Steaming crap for my birthday

David and I decided to go out to celebrate my birthday a few days
early while we were in Baguio. We went to an excellent restaurant that
serves local, organic foods. The meal was amazing. On the
recommendation of Greg, who writes for Lonely Planet Philippines, and
who visited the farm we are staying at to check out Enca farm and
Wwoofing, we decided to try a local specialty with our desserts: civet
cat coffee. Civet cats are a kind of wild cat that lives in this area.
They like to eat coffee beans. I don't know who discovered this in the
first place, but if you take the coffee beans that have been digested
by the civet cat and roast then brew them they make what is considered
one of the best coffees in the world. Greg told us that it would cost
$50 to try civet cat coffee in London but only 150 pesos (around $3)
to try it here. A three dollar coffee is pretty extravagant in Baguio,
but we thought it would be a fun splurge. The coffee was very good,
but I found it strange to get my mind around the fact that I was
sipping a hot mug of poop.

We spent the actual day of my birthday in Acop. We skyped with family
members and enjoyed the chance to catch up. David baked a chocolate
cake and served it with whipped cream and fresh mangoes. We shared
dinner and cake with the family who owns the farm we are volunteering
at.

Routine

Sometimes it seems that time moves more quickly when I settle into a
routine. The days melt into one another, and time passes while I don't
notice it. We wanted to spend a longer time in one place so we made
plans to stay at Enca Farm for six weeks. Suddenly over two weeks have
passed and we are more than a third through our time here. I wonder if
the rest of our stay will pass just as rapidly.

Each morning we get up at around seven o'clock and get ready for the
day. We only spend around six hours a day working on the farm, but we
work hard during that time. We dig, weed, haul, make compost, plant,
find dead fall for fire wood, or do other tasks. I think that David
finds the work easier than I do, but sometimes that just means that he
does more of it. By the end of the day we are both pretty tired, and
we sleep well at night. We prepare most of our own meals. We walk over
to Olive's house to get ingredients for our meal, then we come back
and cook in our cabin. We have a one-burner propane stove and a clay
stove. The clay stove is a clay stand that holds a pot above a bowl
where you build a small fire. We have been trying to get the hang of
it because it is neat and because firewood is free here (we just have
to collect it from the forest), but propane is expensive. There is a
steep twenty to thirty minute walk from the closest place that it is
possible to drive to, so I also feel bad for the person who has to
haul in a full propane tank, so I don't want to make them do that more
often than necessary. We both enjoy cooking and we have not often been
able to cook on our trip, so we like having the chance to cook. It
lets us eat the foods we prefer (i.e. less meat than locals eat) and
sometimes, when we can find all the ingredients, we can make comfort
foods from home. Cooking three meals a day does, however, take a lot
of energy when we are also working hard on the farm. Sometimes Olive
makes a big pot of something yummy and we share a meal with her. When
she does this we appreciate the break and enjoy the Filipino food. So
far it seems that the favourite foods here are rice, meat, and sweets.
We bought a jar of peanut butter (homemade locally) so sweet that we
think it would be a very sugary icing. By the time that we finish
cooking dinner it is usually dark and we eat by candle light. After
dinner we read for a while using candles for light, then we go to bed
early so we will be ready for the next day's work. Life here quickly
falls in to a quiet, comfortable routine that we are enjoying. Most
Filipinos are Christian, so we get Sundays off each week. This weekend
we will be in Baguio, the nearest city to the farm. We will stay until
Tuesday because we need to extend our visas. On Tuesday we will head
back to the farm and back to our routine.

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.