Rice Terraces

The northern Philippines is known for its impressive rice terraces.
The rice terraces are one of those things that you just can't come to
this part of the world and not take the time to go see. David and I
decided that we would go to Banaue and Batad: two towns that are very
well known for their spectacular displays of rice terraces. The rice
terraces in this area were built more than two thousand years ago with
gravity fed irrigation systems that looked to be still in use today.
At Banaue the terraces are visible from the highway. We walked from
town up the highway for two kilometers to the viewpoint. The scenery
here is stunning. The rice terraces are sculpted into the sides of the
mountains in graceful curving lines. At the viewpoint old people
waited wearing traditional costumes in the hopes that tourists would
give them a few pesos in exchange for a posed picture or two. I made
David photograph a group of particularly cute ladies who were finding
the rainy afternoon chilly and wearing toques under their head dresses
and jackets over the rest of their costumes. The next day dawned
bright and sunny (and hot). We hired a tricycle to take us to the
Batad junction. A tricycle is a motorcycle with a cute little side car
that (sort of) fits two. The road was rough and steep. As a result the
pace of our journey was quite slow. When we got to the junction we
gratefully hauled our battered bodies out of the tricycle and set out
for a fairly demanding, but beautiful, two hour hike to get to Batad.
In Batad we found a very nice guesthouse with great views of the
terraces. In Batad the terraces are in the shape of a giant
amphitheater. The acoustics are great; in the evening one house put on
their radio and everyone in town listened to the music (it's OK though
because everyone in town - probably in most of the Philippines - would
choose to listen to country music). I forgot to mention in my last
post about our trip to Sagada that on our six hour bus trip we
listened to possibly every Garth Brooks song ever released - even some
Christmas ones. You may be interested to know that yes, there are
enough Garth Brooks songs to last for most of a six hour bus trip.
Another interesting fact about music in southeast Asia is that no one
is shy about singing aloud whenever and where ever they feel like it.
Sometimes they sing along with the radio, but many times they just
sing. I'm a little concerned that we might be picking up this habit
and one day will get some very funny looks when we start singing on
the c-train. On the topic of music, the Philippines is a very
Christian country. We were in a major mall today and the music they
were playing loudly throughout the mall was Christian pop. Dave says
he even noticed they were playing "As the Deer" in the coffee shop. In
Batad we went hiking on the terraces. I don't know if you have
noticed, but rice terraces are steep. We walked up and down an
unfathomable number of stairs. We climbed up as high as we could to
see the terraces from the top then we went down one very long flight
of stairs to see a really lovely waterfall at the bottom of the
valley. By the end of the day I was exhausted. We went to bed very
early and were up very early the next morning to hike back out in time
to catch the 9:00 jeepney back to Banaue.