'round the world with Jeff and Cady

Manila, Shwarma, and future packing nightmares

2007-07-15T22:47:00.000-04:00

We are in Manila. Right now in the Peace corps office, but forgot the camera so no new pictures. Anna and Laura are editing the Kwan (literature/newsletter) with Cady as a guest editor.

Last night after watching the newest Harry Potter movie, we had some good middle eastern food at Shwarma. I was the only one that didn't have a shwarma (also known as gyro and doner kabob). A very satisfying day.

Before that we had a crazy few days. First a night bus from Baguio to Banaue through mountains with a crazy driver which was not conducive to sleep. Then a vigorous hike into Batad and the amazing rice terraces. One night there and a hike back out. There were a bunch of nutty Japanese(with huge Panda hats) and Koreans(with green and red grape wine). They of course had brought only the bare necessities for a hike to rice terraces. After that we had another night bus to Manila but with much more sleep. So two nights on buses and one amongst the 2000 year old terraces.

Now we are relaxing and looking forward to California and finally back home. Later today we are off to the mall of Asia, which is the largest mall in the Philippines and 7th largest in the world (as if we needed more stuff).

On the move

2007-07-12T19:43:00.000-04:00

We just spent three days on the most fantastic farm I think I will ever be priviledged enough to be on. We hiked an hour down to the small farmhouse and surrounding nippa huts, nestled into a series of terraces in a small valley. It rained a little, we did a lot of weeding, a little carrot planting, played some balderdash, ate good food, hollered at the seven dogs that followed everyone around. Good farm stuff. It was really cool to meet yet another of Anna's friends, Sherry, whose host family owns the farm and is looking to use it for environmental education. The farm was actually just classified as a WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms), so people from around the world should be able to visit the farm and do a little work to earn their room and board.

Jeff and Anna had to rip me away from the farming life and throw me on the night bus to Banaue. It was an eight hour trip over frighteningly curvey, steep roads in a bus with brakes that worried Anna greatly, and thus, me even more greatly. We got into Banaue at 5 this morning, and have spent our time since then eating breakfast and trying to figure out exactly when the jeep leaves to go to Batad (apparently Batad is the ultimate place for rice terrace viewing). So far, people here have told us the jeep leaves at 9, 10, 11, 2, 3, and 5. But we know there is only one regular jeep, so it seems whenever this jeep leaves is really anyone's guess. Or we could hire a trike. Actually, we had just decided to take a trike, when a jeep driver said, no, he would leave in 1 hour with no special charges, and he will even come find us in the internet cafe when he's ready to leave. Or at least that's what he told me. We'll see.

More wanderings

2007-07-09T08:44:00.000-04:00

So, I guess it has been a few days since our last post, and that means that you poor people stranded in various parts of the United States or possibly Cypress, need to once again be made aware of our movements here, though the tropical jungle paradise.

We spent a total of five days on Palawan, including two days lounging in hammocks, swimming in the sea, drinking beer and eating ourselves silly at a beachside hostel. While we were there we were also lucky enough to enjoy a stir-fried wild boar dish which was pretty amazing, really. We also did some pretty rigorous hiking to visit the very famous, world heritage site, Underground River. It is thought to be the longest navigable underground river in the world, and we got about a 45 minute tour by boat of the different rock formations on the first stretch of the river. The hike to get there was also fantastic--on a trail called the monkey trail through pristine jungle. We did manage to see a monkey or two, macaques, sitting at the end of the trail.

After our time on Palawan, we added another form of transportation to our Philippine experience--a 24 hour boat ride from Puerto Princesa to Manila. From there we took a 6 hour aircon bus to Baguio, where we are now. Tomorrow we are travelling on to meet Anna's friend on an organic farm and from there we will spend a few days visiting the rice terraces. So, friends, it might be a few more days before we get back on the internet, but don't worry. We're trying hard to have a good time...

2007-07-03T05:46:00.000-04:00

I've decided that there is way too much for me to try and distill the amount of fun we are having into a post every few days, apropo, in an internet cafe (which don't serve coffee as far as I can tell). This is the third internet cafe we tried (one the connection was down and the other was full).

I think Cady is summarizing the past few days, so I will say that the pensione(same as a hostel) we are at now has been great place to relax and do some crossword puzzles. Everywhere we have gone the people are friendly. They may tend to stare at me when Anna decides we should go into the local library, but do I belong there?
I don't think I could ever get used to people trying to sell me dried fish, but that is not really that bad. The experience of riding in a jeepney or multicab and just watching the beautiful country side fly by is something you just have to come and experience.

Anyway we have already done enough for a vacation and we are only half way done. This definitely makes me want to travel to more exotic locations, especially when friends are there to show you around. Too bad I couldn't go on the Cyprus trip too. Well maybe next time.

Tomorrow we are headed to the longest underground river in the world. After that we are headed up north to work on an organic farm, see the rice terraces and just look around a new island. After that it's a 14 hour flight and a week in Northern California. Hope everyone is enjoying the summer, especially anyone in Cyprus.

Tired in a crowded internet cafe

2007-07-03T05:33:00.000-04:00

Hello faithful adventure-followers. I'm not sure how many insightful gems I have for you on this post--I'm actually quite tired and am not really in the mood for crowded places, even if they are air conditioned. Our new excitments include a trip to Anna's old host family's island baragay on this incredibly frightening pump boat. Once on the island, though, it was immediately apparent why Anna liked the people there so much. They were so friendly! And everyone was so excited to see Anna again.

We also bought a live chicken from one of her friends, transported it back to the mainland on the scarry boat in the middle of loads of rain. Anna and Jeff slaughtered the chicken (while I, chicken myself, went to buy charcoal) and plucked it and cleaned it out (while this chicken merely chopped garlic and squeezed limes to use to marinate it). We had a few delicious pieces, at least those pieces that were cooked all the way through.

We are now on the island of Palawan, in Puerto Princessa--supposedly the cleanest, safest city in the Philippines. We also managed to find a laundromat with washers AND dryers (Anna is very excited about this) and are currently waiting to pick up our laundry. We did a lot of crafty shopping and went to a crocodile farming/rehab place.

Now I think I'm ready for a cold shower and a long, long nap. Maybe in the hammock on the porch of our hostel, listening to the peaceful squaking of their resident parrot....

Hangin' at Anna's place

2007-06-29T05:07:00.000-04:00

So we've been in President Roxas, where Anna lives, for a few days. And is nice to be in one place for a while and just hang out. Yesterday felt productive becuase we did tons of laundary. Now that may not sound like fun...well it isn't, but now we have close that don't reek. We took a short break to watch some cock fighting, but it didn't win any of us over.

We got to meet some of Anna's friends and will go visit her host family's barangay on Sunday. We've just been enjoying some time together not traveling.

Today, I was still amazed that we are here as we ate fresh seafood for lunch on the beach. After lunch we went to the mall in Roxas and had halo-halo (I don't think it will catch on in the states).

A few words...

2007-06-29T05:05:00.000-04:00

About traveling in the Philippines: It's very very different than traveling in the US. We've been the equivalent of less than 250 miles and it probably took 10-12 hours to do it. You take tricycles for short rides, jeepneys or vans for longer rides, and big buses for long rides. No one drives fast (except for one totally insane bus driver we had) because about every 5-10 minutes someone is trying to get on or off your bus/jeep/van/trike. Plus, buses only go through certain cities at certain times so you usually have to do a lot of intermediate steps to get to where your going--loads of trike/bus/van/jeep transfers. So, Anna, Jeff and I unfold ourselves from the mass of people also on the trike/bus/van/jeep, make sure we have all 4-6 of our bags, and then figure out if/how we've paid the driver. Kind of crazy--and if Jeff wasn't here I'm sure I would have forgotten about half my stuff by now on one motorized vehicle or another.

About Filipinos: Incredibly nice, incredibly poor people. They love to hear that you find their country hospitable, and believe me, it is. Way more than the US. Trike drivers, security guards, etc. go out of their way to help you with your bags. People offer you food all the time, or make sure you get on the right trike, or really help you out almost however you need. Very hospitable.

About shopping in the mall: Its weird. We were just in a department store and there was probably 1 employee for every 5 shoppers. Way different than in the US. And all of them wore these strange blue dress uniforms and followed us around as we shopped. I was trying to pick out some things and there were like three people hovering around me, I guess just making sure I was finding everything ok? And every one would just flat out stare at us. It kind of gave me the creeps at first and then I just decided to ignore them and I managed to get my shopping done just fine, thank you.

About noises: Its weird staying in Anna's house now for some reason. Its made me realize that all of the noises which are usually hidden in US houses are completely out in the open here. For example, her kitchen sink doesn't even have a pipe on the drain. The water just falls strait to the ground, and you hear it fall on the clay in the yard. When someone is using the bathroom, you hear every single sound. And you hear your neighbor's sounds as well. Anna says she sometimes wakes us when her neighbors sneeze. Or drop a dish or something.

Anyways, still having a great time, going to go back to Anna's now to continue doing so.

Day care camping and other things...

2007-06-27T03:39:00.000-04:00

So, we've been here a week and we've managed to accomplish a good amount of stuff. We met a ton of Anna's friends at a barbecue (more like a pot-luck) in San Jose and had a ton of fun there. It was nice to see all the different personalities of the volunteers and hear what everybody is up to. My mango salsa was prize winning, we played complicated charades of death (or everyone else did while I attempted to sleep), made smores and headed to the beach where a volunteer rounded up a group of local kids to teach us the "slipper game" and sing the national anthem for us. Just another day in the Peace Corps, I guess...

After all that fun we headed up to visit some more of Anna's friends, Abby and her boyfriend Brian up in Aklan. That day was the feast of John the Baptist, where everyone in the country is supposed to swim as a baptism of sorts. However, it turns out you can also be "baptised" by random people throwing water on you as you pass through town. So, we were sitting innocently in our bus, and were "baptised" maybe about four times before the other passengers demanded that we put our window up. So, we continued on our journey with all windows up and the doors shut and every single seat occupied by soaking wet people. No air conditioning. So we steamed ourselves the whole rest of the way there; our bus was baptized about another 25 times and every time some kid through water at us everyone on board would get really excited and the middle school girls sitting next to Jeff would sort of squeal with delight. When we finally made it to where we were going to stay, we were quite quickly wisked away to meet the local mayor, who was swimming across the street. We did manage a proper John the Baptist swim in the sea later that night after the sun set--very nice amongst the bioluminesence.

And then comes our "camping." We set off the next morning to go backpacking, but as it turns out, it is extremely HOT and WET during the rainy season here. So we're off lugging all our gear through beautiful mountains, and then I sort of start to get heat stroke or something. We decide it might be a good idea to not go so far as we had planned at that point. More walking, beautiful country, I'm still sweating liters and liters of fluids, and then the storm clouds roll in. No big deal, our local guide (Dodoy, a very fun 22-year old who has a medical condition which prevented him from going through puberty and looks like he is 8 years old) says we can stay in his neighborhood and cook our lunch until the rain passes. We get there, it starts to rain, and they send us to the day care where we can cook our lunch and stay dry for a while. We cook our lunch of ramen noodles and eggs, sit on the tiny toddler chairs that were maybe five inches off the ground, and laugh at the play house--a small toddler sized nipa hut inside the day care, complete with a front porch and a bed in the bedroom. Then, Dodoy insists we go swimming, which we do in a river down the path. Very beautiful spot, very cool water which I more than welcomed. Anna actually started moving downstream to swim in another spot, also very beautiful, but then Brian pointed out the pig waste flowing into the river there. We decided we had done quite enough swimming, thank you and headed back to base camp, the day care center.

Once we got back there, a huge storm was looming, and Dodoy tells us we are welcome to camp in there if we need to. We laugh and say, who camps in a day care center? But then we wait and wait, and it rains and rains, we play cards and read books and it rains and rains. It starts to get dark and we say, perfect, lets camp here for the night. We cook rice and use our hands to eat it with canned tuna on a huge banana leaf on one of the tiny tables. Then we have coffee and tea and sing a long as Anna and Jeffrey play the guitar. We then attempt to introduce smores to Brian and Dodoy, but we only had a candle and a kerosene lamp to melt the marshmallows and they were strawberry flavored at that. But the chocolate was imported Hershey's (very expensive) and we wanted smores, so we roasted the tiny marshmallows on the end of various pieces of silverware and taught our Filipino friends about a classic American camping treat. Brian was skeptical at first, but Dodoy dove right in, eating tons of smores and eventually graduating to triple deckers before the night was done.

After dessert, we rolled out the big woven palm mat meant for the toddlers nap time, and settled in for the night. Dodoy slept quit well in the bedroom of the playhouse. The next morning, we pack up, it starts raining, we wait for it to stop, we head back, and barely make it to a sari-sari store in a neighboring barangay before it starts really pissing it down. So, we wait there, all huddled together by some out of order video game machines, reading, and waiting, and watching kids play in the street in the pouring rain.

We took the rest of the day easy, washed all our sweat off in the shower, read a little, slept a little, drank a little tuba (coconut wine) collected from the trees in our front yard. We then hopped across the street to the videoke bar where Jeff attempted to sing "Act naturally" by Ringo Starr and "Always look on the bright side of life" from the Life of Brian. Anna excelled with Madonna's "La Isla Bonita", TLC's "Scrubs", and a song in Tagalog which won her many cheers and applause.

We've been on the road all day today, are in Roxas right now, and are about to head off to President Roxas (Anna's hometown, very small, about 1 hour east of here).

By the way, in case anything happens and we need to be evacuated or anything, Anna lives in President Roxas, not at the Airmail Distribution Center of the Nino Aquino International Airport, as the US State Department, the Phillipine Consulate, and every customs agent who asked for our address currently believes. Joke only.

San Joaquin and San Jose

2007-06-22T04:00:00.000-04:00

We have had a good day and a half seeing southern Panay (the island we are on). The jeepneys are trikes are a little to get used to, but work pretty well to get around and are cheap. I added a link for our photos on the right.

We went to see some local cloth weavers. They some beautiful cloth, but some of it was special for shirts of priests garments. We had some really fresh fish, including blue marlin head, and were trained how to eat Filipino style (using the fork to shovel food on a spoon).

We stayed with Ian another Peace corps volunteer about 20 feet from the beach. Th house to the left is Ian's. We got to take our first bucket shower. This morning was market day and we got to see all of the fish, beef, and produce. There are special water stores to get purified drinking water, so we don't have to worry about that. After several meals and transport, we have spent less than 500 PHP each (about $10 USD).

After the market we took a 30km bus ride through the mountains and are now in San Jose staying with two other PCVs. We have a BBQ tomorrow and then will head up north to go camping.

The true value of cash..

2007-06-20T22:49:00.000-04:00

The true value of cash is not having to beg for money in the Manilla airport. That's it folks, the secret of money. We finally made it here through multiple airports, multiple layovers, multiple naps on small benches and crammed into the corner between the seat and the window. And then we got to Manilla, didn't have any US cash (because hey, we're supposed to be using pesos, right?). No problem, really, except they apparently charge 200 pesos a person just to to board the plane. And niether of the two atms at the airport worked. And the bank opened an hour after our flight was supposed to leave.

So, we begged. After trying to talk to every official and security person in the entire airport twice, one of them had the bright idea to have us ask someone on the flight for a loan. Which ended up working out brilliantly. So now we are here and safe and about to cram all our luggage in a jeepney with twenty other people and move on to whereever it is we are staying tonight. And we owe this dude named Ron 500 pesos. I love Ron. I think Jeff does too.

Oh, and Jeff made us hike all our stuff 1.5 miles down 10th street to the MARTA.

Seriously though, we're here, and excited, and are learning lots of cool things already like how when you don't understand something someone is telling you, you just stand there with your mouth open and they will repeat it for you. Useful stuff like that.

Gotta run. Be good, and make sure you've always got a 20 in your wallet. You never know when you might need it....

36 hours, 5 airports and even more security checks

2007-06-20T22:47:00.000-04:00

There was a lot of reading and sleeping involved, and more security checks than I could imageine.

I'm sure Cady will inform you of our trek to the MARTA station. San Francisco was a little crazy, I had to go through security twice so I could post some mail. Our 5 hour lay over in Vancouver was actually really nice (good katsu-don and the nicest, cleanest airport ever) plus the airport was practically empty. 13.5 hours over the Pacific ocean was mostly sleep with a glimpse of the sun over the north pole and seeing what I am pretty sure was Tokyo.

Then there was Manila...we had no cash (yes that was stupid), but what was the chance of all the ATMs(both of them) being empty or out of order? Plus they have a "Terminal fee" to get to the gate. Luckily a really nice guy gave us 500PHP for the 200 PHP fee each. He was on our flight, but Iloilo had no ATM's.

Anna made a nice sign for us (no that we could have missed her). And here we are at 11 in the morning in an internet Cafe typing away. We'll get some pictures on the Jeepneys later.

Goodbye Hot-Dry-Lanta

2007-06-19T05:47:00.000-04:00

Somehow or another we have managed to cram all our stuff into 1 backpacker's pack, 1 slightly largish bookbag, and 1 over-the-shoulder thing. We now have approximately 30 minutes to be on the bus, headed to the train station, headed to the airport. If we are late, we could never see our luggage again. Literally, I think. Or, we could have misunderstood what we can and can't take on our carry on luggage and then I will pitch a slightly large fit in the airport security section. Then you may or may not see me again. Or, we will have no problems at all. That's what Jeff thinks. I can also honestly say that I think Jeff will be skipping to the bus stop this morning. I will be dragging my ass and my stuff and just hope I make it there on time. We should be leaving the apartment at 6:15 am after all, and I didn't get a wink of sleep last night.

I also feel obligated to inform those of you who new me in high school that I've somehow talked myself into a haircut that is more than slightly reminicent of my junior year at Reynolds. I was disturbed at first, especially when Jeff took to calling me Bessie in honor of my new head of cowlicks. However, I'm starting to see the beauty in being able to take a three minute shower again.

At any rate, we are about to be on our way. And it's about damn time.

Shopping, visas, and packing

2007-06-16T23:22:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our blog. On Tuesday we head out on our trip to the Philippines. So far we have been busy getting ready. Lots of shopping, three trips to the Philippines consulate, and tomorrow we begin packing for real.