Back in the USA…

We made it back to CA last Monday and have been enjoying hanging out at Sarah’s sister’s place with Maia, Greg, Gavin, baby Connor, and Sarah’s mom (who has been enjoying a break from the East Coast winter and helping take care of everyone). We were able to make day trips to Berkeley, San Francisco, and Davis/Sacramento to visit Sasha Van, Taz, Dave and Shannon, Gita, Henry, Sarah’s godmother, Christina, Brian P, Eli, Kerri, Caleigh, Eli’s mom, Eli’s sister, Joy, Jason, and Nathan-san. Baby Nathan (born Feb 16) was the youngest person we visited on the trip followed by Connor (born Feb 12) and Caleigh (born September 27).

Sagada, Mountain Province, January 23-26, 2007

Ahhh, Sagada. Anyone who’s been there knows what I mean. Our first trip there way back in November was too short and much different than this one. This visit was both more relaxing and more strenuous than the first. More relaxing in that we set our own pace and spent some quality lounge time in our cute li’l cottage:

More strenuous in that we hiked out butts off!! First we got up-close-and-personal with the famous coffins, last time seen only from a distance. We hired a guide to take us down to the entrance of Lumiang Cave, where these awaited.

Crazy eh? They are around a hundred years old and filled with real human bones … one had a hole that revealed what appeared to be a shoulder blade. For some reason that our guide couldn’t explain, the locals preferred (some still prefer) to be placed in coffins within caves or hanging on cliffs rather than buried.

This one has two massive lizards carved on top:

There are hanging coffins on cliffs all over the area. We hiked down into Echo Valley near town to find these ones:

Notice the chair on the right. As our nephew Gavin would say, “what the heck!?!”

We continued hiking around, enjoying the fabulously cool and sunny weather. The landscape is a crazy combination of rocky outcrops, pine trees, rivers, and terraced farmland. Here’s a scene on the main road just outside of town:

We hiked up a big hill nearby to see this view of the terraces just outside of town:

The next day we took a longer hike that went through a village surrounded by small terraces:

Our guide said that this village was recently at war with another village on the other side of the hill over water issues.

The hike ended at this amazing waterfall with a nice (but cold) natural swimming area:

Finally, check out Sarah’s cool terrace pic:

Bangkok Part 1

As we mentioned previously, we got to spend a bit of time in Bangkok in January. The first pass through we stayed at the lebua hotel (compliments of Colleen and Mike):

 

We explored Chinatown near the train station. There was a massive Golden Buddha at Wat Traimit, all manner of stalls in back alleys of the market, and delicious street food.

The Golden Buddha dates to the 13th century, is 15 feet tall, and weighs about 5 1/2 tons. At some point the Buddha was covered in plaster to protect it from theft. Imagine their great surprise in 1955 when they discovered that the plaster Buddha was in fact solid gold!

 

 

Congratulations…

To Maia and Greg on the newest addition to the family- a healthy baby boy!

And some belated congratulations to:

• Mike & Sybille and Meg & Vinny on their engagements
• Nisha & Todd on baby Kelsey’s arrival
• Katie and Maia on their recent PE certifications!

Hatching Plans…

In addition to catching up on writing previous adventures (Laos photos forthcoming, we promise!) we have been hatching some plans…  Including a trip to Bicol (here in the Philippines) to visit Sarah’s grad school advisor, Chris, and his wife Glen, a visit to Rio de Janiero, Brazil in late March to visit  Damon’s high school friend Jesse, and a visit to Croatia by way of London to spend some time with Sarah’s college friends Alice and Jon in early April.  We just returned from a fabulous trip to Batanes, the northernmost province in the Philippines- but I’m getting ahead of myself…

Tunod Ad Hungduan, January 19-21, 2007

Here’s a shot of us with Sarah’s cousin Baba, who was the inspiration for our rice terrace extravaganza last month. The tour was run by local volunteers, who took us to places well off the beaten track. Most visitors to this area see only Banaue and maybe Batad, but there are beautiful terraces all around the region.

In fact, the tour pretty much skipped Banaue entirely in favor of places most of us had never heard of: Kiangan and Hungduan. These are municipalities with stunning terraces, recognized by UNESCO, that are nevertheless rarely seen. Kiangan also has a war site: the place where Japanese General Yamashita surrendered to U.S. troops at the end of WWII. We spent our first night there before heading to Hungduan, the focal point of the tour. Here’s Sarah at the fantastic viewpoint at Hapao.

That night we were treated to a cultural show, which included a performance of a Hudhud chant. Here’s what it looked like.

These chants are phenomenal…they are stories thought to be nearly as old as the rice terraces (i.e. two thousand years old, no joke!). There many different chants, and each one takes DAYS to recite. They were memorized and passed down through women chanting while working the rice terraces. Very cool, and also recognized by UNESCO.

The next day, we went on a fantastic and thrilling hike through the terraces at Hapao to a small hot spring. Great views on the hike…

 

After lunch we participated in a tunod, or rice planting. It felt awesomely weird to sink barefoot into a muddy rice terrace up to our knees. Check us out!

Batad, Ifugao Province, Jan 21-22, 2007

 

A highlight of our rice-terraces tour in Ifugao was our trip to Batad, a village with famous “amphitheater” rice terraces and accessed only by foot. Our jeepney dropped us off at a place called Batad Saddle, where we saw this somewhat ominous sign.
We strapped on our overnight bags and hiked down the trail to the village. We had quite a late start so it was dark when we arrived at our guesthouse in Batad. In the morning we awoke to this sensational view from our balcony.

Our hike across the terraces was phenomenal. The terraces cover the whole slope … check out the view looking down.

This view shows the extent of the stonework that form the terraces.

It looks like it could be a stairway leading to a massive Cambodian temple or something … and these were built by farmers. Incredible. This pic shows villagers planting rice on massive terraces in front of their traditional homes.

Our hike took us over the ridge beyond the terraces and down the other side to this awesome waterfall.

Damon swam over to the frothy area – very nice after the long hike.