20.10.18 - 27.10.18 Banaue, Sagada, Manila

To spend our last week in the Philippines and also in Asia not only in chaotic cities, we got on another night bus to go further north. We wanted to settle down in the small town of Banaue first to visit the oldest rice terraces in the world, which are located nearby in Batad.

Early in the morning, a tricycle driver took us to the end of the road, which is about a kilometer away from the village of Batad. The journey there was challenging, Matthias even had to walk a bit because it was too dangerous for a fully loaded tricycle. At the saddle point (where the road ended not long ago), we stopped briefly to enjoy the view and glimpse the rice fields behind the fog. So we left our driver at the end of the road, where he and a dozen other drivers made themselves comfortable to wait for us for a few hours. We continued our way and after a short climb, the path turned into a pleasant hiking trail. After signing the obligatory guestbook, we headed towards the nearby waterfall, which was supposed to lead us through the famous rice fields. Although we were initially disappointed that the rice fields did not shine in the greenest green as we expected, but instead were harvested about a month ago and therefore appeared brown and muddy, it was still a great experience to navigate through the rice fields and even do some climbing. But it was also quite exhausting... so exhausting that Lea gave up after one-third of the stairs that would lead to the waterfall and preferred to enjoy the view of the rice fields. Matthias bravely continued and managed to climb up all the stairs with his last strength. The whole effort was definitely worth it when we saw the waterfall, even though the cooling down didn't last long. Despite the exhausting day, it was still great to see how people live in such a remote place where everything seems to revolve around rice.

The next day, we wanted to go further north to the village of Sagada, which caught our attention mainly because of its hanging coffins on the cliffs. There is also a cave where coffins are placed after an excessively large offering, which hardly anyone can afford. The journey there started with a lot of waiting again, but overall it went well. However, it turned out that it was not possible to visit the cave without a guide, even though the way there was easy to find. We learned the same thing about the hanging coffins... They wanted us to register at the tourist office for an entrance fee and pay for a guide, which we didn't really need but they considered it mandatory to look after us, as they were afraid that the place would be desecrated. We were so shocked by this (and apparently this has only been done recently) that we turned around and didn't see any of the attractions in Sagada. In hindsight, well, it wouldn't have been much money, but in that situation it just didn't feel right to us. So we spent our time in Sagada in cafes and took short walks.

To get back to Manila, we had to take a night bus again. Unfortunately, it arrived in the middle of the night and we naturally arrived at our hotel way too early. The receptionists were not pleased... especially since we didn't want to pay the 100 pesos per hour for early check-in (10 hours) and suggested waiting for at least 5 hours on the sofa in the entrance area. She promised us to negotiate with the manager so that we would only have to pay for 5 hours for the 10 hours, as we would also check out too early two nights later. As it turned out during our check-out, she either didn't do it or it didn't work, and she stood in front of us almost crying, saying that she had to pay the missing 500 pesos out of her own pocket. Even though we were really angry and wouldn't have checked in so early otherwise, we couldn't bear not to pay for it, even though it was our last money and we would have nothing to drink on the plane. Not a great ending... But back to Manila. We spent the last two days in Makati, found a wedding outfit for Lea, had coffee, ate pizza, had Filipino food twice, thoroughly cleaned our shoes to avoid any problems when entering Australia, and looked forward to driving to the airport early in the morning on the 27th.