoy

Travels With Two