Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines.

We’re in the Philippines. Boy, is it an action packed time. Our first stop was on the island of Luzon, home of Manila. It hostes the spectacular (UNESCO World Heritage site) Ifugao rice terraces on this island, and I didn’t want to miss them. Our getting to the village of Banaue and back was pretty interesting… since Justin wrote about the whole story and posted gorgeous panoramas about both villages we visited, I’ll focus on the few photos I have of the life we witnessed in the rice terraces. The authentic life and well, us. We were part of them for two days.

First, let’s set the scenery… this is what we were after: ancient, majestic, steep rice terraces.

To get to the Banaue terraces from the village, we took a tricycle… bumpy but fun ride!

Tricycles were everywhere (along with Jeepneys) including abandoned on the side of the road.

Justin and I hiking on the terraces. It was surreal to be immersed in the landscape rather than just watching it from the other side of the valley.

There were LOTS of stairs during our hikes, such that while going down my thighs would shake so hard I’d be afraid they would just give out. They never did, except for one misplaced footing that almost threw me down a small ravine. Luckily, there was a log where I fell which blocked me and I was able to get back up right away. Phew! Below, is a small boy running down the same stairs that were making our muscles cry for help… and with a bag of rice on his shoulders.

Farmers don’t bother wearing any footwear in the fields because of the sticky mud and sometimes knee-high water. I noticed all the natives feet are incredibly wide and thick.

Justin, sweaty from the hard hike.

In one of the family compounds, a kid way too little for that huge knife was trying to cut a plastic jug. He had fun posing for me and was even happier when I showed him the photo (thank you digital cameras with instant preview).

Kids playing on the terrace walls in the village of Batad.

Pig!

Old people here have a lot of character. Most importantly they seem happy and they are extremely mobile. They can go up and down huge stone stairs, and even squat for hours. Most of us can’t even do that at age 30.

Here are two women wearing the traditional costume (and chewing on betelnut) and making a few pesos by getting their picture taken by visitors like us.

This man was 90 years old.

I love rice fields, there’s something about them. Maybe it’s the growing of an essential food, the green, the simple life around it. In any case being up there in the middle of these 2-3 thousand year old terraces made me really happy.

We’ve been in the Philippines for two weeks already and I haven’t even finished posting about Bali. Action packed times, no time for blogging! Anyways, this will be the last post about our Balinese experience.

Being in Ubud made me want to learn all sorts of things since so many classes were readily available. Just for kicks, I took a silversmithing class where I could make my own 5 grammes sterling silver pendant. The class lasted about 2.5 hours and this is what we did.

First, I sketched out the design I wanted to make which was inspired from one of the pendants I saw in the store.

My teacher, Ketut, gave me the 5g silver wire to work from.

I cut and plied all the little circles required for the design. It took a while… the circles needed to be so small that they kept slipping from my pliers. I spent a good deal of time on my knees in the workshop trying to find the little darn things.

All 17 small circles, one big one, and 2 curvy wires.

Then, I arranged all my little pieces as designed and got to pump the awesome foot cranked soldering machine while Ketut did the very delicate and somewhat dangerous task of soldering the tiny pieces together.

It’s now one piece!

Off it went into sulfuric acid to finish the binding after which it was ready for polishing. I did most of it, but apparently I was too gentle so Ketut kindly gave the last polish with his expert skills.

And here it is, shinny and made by me!

PS: While I was working the pliers, Justin was figuring out how to ship the cow skull… very productive 2 hours.

We finally gathered the courage to rent a scooter for 50,000 rupiah (about $5) in Amed, a stretch of several fishing villages in East Bali. The feel is definitely much more rural than around Ubud.

Justin on our rented scooter overlooking one of the fishing bays.

It was such a thrill to be in control of our moving around after so many cab/bus rides we have been taking here.

When we left, the tank was a little low, so we got some petrol at a “petrol station” such as this one. Gotta love the plastic bottles!

Along the way, it was fun seeing some local life like this woman who I think was about to prepare some small baskets for Hindu offerings.

Or these kids having fun on a bike.

The road ahead of us…

And here’s the video of a pretty representative chunk of the road so you can pretend you were there with us.

Part of the fun of traveling is to try and immerse yourself in the customs and culture of where you are. That’s probably impossible to do thoroughly unless you spend a significant amount of time in a place and have day-to-day interactions with locals about living matters.

The alternative for us passerbys, is to go to small little restaurants, take walks away from the main roads, go to the market, go fishing or take some classes. I’m sure there much more to do, but at least, that’s what we’ve been doing.

And so I took a traditional Balinese painting class. It was a one-on-one, 3-hour course where I learned how to sketch and paint with watercolors a traditional (and simple) flower design.

This is my teacher and I. Everytime I would do something right, he would say “ahhhhhhhh, good.” Or he would correct a curve somewhere and when it was shaped to his liking, he’d go “ahhhhhhhh, yes.”

There were lots of “ahhhhh” in these 3 hours.

I started with sketching the flowers. First with a pencil, then with a felt pen.

Then I painted the base colors for the flowers, stems and leaves.

Then I worked on the flower accents.

And finally the stem and leaves accents, along with a light background wash. Voilà!

We had lunch at the little place where we snapped all the scooter photos. It was a small, cute, indoor-outdoor “hole-in-the-wall” across from the market called Cafe Kopi, and they offered Balinese food at Balinese prices.

Justin ordered one of Bali’s signature drinks, the young coconut water. It is served in the freshly opened coconut with some lime, sometimes sugar and ice. They also provide a spoon to scoop off the tender “meat” from the lid and the inside. On top of having excellent re-hydration properties, it is delicious and it looks just so exotic.

I was feeling a little more bubbly and ordered the ginger-lemongrass-fizz. It was sweet, tangy, spicy, so delicious! I am officially in love with any combination of ginger, lime, lemongrass, mint and some bubbles.

Food-wise, Justin had the Mie Goreng (fried noodles) which I don’t have a picture of, so sorry! I, on the other hand, had a photogenic Gado-Gado. An assortment of steamed or blanched vegetables presented in a cabbage wrap, with a hard boiled egg, potatoes, tofu, tempeh and lots of thick peanut sauce. Yumo-yumo!

For all this delicious food and delightful drinks, the total bill came to about $7. A pretty sweet deal for being stuffed, refreshed and entertained.