Our first week at Enca Farm

We have picked a very nice place to settle in to for the next six
weeks. It's a very nice location about an hour form Baguio. To get
here we took a jeepney from Baguio to the small town of Acop where
Marilyn one of the sisters of the family farm has a house which we can
stay at when she has a spare room. From there we either take a jeep or
walk down a very steep mountain road to a river valley then walk up
the other side of the valley for about ten minutes to arrive at the
farm. Marilyn told us during our correspondence with that we would be
staying in a hut. This is the nicest "hut" I have ever seen. It has a
small kitchen and an en suite bathroom. We have a constant supply of
water about thirty feet from our door except when it's diverted to
water crops. Outside our front door there is a lime tree and a nice
flower bed. We are enjoying the work here. We have gathered dry leaves
to start a compost pile, then we weeded, prepared and planted corn and
snow pea terraces. One of my highlights of staying here so far was
during our farm tour Olive, Marilyn's sister pointed out some small
cherry tomatoes that grow wild here at the farm. They are delicious
like wild strawberries at home. We are able to cook when we want but
so far we have enjoyed shared meals with the other guests and Olive.
Tonight was our turn to cook so we gathered up a bag of wild tomato's
and made a vegetarian chili with various other herbs and vegetables we
found on the farm. There is no electricity or running water here so it
feels a lot like camping except for the big fancy cabin. Most Sundays
for our day off we plan to leave the farm and either stay at Marilyn's
house in Acop or take a jeepney into Baguio pick up things we run out
and enjoy the city for the day.

We are in the Philippines

We thought we would post a quick note to let everyone know we safely arrived in the Philippines. We got our exit stamp from Vietnam with less than an hour to spare then had an uneventful overnight flight and bus ride to arrive in Baguio. We will spend the night here and head out to Enca farm tomorrow morning. We met the owner this afternoon in Baguio and she seems very nice. Philippines so far seems different than the other places we have visited. It makes us think of the colourful countries of central America or Mexico.

Northern Vietnam

The thing to see during any trip to Vietnam seems to be Halong Bay. If
you have only seen a few pictures of Vietnam, you have doubtless seen
a photo of Halong Bay. It is the place where giant pieces of stone jut
out of the ocean. We knew that it would be touristy, but we decided
that we would like to go anyways. We got on an overnight bus to Hanoi
then took the train from Hanoi to Hai Phong. We had planed not to stay
in Hai Phong but to take the ferry directly to Cat Ba Island and stay
there instead. However, when we got to the ferry pier we knew that
they were trying to scam us on the price of the ferry ticket so we
decided to spend the night in Hai Phong and take the ferry in the
morning because it seemed that most companies only ran boats in the
morning. We went back the next morning and were disappointed to find
the exact same set up. If you are a foreigner and want to get from Hai
Phong to Cat Ba you have to buy your ticket from the shady seeming
lady under the umbrella on the street for twice the going rate. None
of the companies will sell a ticket directly to you. We did enjoy our
night in Hai Phong. We found some good restaurants and some nice,
helpful people, but as soon as we approached the pier we found it to
be a really ugly place were everyone seemed to be aggressively trying
to rip us off.

We eventually decided to swallow the increased cost of tickets for a
boat that they would not let us see before we put down the money. Once
on the ferry we really enjoyed our trip to Cat Ba Island which is in
the middle of Halong Bay. The scenery is stunning, and the town is a
really nice place to visit. We had an amazing hotel room with great
views of the harbour for ten dollars a night.

The view from our room

We spent time at the beach one day and went on a boat tour of Halong Bay
the next. After too few relaxing days on Cat Ba we caught the early
morning ferry back to the mainland (for less than half of the cost of
our tickets in) and made the connection to the train we wanted back to
Hanoi with one minute to spare. On the train we decided that motion
sickness may be more prevalent here than at home. It was not the first
time that we have been near to someone who vomited for an entire train/
bus ride. Yuck.

We had a short stay in Hanoi where we enjoyed sipping coffees while
watching the chaotic traffic. Later we went to see a water puppet
show. Water puppetry is a traditional art form here and we really
enjoyed the show. Some of the members of the orchestra looked a bit
bored, but I might look bored too if I put on the same show five times
a day everyday.

I am writing this as we ride the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.
On the train we have two older ladies and an undisclosed number of
mice for room mates. The ladies are very cute. They do not speak
english and we do not speak Vietnamese, but we have managed to
communicate a few things. One lady told us through hand signals that
the glasses prescription that she needs for each eye is quite
different, but someone made a mistake with her glasses and put the
lenses on the wrong sides. She was joking that she could hold her
glasses off to one side and look through only one lens. I joked that
she should try wearing her glasses upside-down. Everyone thought it
was very funny. I think it might have actually worked better than
right-way-up because I saw her wearing them upside-down to read
several hours later.

The ladies are checking out the postcards we were writing

Our other room mates chewed through the side of
our cloth shopping bag and enjoyed some of our crackers during the
night. We plan to spend a couple days in HCMC before we fly to
Manilla. From Manilla we take a six hour bus ride north to Baguio.
From there it is a jeepney ride to the town of Acop. We will be
volunteering at a farm near Acop for several weeks. They do not have
electricity, so I imagine that we will not have access to internet
unless we go into town for something. We will do our best to stay in
contact from the Philippines, but it may not be very frequent contact.

Beautiful Vietnam

Vietnam is very beautiful and reminds us of British Columbia. The
fields here are full of crops, mostly rice but some other things as
well. I'm not sure if this is because Vietnam receives more rain than
the other countries we visited previously or we are approaching the
time of year when the previously visited countries have crops as well.
One of our friends form Harmony Farm said that everybody works in
Vietnam. From what I have seen I think this to be true. There is very
little begging or poor people in the places we have traveled through.

After leaving the Mekong delta we took a night train half way up the
coast to Hoi An. Hoi An is a very nice little town with french
buildings in the old part of town. It is surrounded by neon green rice
fields and just a few kilometers from some very nice beaches. We
enjoyed browsing through the old part of town and looking through it's
many local art shops. The streets in Hoi An are also lined with
tailors ready to make custom garments. Marina and I both had a pair of
pants made as they tend to be a difficult garment to find in our size
here. We could have defiantly spent more time in Hoi An but that has been
true of most places we have visited in Vietnam or even South East Asia
for that matter. We had read about Bach Ma National Park and after
looking into our options decided the best place to visit the park was
from Hue. We hired two moto bike drivers to take us from Hue to the
park gate and from there we walked in to a waterfall and swimming hole.
Bach Ma is a very beautiful park with all kinds of different plants
and insects surrounding us as we walked through the thick jungle.
Normally you can pay to catch a ride up to see the top of the Bach Ma
mountain but the road was under construction so this option was
unavailable. Given that the road was closed this made for a very nice
and quiet day of walking up to the hike starting point and then
walking to the falls. Very few vehicles passed us on our way to the
hike and we only saw one other group on the hike. This area saw heavy
fighting during the American war as the Americans set a base
on the top of the mountain. I would not have guessed from what we
saw that the area had seen heavy bombing. Either the jungle has been
persistent or the area we visited was passed over. Along with the
enormous human tragedy of war nature is another causality.

Mekong Delta

David and I left Cambodia and entered Vietnam by taking an Express boat on the Mekong River. The scenery was beautiful. There were only three other passengers on the boat, so it was a relaxed, quite trip. The sun set over the river while bathing children waved and yelled their hellos. The boat dropped us off in the Vietnamese city Chau Doc. On our first night in Chau Doc we found a street vendor who sold us big, delicious bowls of pho for around a dollar each. Yum. The next morning we enjoyed sitting by the main street sipping Vietnamese coffee and watching traffic go by. There are clearly more traffic rules here. All adults wear helmets while riding their scooters. We never see more than two adults on a scooter. There does not seem to be any rules about how many kids you can pack on there with the two adults though. It is amazing how much stuff can be moved on one scooter or bicycle. We have seen more than once someone moving a refrigerator on the back of their scooter. Fridges here are not as big as those in Canada, but it is still an amazing sight.


After a couple relaxing days and a little bit of wonderfully cooling rain in Chau Doc, we took a bus to Can Tho. In Can Tho we woke up very early one morning to be at the river by 5:30 where we hired a boat to take us to see two nearby floating markets. The markets were really neat. People stack their boats very full of whatever it is that they want to sell (mostly fresh produce) then they head to the market where they pull their boats alongside the boats of potential buyers. The second market was much smaller, but we liked it better because the boats were small and mostly powered by rowing. The boats could be packed much closer together than where they were powered by motors. We went right through the center of the market. Our driver just pushed up against boats until they parted a bit and we could pass between.


Our driver bought some fruit that we did not recognize and shared some with us. It looked a little like a very round mango. The skin was green, and when she peeled it with a knife the flesh was white. There were some large smooth black seeds in the middle. It was very yummy. David and I bought some crispy, tasty, flat bread before we left the market and headed back to town.