I met Rita in Batad, one of the small villages perched among the 2000-year-old rice terraces of the jagged Cordillera mountain range on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

No roads reach the mountain village. To get to Batad my friends and I hired a jeepney in Banue and rode an hour along a windy dirt road to the trailhead where we disembarked. We hiked an hour down the steep rocky trail into the village.

Most of the villages in this part of the Philippine Cordillera can only be reached on foot. 

It’s well worth the effort.

I’m enamored by this place.

The rice terraces are a tribute to human engineering and endurance. Sometimes called “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” the enormous steps were carved by hand from jagged mountainside using stone tools over two millennia ago. It’s said that if they were laid end-to-end, the steps would circle the globe.

To give you an idea of their size, here’s a photo of my friends hiking across them.

The Ifugao people still farm the terraces the same way they were farmed when they were first built and flood them using the same system of stone aqueducts their ancestors carved out of the mountainside.

During the harvest the community takes to the fields and collectively chants the Epic HudHud of the Ifugao, an epic story with 40 episodes that takes three to four full days to complete. I love the thought of the HudHud filling the valley as the community works and chants in unison day after day.

Here’s a sample of the chant that was uploaded to YouTube by the U.S. Embassy in Manila.

The Ifugao culture — like many around the world — is slowly being eroded as television and the Internet reach the youth with images of a vast and exciting world to explore outside the village. Many of the young people move to the city searching for jobs, money, technology, and excitement.  So, in Batad, the number of farmers in the terraces is slowly declining and the HudHud chant is growing dimmer each year.

We spent the day hiking the hills around the village and visiting a waterfall. Afterward I sat at a restaurant overlooking the terraces while my friends took a stroll through the village. That was when Rita introduced herself.

After chatting for a few minutes I asked Rita how old she was.

Rita had been born in Batad. She didn’t know when she was born because at the time her tribe didn’t keep track of such things. We both figured she was probably in her mid-sixties.

If Rita was 65 she would have been born around the time that Filipino guerillas and the United States army were finishing a brutal campaign expel the Imperial Japanese Army from the Philippines.

World War II was nearly over. The Imperial Japanese Army had decided to make the Philippines its last stand in the Pacific, so they had nothing to lose. This made the Japanese military — which wasn’t known for it’s appreciation for human rights on the best of days — extremely dangerous.

The Manila Massacre, in which over one hundred thousand Filipino civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese, had occurred almost exactly 65 years before, and 165 miles south of, my chat with Rita on the balcony of her restaurant overlooking the Batad Rice Terraces.

This was the view.

The end of the World War II marked the beginning of a tulmutuous period for Asia — a period of widespread, incredibly fast development.

I asked Rita how her village had changed during her life

She told me how the steadily increasing communications reaching the Ifugao from the larger Phillipine society (and world) was distracting people from their history and traditions.

As passionate as I am about history and tradition — and as much as I hate to see a rich culture slowly dissolve into our globally-connected world —  I find little mystery in their disappearance.

Many people get up in arms about this.

Some blame the youth for being fickle and thankless. Some blame the adults for not teaching the youth proper reverence for their heritage.

I used to feel that way too, but recently my mind has changed.

All societies seek change.

Well, to be specific they seek progress, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

Our society operates largely on the idea that we should be constantly working to build a better world and should be prepared to discard any of our own traditions that impede our progress.

By it’s nature, progress destroys tradition.

I’m not saying I think we’ve done a particularly good job of building a better world, or that abandoning traditions is either wise or desirable.

I’m just saying that we tend to romanticize the traditions of others as unique and worthy of protection and while we rush to replace our own with newer and ‘better’ ones.

Our society idolizes the those who are most adept at slaying old paradigms and erecting new ones: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johan Gutenberg, Elvis Presley, Nicola Tesla, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Rosa Parks, Elon Musk.

Nearly all societies strive to change. It’s the same reason that 2000 years ago the Ifugao farmers decided to pick up their stone axes and start carving these terraces out of the mountainside.

It’s what people have always done.

So why does it twist my stomach every time I encounter the a dying society?

After speaking for some time, Rita disappeared into her house and returned with folder containing a tattered old anthropology article. It explained that Rita was the last living practitioner of the traditional Ifugao weaving process. The document included photos of Rita harvesting vines from the jungle, stripping the fibres, spinning them into thread, and then weaving them into cloth on a simple handmade loom.

I asked her if she had taught anyone else her weaving method since the article had been written.

She told me that she had taught a man close to her age who lived in the next village over and laughed heartily as she explained how terrible he was at it, relishing her own singular mastery of the craft.

She was the last person in the world that could stroll into the jungle of the Cordillera mountains to collect vines and single-handedly transform them into an Ifugao alampay.

I asked her if she still made clothes.

She did not. She had given up weaving because of arthritis.

My friends returned from their walk. Rita and I said goodbye and I took a photo of her before we began climbing the steep path toward the potholed dirt road where we’d wait to flag down the next passing bus.

As we climbed the trail between the rows of thatched huts I noticed the laundry lines between them were adorned with jeans and basketball jerseys. A short time later we passed a group of teenagers huddled excitedly around an old cellphone.

Their eyes were all focussed on the tiny green-and-black flip screen and I was filled with an unsettling certainty that I had just witnessed some kind of vague injustice that had no definable perpetrator and of which no one seemed to feel they were a victim.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Liberty Project and has been republished here with permission.

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PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

PT2: Hiking the Rice Terraces

PT3: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Pt4: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Pt5: Diving with Thresher Sharks

After swimming with whale sharks on the island of Leyte I spent two days traveling by bus and ferry to Malapascua, a  tiny island about 5 km from the northern tip of Cebu. There is really only one reason that people visit Malpascua: to dive with thresher sharks, enormous sea creatures that can grow up to 500 kilograms and are easily identified by their long whiplike tail.

There was just one problem: I didn’t know how to dive.

Learning to Dive

When I arrived on Malapascua, I signed up for diving lessons at Fun and Sun Dive and Travel. Truth be told, Malapascua is rife with dive shops. There’s probably a dozen or more to choose from. I chose Fun and Sun because their prices were reasonable and I liked the instructor that I met there.

Completing the open-water scuba diving certification usually takes at least four days, but since I was eager to learn and my father, a recreational diver, had taught me a lot of the techniques when I was young, the instructor said he’d try to get it done in three, which would leave just enough time for a dive at the thresher shark cleaning station before I left.

Fun and Sun, like most dive shops, follows the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) curriculum. This entails reading and being tested on the contents of a 272 page manual, learning to calculate how deep, how long, and how many times you can dive before risking decompression sickness and completing a confined water dive and test and an open water dive and test.

Needless to say, I spent the next three days with my nose in a book and my butt in the ocean.  Fortunately, since I was comfortable in the water and had practiced several of the techniques before, everything went smoothly and I passed all the tests.

Diving to the Cleaning Station

The Cleaning Station is 24m below the surface. That puts it just six meters short of PADI’s recreational dive limit of 30m. As such, it’s considered and an advanced dive and open water certified divers like myself must be accompanied by an instructor.

It was also the first dive that I did after I finished my open water certification, which puts it very high on my list of intelligent things that I’ve done in third-world countries.

Thresher sharks normally hunt at depths much deeper than 24m, but each day they come up to shallow water to be cleaned by mall fish called wrasse eat the dead skin and bacteria from their bodies. That is why the dive site is called the Cleaning Station. The Cleaning Station is located on the Moanad Shoal, an underwater island where wrasse congregate. The edges of this island drop steeply to depths of about 230m, where thresher sharks hunt. So, each morning before it gets too light the sharks swim up the wall for a quick cleaning before returning to deeper waters.

The Dive

We met at the dive shop at 5am and boarded our banca boat. Despite my lack of experience, I wasn’t worried about the dive. When done with reliable professional guidance scuba diving is perfectly safe and I had full confidence in my instructor.

After about a 40-minute boat ride (my estimation may not be perfect due to the extremely early hour and the fact that I may or may not have fallen asleep on the boat) we arrived at the dive site. A dozen or more boats were already there.

We put on our suits, hopped in the water, and began to descend. We arrived at the wall to find what looked like between 80 and 100 divers kneeling on the bottom along the cliff’s edge staring into an inky abyss. We skirted along the edge of the wall looking for a spot. Eventually we found an opening and joined the line of kneeling divers.

After about fifteen minutes my instructor pointed into the dark blue. First there was a vague outline. Then the thresher shark emerged and circled above us. It was a majestic site. Although I had my GoPro camera with me, the light at that depth was too poor to record good video. What we saw, was very similar to the video below.

Afterwards we swam along the bottom back toward the boat following a small manta ray.

More Sharks

Later that day we went for a second dive. This time we got in the boat and headed for nearby Gato Island where we dove Whitetip Alley. Whitetip alley was also an advanced dive, not because of the depth (though it is 20m) but because of the strong current. Whitetip Alley is known as the best place near Malapascua to look for whitecap reef sharks.

We descended into the current and began swimming slowly into it, my dive instructor peering into small caves and under rocks for whitetip reef sharks. Most of the dive passed without finding any. We did, however, see a beautiful sea snake winding its way toward the surface.

Then, just as we were nearing the boat, the instructor waved us down to a narrow crevice. He moved away so I could fit in. At the bottom of the crevice was a small cave and in it were two two-meter long whitetips. They were about two meters from my face, sitting perfectly still, and appeared to be looking at me. It was chilling.

I moved out of the way so that the others could see them. Afterwards we returned to the boat, spotting a cuttlefish — truly an alien looking creature — along the way.

It’s hard to find a negative in my sea experiences in the Philippines. In the space of a week I swam with whale, thresher, and reef sharks, and saw numerous other exotic underwater creatures. It was amazing, but I’m now left with a problem.

On my first two dives I saw sharks. Now, how can I ever be satisfied with boring ‘ol coral and fish?

I’ve been spoiled by the Philippines.

I was provided discount diving lessons by Fun and Sun Dive and Travel, but I recommend them because I had a genuinely great experience with their instructors. If you’re planning to go to Malapascua, I recommend contacting them.

Fun and Sun Dive and Travel
Address: Bridges Town Square 143 Plaridel Street, Alang-Alang,
Mandaue City, Cebu, Philippines 6014
Phone: +63 32 343 3410
Email: info@funsundivetravel.com

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PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

PT2: Hiking the Rice Terraces

PT3: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Pt4: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Pt5: Diving with Thresher Sharks

“Don’t touch the whale sharks. Don’t go too close to the whale sharks.” We were lectured by the local official in charge of tourism.

“They are gentle creatures.” He informed us. “We have had years where fewer whale sharks returned. We don’t want to scare them away.”

Once the lecture was finished, the hunt was on. The three filipino spotters climbed into their traditional outrigger canoes and fanned out across the bay, pausing every few moments to hold a snorkelling mask to their face and dip their head in the water.

The Leyte Whale Shark Swimming Experience

On the dive boat I and half-dozen others sipped instant coffee, chatted idly, and gazed out across the broad empty bay. We were on the island of Leyte in the southern Philippines with Peter’s Dive Resort, one very few (I know of only two) operations on the island that offer whale shark tours.

After about 45 minutes a shout rang out across the bay and one of the spotters waved his hand in the air. Everyone began scrambling to put on their fins, snorkels, and masks (snorkelling is preferable to scuba diving with whale sharks because they don’t like the sound of scuba regulators).

I put on my mask and strapped my waterproof GoPro video camera to my head. I prefer swimming without fins and a snorkel. This turned out to be a mistake, though, because, although I’m a fast swimmer, the whale sharks are faster, and because making a video with a camera on your head while bobbing your head in and out of the water to look for whale sharks in between breaths doesn’t make for a very enjoyable video.

We all jumped in the water and started swimming toward the spotter who was pointing at the water. The whale shark began to swim away from the group. I stopped to fiddle with my camera’s settings and fell behind. Fortunately, one of the spotters allowed me to grab on to the back of his boat and towed me to the front of the group where I caught my first glimpse of the enormous shark. Here is a video of the chase.

Why Leyte?

There are several places in the Philippines where you can swim with whale sharks, many of which are better known than Leyte, but Leyte is my favourite. There are three reasons for this.

Reason 1: Seclusion

Leyte is an island in the southern Philippines seldom visited by tourists other than the divers who visit the few shops there. So, although there are few amenities that cater to tourists other than a few dive shops and nearby restaurants, you also avoid the crowds of tourists.

I’ve swum with whale sharks twice on Leyte, and both times the only people there were about eight people on one boat. This is in contrast to other better-known destinations, such as Donsol (which is much busier because of its proximity to Manila) where dozens of boats can be out on the water at the same time.

Reason 2: Visibility

The water in Donsol are said to often be cloudy, whereas the waters in Leyte were crystal clear both times I was there.

Reason 3: Sustainability

The town of Oslob on Cebu is another popular destination for swimming with whale sharks. There, fishermen will feed the whale sharks shrimp to draw them near the boat for the tourists. This practice is frowned upon by environmentalists who say this practice may cause sharks to stop looking for their own food and become dependant on humans, which would make them less able to fend for themselves and more vulnerable to poachers.

Although the first time I swam with the sharks on Leyte several years ago a young filipino boy surfed underwater on a shark’s back, the second time things had changed. We were lectured by a local official about how to behave near the sharks. Contact was discouraged, no feeding occurred, and few people entered the water to disturb the whales.

How to Get There

Leyte’s capital, Tacloban (about a 3.5 hour drive to the resort) can be reached from Manila or Cebu by plane. Massin (35 minute drive from the resort) can be reached by ferry from ferry from Cebu City or by banca boat from Ubay on Bohol.

I stayed at Peter’s Dive Resort, which was as clean and well-maintained as any dive shop I’ve been in with reasonable rates. They can arrange to pick you up from the airport or ferry terminal

The staff were also very friendly. One great bonus of getting of the beaten path is this: when you visit touristy places, you meet employees who deal with large numbers of strangers, many of whom can be rude. When you venture a bit farther from the crowd, you meet employees who aren’t as burnt out and bitter towards tourists. The experience is almost always better.

I’d like to thank Peter’s Dive Resort for hosting my stay. Although my stay was sponsored by the resort, the opinions expressed here are my own and accurate.

Lead image by spettacolopuro

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PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

PT2: Hiking the Rice Terraces

PT3: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Pt4: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Pt5: Diving with Thresher Sharks

During my visit to Loboc I visited a well-known tarsier conservation area that I had looked forward to seeing for years only to later learn that in doing so I had unwittingly contributed to an unethical business. Read on to avoid making the same mistake I did.

Getting to Loboc

After a whirlwind two-day bus, plane, and tricycle journey from Banaue Rice Terraces on Luzon, Jeannie and I arrived at Alona Beach on the island of Bohol where we contemplated our next step. After some deliberation, we decided to split up. Jeannie wanted to spend a few days in a filipino homestead with Flip Flop Tours (she wrote about it here). I had been to Bohol several times before and had heard a lot about the Loboc River and the Tarsier Sanctuary there, but had not yet seen it.

I hopped in a tricycle back to Tagbilaran, which is the capital city of Bohol where the airport and main ferry terminals are located. If you are travelling to Bohol, you will most likely travel through Tagbilaran.

The most common way to get to Loboc is by local bus. The local bus station, however, is about 2km out of the city, so I had to take a tricycle there, which cost about fifty pesos. Loboc is only 24km from Tagbilaran, so it’s a short cheap bus ride.

The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

The Philippine Tarsier has two claims to fame: 1) it’s endangered and 2) it’s cute as a button. For these reasons, visiting the Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area was on top of my list in Loboc. Sadly, in researching this article I discovered that the Loboc Tarsier Conservation is not an official tarsier sanctuary run by the Philippine Tarsier Foundation, but is an unethical for-profit tarsier viewing area that subjects tarsiers to conditions harmful to their health.

The Philippine tarsier (locally referred to as the kupal) is one of the world’s smallest primates. They grow to 8 – 16 cm (3.5 – 6.5 in) and are known for their enormous and strangely cute bug-eyes. They actually have the largest eye-to-body ratio of all mammals–their eyes are 150 times larger than a human’s in relation to their body. They can move their ears to better hear sounds, leap 5m in the air, rotate their heads nearly 360 degrees, and bear an uncanny resemblance to Yoda.

The Philippine tarsier is endemic to the southern Philippines and listed as endangered. for this reason the Philippine Tarsier Foundation, a private organization, works to protect them and runs a research and development centre. When I visited the Loboc Tarsier Conservation Center I assumed it was run by this organization.

I was wrong.

In researching this article I learned several disturbing facts about tarsiers that are kept in captivity for public viewing:

1) It is illegal in the Philippines to possess a tarsier except for educational or conservation activities.

2) Philippine tarsiers are shy solitary roaming animals. One average males need 6.45 hectares of home range, and females need 2.45.

3) Philippine tarsiers live alone and only encounter each other occasionally during the night while hunting.

4) Philippine tarsiers are nocturnal.

4) Philippine tarsiers reproduce poorly in captivity.

5) Captive tarsiers can live as little as two years and as long as 12 years, which is still much shorter than their natural average lifespan of 24 years.

A captive tourism-based environment is very stressful to tarsiers. They are kept awake all day when they normally sleep, they are subject to camera flashes that hurt their extremely light-sensitive eyes (they can see at night, remember), they are forced to live in close proximity to other tarsiers and humans (which runs counter to their solitary nature), and they are unable to roam as they do in the wild. The result is extremely low reproductive rates and a 50-95% reduction in their lifespan due to stress. Some captive tarsiers even been reported known to ‘commit suicide’ by banging their heads against hard objects.

That means that captive tarsiers have shorter lives and reproduce less than those in the wild. When captive tarsiers die, they almost always need to be replaced with wild ones, thus contributing their ever-nearing extinction.

The legal status of the Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area is not clear but it does, from what I can tell, seem possible that they have special permission to display tarsiers for tourists. The facility I visited, with a large (perhaps 1-2 acre) open tarsier viewing area, appeared to be much better than its previous incarnation, which was simply a collection of caged tarsiers along the Loboc River.

So, it seems that steps have been taken over the years to improve conditions. Still, knowing the suffering that tarsiers in captivity endure, I cannot recommend visiting this facility.

If you would like to see tarsiers, I strongly urge you to visit the official Tarsier Research and Development Center just 18 km from Tabilaran. Alternatively, this centre is also a short 20 km drive from Loboc. It’s a short distance to travel to know that you are contributing to the survival, rather than the demise, of an entire race of furry little Yodas.

Mary Jane’s Native House

While in Loboc I stayed at Mary Jane’s Native House, a traditional native-style house beside the Loboc river. I have to say that, while basic, the room, which had a sink, toaster oven, fridge, and separate bathroom with a real toilet and hot shower, was more than worth the $12 USD/night they charge for it. The owners are also incredibly kind, which is the real charm of the place.

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PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

PT2: Hiking the Rice Terraces

PT3: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Pt4: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Pt5: Diving with Thresher Sharks

We arranged our accomodations in advance without knowing anything about the area that we were visiting, which is a perfect way to mess up your vacation before you even arrive.

I don’t mean to imply that there was anything wrong with the Native Village Inn where we stayed. It was actually very nice–a small resort of traditionally-constructed aboriginal huts with a good restaurant and a stunning view of the emerald and blue Hapo Rice Terraces.

The problem for me was that the Native Village Inn was located a thirty-minute ride from Banaue, which was still another hour’s ride (at least) from the trailhead leading to the Batad Rice Terraces where I wanted to go hiking. This was less a problem for my traveling companion Jeannie Mark (aka Nomadic Chick) who enjoys exploring foreign cuisines and cultures in relative comfort more than dragging herself across muddy mountainsides. I, however, wanted to play in mud.

It was mud I wanted and mud I would get, if not exactly in the way I desired. Tons of unexpected mud was going to lead us both on a an unexpected and serendipitous side trip.

We were only staying in the area for three days. There were other hikes that could be done in the nearby Hapo Rice Terraces, which are epically beautiful themselves–but everything that I’d read said that the Batad Terraces were the most majestic.

Day 1: Our Arrival in Banaue

We arrived in Banaue in the morning after a freezing all-night bus journey. It was cool and foggy and raining lightly. We ate breakfast in Banaue and then arranged for a jeepney to take us to the Native Village Inn. The resort was nearly empty because December is a slow time for tourism (things start to pick up in January and stay busy through spring). The Native Village Inn is an authentic native-themed resort perched on the edge of a steep slope that drops several hundred meters into the valley where the Hapo Rice Terraces are. Here are a few pictures of the view from the thatched-roof covered outdoor dinner table beside our huts and of the decorations inside.

That afternoon we unpacked, explored the grounds, ate a splendid filipino dinner, and made plans to visit the Batad Rice Terraces in the morning.

Day 2: Hiking the Batad Rice Terraces

When we woke up it was still foggy and rainy, but we only had two days to explore the terraces, so we caught a jeepney into Banaue where we looked for others to share a ride to the Batad Saddle. The Batad Saddle is the head of the trail to the village of Batad where the storied rice terraces were located. We met a group of three Dutch engineers and another group of four hikers who agreed to come with us. The hikers would get dropped off before the saddle for a longer hike, and the engineers would join Jeannie and I hiking into Batad from the saddle.

The trail descended steeply into the foggy valley. We had been told that the weather had been rainy in the morning and clear in the afternoon during the previous week, and we hoped it would be the same for our hike. After about 40 minutes we arrived in Batad, a 2000-year-old village of 1500 people living in the hills around a swath of rice terraces crossing a large amphitheater shaped hillside. Here is a picture of it.

The hike down had upset Jeannie’s weak knee, so she opted to stay in the village and enjoy the view from the patio of Rita’s restaurant. We found a young filipino guide named Rambo who agreed to guide us across the terraces to the Tappiyh Waterfall and back. Rambo was a student and spoke English well. He told us that the rice grown in the Batad Terraces was all organic and was not exported because they only produced enough to meet the needs of the villagers. He also told us that their irrigation system had been damaged by a slide caused by heavy rains earlier in the year and that was the reason why many of the terraces were empty rather than growing with young rice plants. He told us that the government had provided some money to fix it, but he didn’t sound hopeful about the project’s success.

The rice terraces actually face many difficulties and are on Unesco’s list of endangered world heritage sites. More information can be found in this photo essay on the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras.

Here are some pictures of the the hike.

Day 3: A Serendipitous Trip to the Hapo Rice Terraces

It was raining again so Jeannie and I decided to go into Banaue where there was Internet to do some blogging, but when we asked the girls working at the desk to call us a tricycle to take us into town they informed us that the rain had caused a slide that made the road impassable. We couldn’t go. After working for a few hours in we decided that we should not totally waste the day, so decided to visit a nearby natural hot spring that we had heard about. An hour later we were riding in a tricycle over a bumpy dirt road that crossed two mostly cleared (read nearly knee-deep mud) mudslides. It late afternoon when we arrived at the trailhead. The guide informed us that the hot springs were a five kilometer hike away. Jeannie, whose knee hadn’t yet recovered from the previous hike, was not pleased.

The weather had cleared by then, and the hike took us directly through the Hapo Rice Terraces. The terraces were not as majestic as those in Batad, but still an amazing sight in their own right. The hike was much better that the previous day’s, though, because it was there were no other tourists. The sun was low in the sky as we crossed the terraces and the light was perfect for pictures. I was in heaven. For lack of time and flashlights we had to turn back before we made it to the hot springs. I did, however, take loads of fantastic pictures in the late afternoon light. Here are a few of them.

We returned to the Native Village Inn in time for dinner. We learned that the road had been cleared, so we would be able to return to Banaue and catch an overnight bus back to Manila. That was good, because we had no time to spare. We would only have a few hours between our early-morning arrival and our flight to Bohol where we hoped to find a seldom visited hill tribe called the Eskaya.

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PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

PT2: Hiking the Rice Terraces

PT3: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Pt4: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Pt5: Diving with Thresher Sharks

About Manila

The Philippines is awesome in almost every way. It’s cheap and exotic. The locals are charming and kind. The beaches look like postcards and the jungles look Indiana Jones movie sets. And there is rum, smooth delicious rum, for less than $2 USD per bottle. Go to the Philippines. Go now, go often, and go for a long time but, for the love of God, after you get off the plane get the hell out of Manila as fast as you can.

Unless you’re shopping, looking for hookers, or watching midget boxing, there’s nothing to do in Manila. Aside from a few colonial era churches, the city is devoid of historical attractions. The poverty is depressing, the beggars and touts are aggressive, the prices are the highest in the country, and crime aimed at tourists is common. There is no reason to stay there. I strongly advise leaving as quickly as possible.

The Bus From Manila to Banaue

Jeannie Mark, aka Nomadic Chick (you can read her post about our trip here), and I spent one night in Manila at a hosel while planning our escape for the following day. The owner, Elanore helped us to figure out the bus times. Several companies run busses to Banaue. It’s an 8 – 10 hour trip (give or take) so busses generally run in the morning (travel all day) or between 8pm and 11pm (travel all night). They generally run $400-450 pesos (around $10-12 USD). Don’t expect a lot of luxury. If you are traveling at night expect hard seats, bumps, and swerves to interfere with your rest. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, the bus is COLD. For reasons that I cannot explain, the bus drivers crank up the A/C like they’re trying to climate-control hell. Bring a sweater, jacket, and hat.

Banaue, Batad, and the Best Ways to see the Rice Terraces

If you want to make your stay as comfortable as possible, stay in Banaue. Banaue is a small town at the foot of some very nice rice terraces. The town has several hotels and guest houses (though its quite hard to find information about them online) as well as a handful of restaurants and cafes with internet access and great views of the nearby terraces. However, the prices do reflect the large number of tourists that stay there and Banaue is about an hours bus ride from the Batad Saddle Point where you begin the walk into Batad where the most spectacular rice terraces are.

If you want to really explore the rice terraces (and save some time and money) I suggest that you try to skip Banaue and go straight to Batad where the most spectacular rice terraces are located. From Banaue you will need to take a jeepney to the Batad Saddle Point. The price per jeepney is $2000 pesos and is split between all occupants (12 at the very most). From the trailhead you will have to hike about 45 min – 1 hr (with all your gear) downhill into Banaue. Banaue has some inexpensive guesthouses with beds as cheap as $100 pesos per person per night. The restaurants are also reasonable and the views are epic.

Waking up in Banue and eating breakfast with a view of the amphitheatre of terraces is itself worth the trip. Even better, however, is geographic position of Batad among the terraces. Here you are in position to jump off into several hikes ranging from one to several days that will take you through thousands-of-years-old terraces and villages that are only accessible by foot.

On our visit, I didn’t have time to go on one of those hikes. Had we gone straight to Batad, I would have. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

Have you visited the Banaue Rice Terraces? What did you do while you were there?

The post Philippines Adventures PT1: Manila to the Banaue Rice Terraces appeared first on XpatMatt.

We haven’t finished booking sponsors for the end of the trip, so if you have a business and would like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Days 1 and 2

Activities

Manila Midget Madness
We will spend our first two days getting acquainted with Manila, picking up a few items for the trip, making last-minute arrangements with sponsors, and, most importantly, visiting Manila’s finest cultural establishments: a restaurant called the Hobbit House, which is staffed entirely by midgets, and a bar where they have regular midget boxing matches.

Attractions

Hobbit House Restaurant and Bar
Phone: +63 2-521-7604
Address: 1801 A Mabini St., Malate, Manila, Philippines

Ringside Bar
Phone: +63 2-899-7106
Address: 4853 Kalayaan at the corner of P. Burgos St., Makati City, Manila, Philippines

Accomodations

Where to Next Hostel
Email | Facebook | Twitter
Phone: +63 2-354-3533
Address: 1776 M. Adriatico Street, Malate, Manila, Philippines

Days 3 -6

Activities

Banaue Rice Terraces Next we will move on to the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Banaue Rice Terraces, where we will spend a few days trekking among these thousands of year old rice farms that were hand-carved into the mountainsides. I’ve heard great things about this place, and am eager to see it!

Accomodations

Native Village Inn
Email
Phone: +63-916-405-4743
+63-908-864-6658

Day 7

Activities

Travel to Bohol

Days 8 and 9

Activities

Chilling on Bohol
with Anna Cleal of Flip Flop Tours We will be hanging out and staying with Anna Cleal, an acquaintance of Jeannie’s and the founder of Flip Flop tours. We also hope to find time to check out the very cute, very weird, very tiny, bug eyed, and rare tarsier monkey.

Attractions

Philippine Tarsier Foundation

Accomodations

Flip Flop Tours
Email | Facebook | Twitter
Address: Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines

Days 10 – 15

Activities

Bohol Mountain Tribe My friend’s wife is from Bohol and her family once took a group of our friends to visit a remote hill tribe on the island. The trip sounded spectacular, so I asked if she could arrange for us to visit as well. I’m not sure what to expect.

Day 16

Travel to Puerto Princessa, Palawan.

Days 17 – 19

Activities

Iwahig Penal Colony and Prison Farm
Iwahig is a unique prison colony in which prisoners are not physically detained, but stay primarily because the island makes escape difficult, and because they are allowed to work the land freely and even make money from their labor. It is said that some prisoners even bring their families to join them

Honda Bay Island Hopping
Honda Bay on Palawan is a classic island hopping spot with white sand beaches and lots of coral reefs and marine life for snorkeling.

Subterranean National Park
Recently named one of the Seven New Natural Wonders of the World, this park features the second longest underground river in the world, a full mountain-to-ocean ecosystem, and what are considered to be some of the most important forests in Asia.

Tour Operator

MAG Tours
Email | Facebook
Phone: +63927 234 9293 or +63919-889-2851 or +63 (048) 723-3258
Address #18 Fernandez Street, Masangcay Building, Room 6, 2nd Floor Puerto Princesa City Palawan, Philippines

Accomodations

House of Rose Hotel | Andy and Rose
Email
Phone: +63 (0)48 4341316
Mobile: +63 (0)9065051829
Address: Abueg Road Bagong Sikat, Puerto Princessa City, Palawan, Philippines

Day 20

Travel to El Nido, Palawan.

Day 21 – 29

Activities

We haven’t decided yet.
We have no firm plans, but in El Nido we hope to snorkel and maybe learn to scuba dive, and go kayaking, island hopping and trekking.

Tour Operator

We haven’t booked a tour operator to sponsor our trips in El Nido. If you’d like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me.

Accommodations

We haven’t booked accommodations in El Nido yet. If you’d like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me.

Days 30 – 31

Sadly return to Manila to catch our flight home.

We’d especially like to thank Hostelbookers.com for helping us to arrange our accommodations at the Where 2 Next Hostel (affiliate link) and the House of Rose (affiliate link).

Lead photo by chooyutshing on Flickr.

The post Adventures in the Philippines Pt. 1: The Itinerary appeared first on XpatMatt.

Emilie and I arrived Cebu city one humid February afternoon with the intention of leaving the next day to find a village where there we could get away from other travelers.  Over breakfast I thumbed through our Lonely Planet’s section on the Visayas. The book made it clear that the island of Cebu was too touristy for our mission. The closest island, Bohol to the south, would be less touristy, but would also be a difficult place to get away from other travelers. As I scanned the map looking for an alternative I noticed a speck in the straight between the Cebu and Bohol. It was labeled Cabilao Island.

The book contained only one paragraph about Cabilao Island. It said that it was eight-square kilometers, had one small village, and listed the names of two businesses that provided accommodations. It did not mention any way to get on or off the island, or any attractions on the island that would draw visitors. It was perfect.

By lunchtime we were on a ferry to Bohol, and by mid-afternoon we were walking among dozens of ornate local busses called jeepneys looking for one that would take us to the village of Calape. Calape was the black dot on our map nearest Cabilao Island.

We found our jeepney and crammed our stuff and ourselves into the back. When the jeepney was so full that nobody could move, it departed.

An hour later we arrived in Calape. The sun was beginning to sink into the palm trees casting long shadows across the potholed road. I looked in each direction. The road was lined with weather-beaten wooden structures for about 100 yards before giving way to jungle. The structures appeared to be stores, but I could not be sure because there were no signs and most of their doors were closed.

“What now?” Emilie asked.

“I guess we better find somebody with a boat and pay him to take us to the island.”

I walked up the road, looking inside open doorways to see if anyone was in any of the buildings. Inside one was an old woman.

“Hello.”

She looked up at me and said something in Tagalog. Then she shouted something over her shoulder. A man appeared in the doorway behind her.

“Hi. We’re trying to go to Cabilao.”

They looked at me blankly. I had thought that most people in the Philippines spoke English. I was wrong.

Outside Emilie was trying to talk to an old man who also didn’t speak English. A group of amused children watched the exchange. The news of our arrival spread quickly through the village and soon a small crowd surrounded us. One young man came forward.

“You go where?” He asked.

“We want to go to Cabilao Island.” I said and showed him the island on the map.

“Oh, Cabilao.” He turned and spoke rapidly in Tagalog to the crowd. Then he turned back to us.

“How will you go there?”

“Boat.”

“You have a friend with a boat?”

“No. We want to go to the docks.”

He turned and spoke again to the crowd. Everyone chattered for a moment, and then the crowd began to disperse.

A few minutes later a large sweaty man with a latino-style mustachio pulled up on a dirtbike.

“He will take you to the dock for 200 pesos (about $5 USD).” The young man told us.

“Can somebody there take us to Cabilao?”

“I don’t know.”

Emilie and I managed to squeeze onto the bike behind our rotund driver with our two large backpacks while I held my guitar in its hard case off the side. We drove first through the jungle, and then along dirt road to the end of a peninsula in the dwindling daylight. The air was thick with moisture and chlorophyll and the man smelled like sweat and rum. Of course, nobody had a helmet.

At the docks three fishermen were unloading the last boat of the day. They didn’t speak English, so I took a notebook and pen out of my bag. A spirited round of written bartering ensued, resulting in a price of 800 pesos (about $20 USD) each.  It was much more than we should have paid, but they had us over a barrel. At that point we didn’t really care anyways. We were almost at the island.

We reclined in the boat, proud that we had left Cebu that morning without so much as a plan, and managed to improvise our way all the way to Cabilao Island. We quietly gloated to ourselves about what awesome off-the-beaten-path travelers we were.

It was dark when we arrived.  The boat slid onto the sandy shore with a “shushhh”. We paid the fisherman, slung our packs, and started up the beach. About twenty yards inland stood a large building with bamboo walls, a grass roof, and light streaming from the windows.

A beautiful Filipino girl wearing a long flowered dress greeted us at the door.

“For two?” She asked.

Scattered throughout the room were several polished wooden tables surrounded by pale old Western tourists with wrinkly chicken waddle skin under their chins. Most of them wore t-shirts and speedo bottoms. As it turned out, the listings in our Lonely Planet, which included only names and telephone numbers, were not for cheap local hotels as the lack of description had led us to believe. They were first-class scuba resorts for fat rich Germans.  The people in the dining room stared at us for a moment before returning their attention to their schnitzel and gewürztraminer.

Defeated, we took an overpriced room, ate an overpriced schnitzel, and drank an overpriced beer. That night, while thinking back to figure out where we went wrong, I came up with three steps necessary to getting off the beaten path. We had failed in two.  These are the steps:

1)   Throw away your guidebook. Anyplace that is mentioned in a guidebook will have tourists by virtue of being mentioned in a guidebook.

2)   Get on a local bus out of town.

3)   When you arrive in a village with no tourists, hotels, or English speakers, where you feel completely uncomfortable and out of place, stop.

The post How to Get Off the Beaten Path in Three Easy Steps appeared first on XpatMatt.

Boracay, Philippines

Location

Boracay is an island in the central eastern Philippines, about 315 km south of Manila.

Closest Town/City/Village

Boracay is a small island covered to a large extent by tourist facilities, so one is never far from amenities here.

Climate and Geography

Boracay is a small narrow island 7 km long and in places less than 1 km wide. It’s located in the central eastern Philippines, and is part of the Western Visayas island group. The island has 400 hectares of preserved forestland and one fairly impressive cave. The two most appealing parts of Boracay’s geography, however, are the white-sand beaches and the wind. The Amihan wind blows across the island from November to April at speeds of 10 – 30 knots. December and January are the best months for wind sports on Boracay.

Boracay has two main seasonal patterns: Amihan and Habagat. The Amihan season generally begins in early fall and ends in late spring, and the Habagat season stretches from late spring to early fall. The Amihan season is characterized by wind from the east, moderate temperatures (25 – 32°C), and little rainfall. The Habagat season, in contrast, sees wind from the west, higher temperatures (28 – 38°C), frequent heavy rains, and occasional typhoons.

Description

People who are looking for travel deals and cheap Boracay hotels for their beach holidays, but still want to be served their drinks in coconut shells on world-class white sand beaches are looking for Boracay. Voted one of the best beach destinations in the world the BMW Tropical Beach Handbook, and the world’s best tropical beach by TV Quick, Boracay is the place to go if you want to relax on the beach on a budget.

Boracay also has plenty of activities to satisfy wind and water sport lovers. With strong winds year-round Boracay is a brilliant destination for windsurfing, kiteboarding, and sailing. For this reason the Asian Windsurfing Tour usually stops here, and Boracay also hosts the Boracay International Funboard Cup every year in January. Those who prefer to delve below the surface of the ocean will find abundant diving and snorkeling facilities around the island.

Activities

• Diving (reefs, cave, wreck)
• Snorkeling
• Windsurfing
• Kiteboarding
• Skimboarding
• Sailing
• Cliff jumping

On a Budget?

• Beds in shared dormitories can be found for less than $5 USD per person per night and private rooms can be found for less than $20 USD per night.
• Food on Boracay tends to be more expensive than other places in the Philippines, with many tourist-oriented restaurants serving meals for upwards of $5-10 USD. However, if you look around, you will be able to find all your meals for just a few dollars each.

Photos

[nggallery id=18]

Photos courtesy of (in order of appearance) Anthony Alger, Eric Lindholm, Anthony Alger, and Anthony Alger from Wikipedia, and The Wandering Angel, Flair Candy, and Hulivili on Flickr.

Map

View Larger Map

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