Banaue

It was a long 8 hour van drive to the town Banaue.  I was still bun burned and tired from the island and this is when my feet really started to swell and I started getting sick.  We made it though with no issues.

Banaue was up very high and was pretty different than the other parts of the Philippines I'd seen so far.  Almost everywhere we looked was a great view and they even had pine trees.

The main reason we came up here was to see the famous rice terraces.  They are 2,000 year old rice fields cut into the mountains.  For more info here is the wiki link.  We hiked down for a closer look.

The hike wasn't bad, but I did have to go to the bathroom.  At the bottom they had a bathroom I could pay to use but it was one of the worse ones I'd seen and my real concern was that it only had a curtain and there were lots of people outside it.

One interesting thing about it was that all these people had to make this 1ish mile hike to and from their houses every time they wanted to leave the small village.  Cars couldn't drive down.  We saw people carrying eggs and food down to their houses a couple of times.  They had an elementary school at the bottom but that was it.  Older kids had to walk up and they pay for a ride to school.  Because of the cost they stayed somewhere near the school during the week before coming home on weekends.

This next picture is of a different rice field and village.

Here we are walking up.

This next picture is one I took from the car.  You can see the rice a little better here.  Notice how the road goes all the way to the very edge?  It was super curvy and pretty scary.  There were parts where the road eroded away, other parts we could see the ground underneath the road had eroded away making it even more scary.  Sometimes it was best not to look.

The hotel we stayed at that night had a mini model of an old home.

This next picture was the view from our room.

One nice thing about this town is that it was quit a bit cooler.  I wasn't checking all the time but I'd guess it was in the lower 70s with some overcast and even slight sprinkling.

Island Hopping

Cotton candy must me a little more popular in the Philippines than it is in America because they even sell cotton candy floats at McDonalds.  I tried one and it wasn't that great.  I guess I don't like cotton candy flavored pop.  Their McDonalds also sells other floats, and a couple different things like spaghetti.

While on Palawan our hotel was decent.  I think we Americans are just a little high maintenance.  At more than one of our hotels we complained about cold showers air conditioning not working.  This next picture is of the breakfast.  They tried to make it fancy, but most of the charm was wasted on me once I saw all the bugs jumping around the food.

We spent most of the day island hopping.  Our tour group went snorkeling and swimming on three different islands.  The first one was pretty small.  It was pretty empty too so I liked it.

This place was fun because they had a high jump I got to try out a couple times.  The sand was also nice and smooth.

While on the second island we ate lunch.  Under the water on this island was supper rocky.  It wasn't as smooth and pretty, but it actually was my favorite because they had the prettiest fish!  I spend the most time snorkeling here.  It was great.

We saw lots of people selling coconuts.

The third island was similar to the first because the beach was smooth and pretty, but this one didn't have any fish.

By the end of the day I was super sunburned!  I did put on sunblock but apparently not nearly enough.  My legs hurt so bad it was the worst sunburn I've ever had.  Every time I stood up for the next entire day it hurt so much!

The trip back to my parents house was a little crazy.  After flying back to the main island we couldn't find our driver for a while.  Once we found him he drove us to a bus then we got on the bus and rode to my parents town it took a while.  The bus was freezing though and my legs were killing me.  We ended up getting back after midnight which wouldn't be so bad.  The problem was we all needed to hurry and do laundry because we were leaving at 3:30am for our next trip.  I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours.  I think my mom stayed up the whole time switching laundry.  Their washing machine took a little more involvement than I'm used to. 

Palawan

After visiting the local town where my parents live and their ward area for a couple days we hopped on a flight and went to one of their larger islands Palawan.

 This part of the airport was pretty small but it was different because it was just one large room.  Nothing was sectioned off for the different gates.  We eneded up leaving a couple hours later than we planned so we hung out in that room for a while.  They had Papa Johns, Cinnabon, and Starbucks.

Once we got to the island we were with a tour group most of the time.  Our tour guide was great, she was friendly and nice as she and the driver took a van of about 12 people around for 3 days.

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Here I am shopping.  They are known for their pearls and were pretty inexpensive.  

 I got to hold a stick bug,

a scorpion,

and a giant snake!

They had a pretty butterfly garden.

The next day we got on a boat and traveled to the underground river.  It was voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world.

There were lots of tourists.  Here you can see a boat going in.

We listened to an audio tour so we wouldn't disturb the environment.  There were so many bats!

It was neat!  There were lots of rock formations, we were in it for about 45 minutes and the river was even longer than that.  I didn't take pictures because it was pitch black inside.  The only light came from our tour guides helmet lamp.

It was a once in a lifetime experience.

The Filipino People

While in the Philippines my parents took us to meet some of the members in their homes.  Everyone was extremely nice and happy.  It was great!

These next two arn't actually members of their ward but just a houses we saw while driving.

 The ward seemed sad to have my parents leave.  They had a ward activity farewell for them.  They sang songs to them and performed dances.  They even took turns thanking them in the microphone, then we all ate.

 Oh, and we took tons of pictures!  Everyone wanted pictures on their phones, so we spent a good amount of time taking selfies.  It was fun.  here is the ward after sacrament on Sunday.

 I also took a few pictures of a typical street.  The first one shows a Jeepney.  It is basically their form of a bus.

 The next picture shows a tric, I would think of this more like a taxi.

 Their driving was pretty different from what I'm used to.  The lines seem to be more to give everyone a general idea of lanes than something that they should actually stay inside.  They also don't have very many lights or stop signs.  Everywhere you just sort of merge in.  If you leave any sort of gap in front of you a car will squeeze in and you are expected to stop and wait for them.  When you are the one pulling into traffic it's almost like closing your eyes and crossing your fingers hoping they will stop for you.  If you wait for an opening you will never get a chance to go.  Drivers are expected to honk about every 10 seconds, whenever you pass someone or want them to get out of your way.  Riding in the car was a little stressful for me.  I'm not sure Bob could have handled it at all, he has a hard time letting anyone drive but himself.

Temple Mall and Market

The first thing we did after sleeping was go to the temple.  Nothing culturally different there.  It was a very small temple with the smallest session I've been in, but nothing unusual.  Everything was even in English.

Later we headed to the mall where I saw all kinds of different things.

They had unique ice cream flavors like cheese and avocado.  I did try a cheese flavored popsicle once and it really did taste like cheese.  I couldn't do more than one taste.

Lots of little fish thing for sale everywhere.  We saw them at the market and at the breakfast buffets of our hotels.  They had a pretty strong smell that was hard for me to handle.  I did not taste any of them.

The coolest thing at the mall was the cotton candy stand in the middle.  I got the flower shape for about $2.  Most of their food was amazingly cheap.  Much less expensive than I was used to.  Each different color had a different flavor, one was even buttered popcorn flavor.

The mall was super crowded and loud!  We saw a marching band walking right through the mall.  Another store had Karaoke out front.  I also saw a different band and a guy in full costume blasting music and dancing in front of Dunkin Donuts.  It was like the stores put on a little show to get you to go in them.  The grocery store even had karaoke going on inside.

Another thing that was strange about going to the mall was all the security and employees.  They have tons security gaurds!  We had to walk through a metal detector and get our purses looked through when we entered.  Throughout the mall there was lots of security and they had big huge guns too.  They stores also had tons of employees.  If you are looking in their section they will come up to you and say "Yes Ma'am."  Then they will stand right next to you staring until you move on or buy something.  I was called Ma'am more times in two weeks than I was in my entire life up to this point.  In the tie section there were three employees working.  Each time I switched rows the next worker would come stand next to me.  The same thing happened in the lipstick section.  They seemed to stick to their small sections and if anyone enters their section they stand next to them ready to help.

The last thing about the mall was that we saw many people and they all saw us.  We were not in a tourist area so we were really they only white people.  No one seemed to have a problem openly staring at us.  It was awkward.  The guys seemed worse because they were so blatant about it.  A few women even told me that I was beautiful or something similar.  When in Japan I felt out of place but not anything like here.

Later that night we went to the market.  It was pretty much their version of Pikes Place.  The main differences were that it was sooo hot and smelly.  It was actually pretty hard for me to be there at all.  It was also pretty crowded and I felt like at any minute I was going to get hit by a car or their trike things.  I wasn't used to all their honking and zipping around.

Next is a picture of us out to eat.  It seemed like most of the time I could get a full meal for around $3.

I saw a few help wanted signs like this, mostly at restaurants or sales jobs.  They have no problem specifying age, gender, or even marital status when hiring.  I do not meet the requirements.