Tej Turner

Travelblog#46: Baguio – the Philippines

21^st-24^th February, 2015

Me and my three travelling companions had originally intended to spend our last few days in the Philippines visiting a small village in the north called Kabayan – which is famous for its people having their mummified ancestors stored within caves – but when we looked at the transport options we realised that such a venture would have been impractical with the rather limited ammount of time we had left. We could have just about done it, but it would have meant an entire two days of travelling for just one to spend actually exploring Kabayan.

So instead we ended up going to Baguio – a mountain city in the highlands of North Luzon, which is surrounded by many attractions – and it swiftly became my favourite city in the Philippines. Throughout this blog I am going to catalogue the places we visited.

St Louis University Museum

This is definitely somewhere to go if one has a particular interest in indigenous tribes, but it is not for everyone. I visited alone, while my travelling companions – who are not quite as geeky about history as I am – were busy shopping in SM Mall.

Hosted in the basement of the University’s library, it contains a vast collection of tribal artefacts from across the Cordillera, and the exhibition is wonderfully illuminated with enlightening information. The curator, Ike Picpican, is clearly very passionate about his subject and appears to have a particular interest in the magico-religious traditions of animist tribes. I found the details about indigenous talismans – such as tangkils (bands warriors wore around their arms) and dulis (necklaces made from snake vertebrae, which Bontoc women wear to protect themselves against malevolent spirits and thunderstorms) – and the stories about the gods and goddesses of the Cordillera pantheon, very intriguing.

Entry was free but, as it is on the grounds of St Louis campus, I had to pass through security, leave my passport at the entrance and wear a visitor’s badge. It was quite interesting to see the inside of a Filipino university.

Baguio Museum

As far as tribal history goes, the museum at St Louis University definitely had the upper hand, but Baguio Museum was still a fairly good (and educational) way to burn an hour or two of time, and it was also home to a genuine Kabayan Mummy.

There was also an art gallery downstairs and, if any of you readers have a burning desire to see a portrait photo of every mayor Baguio has ever had, then the second floor of this museum is the place for you. I, admittedly, may have breezed past that particular section…

BenCab Museum

Possibly the highlight of Baguio for all four of us was this treasure. It was a little out of town so we had to catch a taxi, but it was definitely worth the trip. It was more of an art gallery than a museum, but a very good one, and it somehow managed to cover a whole range of traditional and modern styles while still keeping the tribal theme as a distinct nucleus.

Baguio is a very arty place. Every museum there seems to have at least one room (or several) dedicated to displaying works made my local hands and minds. I found that the standard was generally very high, and much of it captured what I sensed was the essence of a tribal – and formally animist – identity caught in the throws of modern urbanisation and a Christian doctrine.

Tam-awan Village

Tam-awan was okay, but not quite deserving of its status as one of the main attractions in Baguio. It was essentially a collection of remodelled tribal buildings scattered around a copse, with a few art galleries and new-agey things – such as dream-catchers, and tires painted in psychedelic colours – thrown into the mix. There is quite a nice atmosphere there, though. I would recommend it to future travellers if they have some time to burn.

Baguio Botanical Gardens

The Botanical Gardens were a little rough around the edges – if they had just cleaned up the few little parts of it which let it down it would have been great – but it was definitely an enjoyable place to wander around for an hour or so, and we couldn’t really complain when it was free.

Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary

The ‘Cosmic Journey’ (which involved walking through a series of gardens giving a very brief history of the universe and life on our planet) was a bit cheesy, but the gardens themselves were very nice and the energy there was pleasant. The gift shop was stocked with lots of naturally made products, including soap and insect repellents, and there were a variety of interesting books about spiritual philosophy for sale. I ended up walking away with a copy of a book about the pre-Christian religious traditions of the tribes of the Cordillera – a subject I had become increasing intrigued by.

Mine’s View

It was just a short jeepney ride away, and the four of us caught a great view of the mountains.

We did, however, have to walk past a tourist trap of street stalls selling various forms of tat on our way down.

Vegetarian Restaurants

Being vegetarian in Philippines has been very frustrating, at times – there have been occasions where I have wandered around towns for what felt like hours, trying to find something without meat in it – but Baguio was definitely an exception to that rule and there was a good variety of places for me and Pedro to eat. ‘Oh My Gulay’ is the restaurant which all the travel guides rave on about, but we actually found the food there a bit bland. There was a Taiwanese style vegetarian restaurant in the food court at SM Mall which was always good for a spot of lunch, and on the final day in the area we discovered a place called ‘Health 100’, which just so happened to be opposite the road from Baguio Village Inn (the guest house most backpackers end up staying at).

The Earthquake

On the morning before we left, we went to Health 100 to eat breakfast and just as we were waiting for our food, the table suddenly began to shake and the floor rumbled. It didn’t last for very long, and I was a bit unsure what was going on at first, but, when I saw the panic-stricken café workers running towards the doorway, I realised that I had just experienced my first earthquake.

Its epicentre was 13 kilometres away from the city, and it was a magnitude of 4.1. Nobody was hurt, so I am actually glad it happened because it was quite an exciting experience.

For more photos from Baguio, click here.

Travelblog#45: Sagada – the Philippines

19^th-20^th February, 2015

Sagada was a bit of a surprise for me. It was one of the places I had ringed in my travel guide as a somewhere to visit – mostly because it sounded like there were some interesting caves to see there – but it wasn’t a location I had been expecting too much from. The Ifugao Rice Terraces had always been the principal reason for visiting the north of the Philippines, and Sagada was just an afterthought.

Well, I visited. And, as expected, the caves were quite interesting. On our first morning there me and my three companions – James, Chloe and Pedro – started off the day by visiting Lumiang Cave, which was home to over 100 coffins.

The coffins were filled with skeletons, and some of them even had carvings of lizards (symbols of fertility) on them. The people of Sagada have a tradition of ancestor worship which is hundreds of years old.

We then ventured to the next cave; Sumaging. The travel guide never mentioned how the road which runs between these two attractions has stunning views of a plateau.

Sumaging Cave itself was a little bit mediocre. We wandered around inside it for a few minutes and then turned back – none of us had a very powerful torch, and it didn’t seem like there was anything in there which was interesting enough to warrant hiring a guide and spending a couple of hours of our day scrambling around a series of dark chambers. We wandered back up to the town, stopping at a lovely vegetarian cafe called Gaia for a lunch, and then making a little detour through a chain of small villages: Ambasing, Demang, and Dagdag.

In the afternoon we went for a walk around Echo Valley, which was, like most of the terrain around Sagada, covered in beautiful pine trees. It is also home to more coffins, which had been hung from a series of limestone karsts – a tradition which is still in practice today by some of the Applai people who have remained faithful to their animist roots.

The following day James, Pedro and myself caught a jeepney to a nearby village called Banga-an, with the intention of taking a leisurely stroll to the nearby Bomod-ok Falls.

With it being Chinese New Year there were typically lots of tour groups being guided along the path, and the ladies who were escorting them kept asking us where our guide was. Which confused us, as the path in question was paved and we had been told by the Tourist Information Center in Sagada that a guide wasn’t needed for it.

We ignored them and carried on walking, but a few of the ladies we walked past got out their phones and called their friends, and thus, when we reached a small hamlet and at the bottom of the hill a group of them were waiting for us. They blocked our path and were very insistent that we could not venture any further unless we hired one of them to lead us.

At first they claimed it was because of safety – what if we got lost or hurt? – but then James told them that he had GPS on his phone and the trail was marked out on an App he had downloaded. They then said it was possible for us to walk it without a guide if we paid them a handsome ‘ordinance fee’ of 300 pesos. Each. We immediately pointed out the logical flaw: that, if they were prepared to do that, then this really wasn’t about our ‘safety’ at all. I asked them how long this new procedure had been in place for – at what point, exactly, was it decided that guides were mandatory? – but they wouldn’t tell me, so I am guessing it was very recent change. After I asked their ringleader three times, if there was any law against foreigners walking down that trail without a guide, she, very reluctantly, admitted it was just a ‘policy’ decided by the ‘Banga-an Tourist Center’ (aka, the village mafia).

The argument went round and round in circles, and I got very frustrated. Eventually I just walked away.

“You taking a guide then?” she said, siding up to me with the registration book and a pen.

“No.”

“Why not?” she asked, looking incredulous.

“Because I think what you lot have got going on here, is very weaselly.”

I know what you are probably thinking: that I am just a privileged person from the First World and they are just trying to make a living. Why didn’t I just pay up?

It wasn’t about the money – I would have paid that much as a conservation fee and not thought much about it – it was the method they were using to try to get money out of me which vexed me. Schemes like this keep popping up all over Asia, usually in places which are quite touristy, and they are nothing more than institutionalised scams. Walking people up and down a paved pathway is not a valid job, and forcing such a service upon someone, when they neither want nor need it, isn’t all that different from begging – in fact, in many ways it is worse, because beggars are not usually plump middle-aged women who own mobile phones; they can be ignored, and they will not block you from somewhere you want to go if you don’t pay them. Guiding is a profession which I have the upmost respect for, and I quite often employ the service of one when I think they can provide me with some information about an area I am venturing to or escort me to a place where I actually need to be guided but, as far as I am concerned, those ladies back there were not guides, and predatory way that they stalk around Banga-an, leaping upon any foreigner they see, lacks dignity.

Forced to turn back, by the time I reached the road in Banga-an again I was feeling very grouchy and I decided I needed some time alone to clear my head, so I began walking in the direction of Aguid; a nearby village which I could remember being described as quite scenic in something I had read.

On my way there another three more ‘guides’ jumped upon me from the roadside, suspiciously asking me where I was going – obviously hoping that I was going to the waterfall and they could ‘guide’ me – but I didn’t even credit them with a response. I just ignored them and carried on walking.

The views I saw from the roadside as I walked to Aguid were great, and my mood soon lifted. When I reached the main village where I was greeted by a few wide-eyed locals who seemed surprised to see a foreigner wandering around their neighbourhood. This surprised me, because it was probably one of the most picturesque places I had seen in the Philippines so far. I would certainly recommend it to any future travellers who end up reading this. Hoards of people come to see a waterfall which is just a stone’s throw away every day, but yet it seems that not many visitors make it here:

I walked down some steps, past a few more houses, and around the terraces for a while, enjoying the quiet simplicity of the setting and the wonderful scenery.

I eventually realised that I was going to have to go back to Banga-an, as I had been gone for a while and James and Pedro were probably waiting for me, so I started to navigate my way back up to the main road. The villagers I passed were all very happy to point me in the right direction, and none of them asked for any money.

For more photos from Sagada, click here.

Travelblog#44: Ifugao Rice Terraces – the Philippines

15^th-18^th February, 2015

Leaving Manila in behind, me and my three travelling companions – James, Chloe and Pedro – made our way to the bus station, where were loaded upon an aged vehicle. Once every space was filled, extra chairs were assembled in the aisle and more passengers were loaded on. This kind of thing is generally the norm in Asia, if you are travelling during the day, but this was night and… wasn’t this service advertised as a ‘sleeper’?

Ohayami are certainly not a company I would recommend to future travellers.

As the bus drove out of the city, engine straining from the weight of over 60 passengers, I discovered that my seat didn’t recline, and accepted the fact that sleep was going to be near impossible that night.

Banaue

Banaue is a mountain town in the highlands of North Luzon. It is the gateway to the Ifugao Rice Terraces; an ancient complex of paddies spread across the Philippine Cordillera which archaeological evidence suggests are over 2,000 years old. In 1995 the area was awarded the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was one of the places which had originally inspired me to come to the Philippines.

When we arrived in the morning it was raining and we were very tired, so we resigned ourselves to a lazy first day. We settled into a nice guest house called Querencia Hotel, which had restaurant overlooking the mountains, and we relaxed, occasionally turning our eyes wistfully to the window, where the downpour seemed to carry on relentless.

It eventually cleared up for a while, and during this brief lapse we ventured outside and made our way over to a local viewpoint, where we caught sight of mist drifting across the valley, blocking much of the scenery from view but making for an atmospheric landscape.

We then wandered over to a nearby museum, which was filled with artefacts and had lots of information about the culture and history of the Ifugao tribes who call these lands home.

After a good night’s sleep – and much improved weather – the following morning we were ready to start exploring the area properly. We went for a wander along a trail which followed an old irrigation canal through some of the rice fields outside Banaue, passing Tam-an – a humbly picturesque village – and then Poitan, which had some traditional Ifuago huts.

We then returned to Querenia Hotel and packed our bags before jumping upon a jeepney heading to Batad. We had ideas in our minds of venturing out on a trek from there so we could see some of the terraces and villages which are a bit more off the beaten track. By a stroke of fortune we met a woman on the jeepney called Joy who was a registered guide. She was from Batad and spoke very good English, so we told her that we were interested in hiring her to take us out on a trek the next day if the weather was agreeable.

Batad

Batad isn’t properly joined up to any roads so we had to get off the jeepney and walk the last few kilometres. We managed to make it to the village in time to see its breathtaking terraces before the sun went down, and then we claimed a dormitory-style room in a simple lodging house. It rained all night, and when we got up the next morning the entire village was so enveloped by fog that all we could see from the balcony was white. We began to worry that we were going to have to rethink our plans to venture out on a trek that day, but luckily the haze gradually lifted and the sun came out.

We contacted Joy and told her that we could be ready to leave within a few minutes if she was still free to take us.

Shortly after that, she was leading us out of the village through the terraces. Along the way she told us lots of interesting facts about the area and its people, and she was also happy to do her best to answer any questions we had. All but 2% of the people living around Batad have converted to Christianity, but some of their old summer festivals are still in practice, and she was able to tell me that the wooden effigies of a sitting man I kept seeing everywhere were depictions of Bulul, who, back in the days when they were animists, was placed around the fields to guard the rice.

Once we had crossed the Batad terraces Joy led us over a mountain and through some woodlands. At around midday we reached a village called Cambulo, where we ate lunch, and then for the rest of the day we were hiking along a ravine with very striking scenery.

Later that afternoon we reach Pula, a small village perched upon one of the mountain peaks.

Pula

It only had one guesthouse, which was owned by an elderly lady whom everyone called “Aunty”. There was a French couple also staying there that night, and their guide and ours worked together to rustle up some vegetables and rice for dinner. While they were cooking Aunty’s grandson, Marvin, chatted with us about his life growing up in the terraces and his plans to get a job abroad for a while to improve his English. When we had finished eating we all sat around a fire and Marvin initiated a few puzzle games.

In the morning we rose bright and early. We were all keen to get going, as we were hoping to get back to Banaue by lunchtime so we could catch the midday bus heading to Sagada. We were accompanied by the French couple and their guide for the remainder of our journey as we walked for four hours through a terrain of forests until we reached the main road. Once there, we thumbed a passing dumpster-truck and jumped onto the back.

For more photos from the Ifugao Rice Terraces, click here. My travel-buddy James also has his own photography website.

If you are interested in embarking upon a trek around the area with Joy (whom I would highly recommend as a guide) then she can be contacted via email (jpoligon@yahoo.com) or her telephone number (+639366580357).