Almost Losing Our Minds and Actually Losing a Camera in Manila

So after waking up from our little snooze in a very shabby hostel room that smelled a little like urine (delirious, sleep-deprived beggars can't be choosers), we decided to hit the streets and plan our next adventure to Donsol.

Donsol is a teeny tiny village on the Southern end of Luzon island. It would have no tourist attraction were it not for the hundreds of whale sharks that come every year to feed and mate in the waters near the village. People come from all over to snorkel and see these enormous, awesome fish. So we had set our sights on doing this, and we needed to decide on our plan of attack.

The first goal was to find a phone to call the visitors center and book a whale shark excursion. So we got dressed and headed out to the streets of Manila. Now, if you remember the information previously provided about Manila, this is an overcrowded, poor, and crazy city. So we were a little overwhelmed at the amount of people on the streets and the reactions we got as we walked down them. Being a group of three outstandingly white girls, we stood out quite a lot. So as we walked we received many a cat-call and many a request for money. Being savvy travelers we ignored them all and walked with our eyes forward and our hands guarding our pockets and purses. We found a hotel and went to their desk to inquire about a pay phone. The man at the desk sold us a phone card and directed us to the phone we could use to call long distance to Donsol. Well, we tried and tried and it would not work. So we figured it was the phone card and exchanged it for a new one. Still no dice. So the nice gentleman at the desk told us it must be their lines, and that we should try the payphones in the mall.

So we haul our asses over to one of the many many malls in Manila (shopping is a major attraction there, since you can buy a lot of goods dirt cheap) and went to the information desk where they promptly informed us that they don't have the type of phones we need for that card and that there is nowhere else in Manila that has them (or something along those frustrating lines). So we decide to use a regular pay phone to call the visitors center. This involved me and Patty running back and forth from different stores to break bills in order to keep Jackie on the phone with the man and Jackie doing a lot of digging through her purse to find enough change (being unfamiliar with the money we did a lot of fumbling for the right amounts) to cover the call. Now when I say Jackie was digging through her purse what I actually mean is that she was engaging in her normal way of looking for things in her purse. This involves her taking everything that is not the item she is looking for out of her purse and placing it in random locations around her body. **fact learned about travel buddy: Jackie is disorganized. I think I already knew this, but it became glaringly apparent on this trip** So this is how she found enough change for the call, and then she put everything back in her purse (or so she thought...dun dun dunnnnnnn) **foreshadowing** 


So we make the call and agree to email the man at the Donsol Visitors Bureau to book a tour plus transportation from the bus station for the next day. Next stop, bus tickets.

In the Philippines, buses are a major way of getting from one place to another long distances. There are few airports and limited flights from place to place, so most common people take buses everywhere they go. They  range in luxury from a typical travel bus with no bathroom to "luxury liners" that have bigger seats and bathrooms. However, we discovered that there were no such thing in the Philippines as the typical "night bus" in which you have a seat that reclines at least more than 45 degrees, even most of the way down. But we were determined to waste no time traveling, so we had decided we would take night buses instead of commuting during the day.

Riding through Manila in a pedi-cab (a sidecar with a bike attached)

Crazy Manila traffic

So we go on a search for the bus office for one of the major carriers. This search leads us down some sketchy roads with a lot of friendly people that offer us a lot of help in exchange for god knows what. We also discovered that people in Manila love to give you directions, but they don't necessarily know what they're talking about. We had about 5 different people at one point give us completely different directions. In the end, it was a nice woman sitting on the sidewalk in the rain with her two children asking for money (tears your heart out...but unfortunately you have to turn them down or else you might end up with a swarm of homeless people chasing you down the streets of Manila. It's happened to people before.) who gave us the correct directions to the bus station. So wet, exhausted, and starving (we have not had coffee or breakfast yet) we arrive and ask for a ticket to Legaspi (the nearest major city to Donsol) that night. Surprise, surprise! They don't have any tickets.

Well, this kind of messes up our whole plan (and I use the word "plan" very loosely because there actually was little to no planning that went into this trip) and we get a little frustrated. But we decide to check another bus company to see if they have any tickets. So we hit the streets again with our map and head to find the other bus office. 20 minutes and 10 sets of bad directions later, we arrive at Philtranco bus station. And hallelujah! they have tickets for that night on a bus with a bathroom (we have lowered our standards to each of us having our own seat and there at least being a bathroom on the bus). So we book our tickets and head back to email the Donsol Visitors Center, get some money, and pick up some snacks for the bus.

Well, this whole time we've been running around Manila like chickens with our heads cut off, Patty has been very quiet. Silent, actually. And Jackie and I have been a mile a minute trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Well, apparently at this point in time Patty had had enough and she stopped in the middle of the street and said "if I don't get some coffee and some food right now I'm going to die!" **fact learned about travel buddy: Patty needs her coffee, food, and sleep...go figure**

So we stop, eat some breakfast and get some coffee and then continue on our mission. Now we only have about an hour and a half before we have to hop a cab back to the bus station, so we decide to divide and conquer. Jackie goes to the mall to get converter plugs for our computers and phones (forgot that the Philippines was 220 oops!) and to get some snacks and water and Patty and I headed back to the hostel to contact the visitors center in Donsol to arrange our ride from the airport and our tour.

Run, run, run around, call on Skype, email the visitors center, get some money, get some snacks, pack our shit, throw it in a cab, and tell him to get us to the bus station as fast as humanly possible. Here we go to Donsol!!!

Night Buses, Tricycles, and Jeepneys: The Philippines

So as completely predicted, I am a terrible blogger. But I figure, it's better late than never so I will fill you in on my recent travels and adventures, beginning with my Spring Break trip. Because we did so much and I'm pretty sure I will get ADD in the middle of writing everything and need a break, I will do this in  installments.

Part 1: The Philippines- Banaue and Batad


Living in Japan for 4 years, I knew a lot of people from the Philippines. Plenty of people told me about how much they loved this place, yet I never felt a particular urge to travel there. So when Jackie and I were deciding on where to go for Spring Break, the Philippines was not on the top of my list. However, we found an amazing deal on tickets that could send us to the Philippines and Palau (another tropical island that I will describe in the next installment) all in one vacation. So I thought "what the hell, I'll give it a try". Right after we booked our tickets, our friend Patty decided she wanted to join us for our Philippines adventure, so the three of us began planning what we wanted to do there.

The more I researched the Philippines, the more overwhelmed I got by deciding where to go. I never realized how huge the Philippines is. There are roughly 4,000 inhabited islands that make up the Philippines. So figuring out where to set our sights was a huge challenge (especially given all of our indecisive natures). But after some asking around, we decided one of the things that we really wanted to do was to go to Northern Luzon (the main island chain) and see the rice terraces. Another main thing we wanted to do was to go to Donsol and snorkel with the whale sharks. So having narrowed down our options and because we only had 5 days there, we decided that we would stay on Luzon and take buses from place to place.

And that is the extent of planning that went into our trip to the Philippines.

So on Thursday, April 7, we set off to begin our adventure. We arrived in Manila at 8:45pm. After getting our luggage, we went straight to the information desk and asked how we could get to Banaue (the place we heard had the best rice terraces). They informed us that there was a bus leaving at 10:50 and gave us directions to the bus station.

Now, before I continue I feel that I should give you some information about Manila. Manila has a population of 1.7 million people. The area of Manila is about 15 square miles. This means that the population density of this city is about 111,576 per square mile. This makes it the most densely populated city in the entire world. It is also a very poor city, with many people that traveled from other islands and cities in the Philippines to find work and discovered a scarcity of jobs. So while it is a very interesting place, it is also very hectic, crowded, and at times scary. So given this information, we had decided before getting on the plane that we would spend as little time in the city as possible. So getting on that night bus to Banaue was our first priority.

We hopped in a taxi that drove us crazily to the bus station to get our tickets. *note: driving in Manila is insane. People literally just weave and swerve and change lanes and don't actually stay in lanes and everybody beeps constantly. Miraculously, we only saw 2 fender benders the whole time driving around in the city.

So we make it alive to the bus station and find the bus to Banaue. However, the ticket counter is closed. So we go up to the attendant standing by the bus and ask him if there are any seats left. After a couple minutes of confused conversation in which we asked if he had three seats and he offered us two, then we told him we needed three, then he pointed to two, then finally we said we needed three and he said "oh, yes, three seats", we threw our bags underneath the bus and sat in our (suppposedly) three seats. The seats were across the back in a row of 5 seats.

Ready to go!

As we're waiting, two more girls come and sit in the other two seats across the back of the bus. Now, when we got on we noticed that there was some stuff already in one of the seats in the back- a jacket, a pillow, etc. but we thought nothing of it. So the bus pulls away from the station and we make ourselves comfortable- this is going to be a 9 hour bus ride overnight. About 5 minutes into the bus ride, a man comes to the back and sees us all sitting there. He looks a little confused, then says something to the girls sitting next to us. The girl turns to us and says "one of these seats is for the extra driver and we have to move over". WHAT?? So we all squish over, basically amounting to Jackie, Patty and I being in two seats. Needless to say, this was not the most comfortable bus ride I have ever been on. Jackie ended up sleeping on the floor at our feet (which apparently shocked most of the people riding on the bus). To top it all off, it was about -10 degrees on the bus, the driver was blasting 80s music all night, and the lights kept coming on every time we stopped. So by the time we rolled into Banaue at about 7:00am we were exhausted and a little irritable. But we were ready for an adventure, so we found the nearest jeepney and took it into town. 

Now if you've never been to the Philippines (as I had not before this trip), you may have no idea what a jeepney is. Allow me to explain: after WWII there were a lot of old military jeeps lying around the Philippines. Basically, the people took them and turned them into public transportation. They are now manufactured int he Philippines and are a main form of tranportation. People take great pride in their personal jeepneys and decorate them with all kinds of crazy colors, sayings, and personal touches. They are practically an art form there. Manila is FULL of them, and people just hop on and off when they need to. They're pretty cool. 

So once we got into Banaue, we found the nearest restaurant and had a delicious breakfast, most of which I can't remember the name of, but it was amazing. We then walked next door and found a hostel to store our bags so we could venture out to the nearby village of Bataad, rumored to have the best of the rice terraces. We quickly changed our clothes and found a nice gentleman by the name of Lancer to take us to Bataad on his pink tricycle (another novel form of transportation- a motorcycle with a little sidecar that fits 2 people). So 2 of us hopped in the sidecar and one on the back of the bike and we headed to Bataad. 

Small rice terraces from the window of our breakfast restaurant- Banaue

Banaue

Sir Lancelot (as I dubbed him) and his trusty pink steed

After about an hour drive, stopping to take pictures of course, we got to the Bataad junction. From here, we hiked about an hour to the outskirts of Bataad. It was here that we met arguably the coolest person we met in the Philippines. As we were walking on the road to Bataad village, a tiny, weathered old man approached us wearing a wide brimmed straw hat. He introduced himself as Vicente, a resident of the village of Bataad. He offered his services to us as a guide for the rice terraces and village. At first, we were all resistant to the idea of a guide. Along the path, we had met many people who offered to be our guide, and we politely turned them down, opting instead to find our way and see everything on our own (not to mention, avoid paying them 10 dollars for the service). So we did the same for Vicente, but he walked with us anyway and told us about his village and himself a little bit. After about 10 minutes of this, I turned to Jackie and said "We need to keep this guy around." He was adorable, and clearly needed the 10 dollars he charged for the guide services. So Vicente became our official guide to Bataad and the rice terraces. 

A few things we learned about Vicente through our time with him: 

• He loved "making photos" and would stop about every 10 feet and suggest that we stand and he make our photo from 3 different angles. This got so bad that at one point he commandeered my camera and started taking pictures of everything. We had to finally start turning down pictures of us, telling him we were satisfied with just landscape pictures. But we got a lot of great pictures because of him! 
• He and most people in his village are very poor. They grow rice, but most of the time it is just enough for their families to eat so they are not able to sell much of it. Vicente showed us his home, which was a poorly built shack with one room. He told us he was working on rebuilding his house, but that it was difficult because his mother had just died and he had to slaughter the karabao that would help him transport wood to feed the people of the village who came for her funeral. He also explained that he would like to find a lady to marry, but that he needed five pigs and a karabao to offer to the bride's family in order to have a feast at their wedding. It was really interesting to realize that these practices viewed as old fashioned in our country still take place in many places in the world. 
• Vicente is a wonderful guide. To prove this to people and encourage them to take advantage of his guide services, he keeps a book in which people can write their recommendations. He proudly showed us this book and pointed out that there were recommendations in many languages. We of course wrote our own recommendations for Vicente. 

Hiking to Bataad

The first photo Vicente made of us

I turned the corner and gasped- it was literally breathtaking!

More stairs!!!

He was a very small Filipino man. : ) Patty looks like an Amazon woman here. 

Traditional houses- lots of the village people still live in these.

After an awesome tour of the rice terraces and the village, we headed back to Lancer and the tricycle. Along the way, we met some people who offered us a jeepney ride back to the junction. Having hiked already for an hour, not to mention climbing a ridiculous amount of stairs to get back up the rice terraces (yes, what goes down must come back up) we were exhausted so we took them up on their offer. 

Ever since getting to the Philippines, I was amazed by how many people they could pack into moving vehicles. At one point on our trip, we counted a family of 6 on a tiny little motorbike (2 adults, 4 children). Jeepneys are no exception. They pile them full, hang people on the back, and then pile people and bags on top. Well, once Jackie saw that you could ride on the top of a jeepney she got it in her head that she wanted to. So for this ride we hopped on top of the jeepney and rode on a very bumpy road down the mountainsides back to the junction. Unfortunately, all our footage/pictures of this exciting event were lost (Jackie lost her camera in Manila) so I have no proof but I totally rode on the top of a jeepney! 

After getting back to Banaue, we took quick showers at the guest house where we stored our bags, grabbed something to eat, and hopped on another night bus back to Manila (we were determined to waste no time traveling). We thought we were golden this time, because we had decided to beat the system and buy 2 seats each figuring we could stretch out and be more comfortable. But as the world works, there was one catch- this bus did not have a bathroom. This bus was also equally noisy (we were lulled to sleep by the gentle noises of a Korean movie called Tidal Wave, which was sensitively presented after some real footage of the Japan tsunami) and it was equally freezing. So we ended up in pretty much the same conditions (a little more spread out) but with no bathroom. **Fact learned about myself: I really like to drink water. And drinking a lot of water on an overnight bus with no bathroom can get very uncomfortable)** But we toughed it out and arrived back in Manila at about 5am. 

Getting off the bus, we were overwhelmed by people asking us if we wanted a taxi, but we pushed through them all to find one with a meter. We headed to a guesthouse, got a room, and promptly fell into bed and slept. 

This ended day 1 of our Philippines adventure. Tune in to the next installment, titled "Almost Losing our Minds and Actually Losing a Camera in Manila".