Baguio, The Philippines

Caught a bus from Manila to Luzon province and Baguio. There was not much here to see and do but it was a stepping stone to the World Heritage Site of the ancient rice terraces in Banaue. The city is always coverered in mist and so it was quite cold in the evenings. We didn't need an air-conditioned hotel room!

Unfortunately we got stuck in Baguio because there were two typhoons in the province. We had a nice enough room in a clean hotel with cable TV so were able to stay put and watch the typhoons progress through the province. They even had piped Christmas music in the corridors. We also managed to get some postcards written and John got hooked into his Sudoku book again. Banaue is a small place in the mountains at the end of dirt roads so it was not a good idea to go there after the typhoons because of the slips and fallen trees etc.

In Baguio we felt comfortable walking about the place at night and found a huge shopping mall called SM where there were many restaurants, a foodcourt, supermarket and internet shops to keep us busy.

We thought it would be nice and peaceful in the mountains and away from Manila but the jeepneys and tricycles cause as much congestion, noise and pollution as they do in Manila.

There was also a 6.1 earthquake near Baguio but we seemed to have missed it but some other travellers we have met felt it.

One of the favourite dishes here is pork intestines and a favourite snack is fried pig skin which they eat with a hot spicy sauce.

Baguio is a university town so it is full of younguns canoodling in the parks and chatting in the internet shops.

(Photos to come as soon as we find a place that has the equipment to load them!)

Manila, The Philippines

Manila-what a culture shock after Japan and Taiwan! We enjoyed the order and cleanliness of Japan.

Manila is a mix of Mega shopping malls and shanty towns, wealthy government officials and begging children, Catholic nuns and head-scarfed Muslim women, uniformed street sweepers and uniformed school kids, armed security guards and armed police. Even McDonald's has armed guards. At the shopping malls guards search your bags and feel your waist for hidden guns (well I think that is what they are feeling you for).

Manila has a population of 10 million people with 14 cities included and 3 municipalities.

Tricycles using motorbikes.

The transport system is organised chaos and there is lots of it! There are not many public buses but thousands of jeepneys. These were originally jeeps left by the Americans and converted to hold passengers at the back. They advertise their route on a card at the front and cruise the streets until they are full and then head off on their route. You don"t have to wait long for one to come along and they hold about 10 passengers in the back and two in front with the driver. Some are air brushed and others are hand-painted and some are polished stainless steel. Some have statues of stallions on their bonnets and these are supposed to be for the mistresses the driver has! Competing with these are tricycles: a motorbike with a sidecar that seats 2 people facing forward and 2 more facing backwards. Competing with theses are the FXs: Toyota and Isuzu vans which seat two in front with the driver and a bench seat behind seats 4 and then two short seats that are accessed through the back door seat another 4. Competing with these are the taxi and private cars as well as some local buses. I had better not forget the motorbikes and the bicycles and the cycles with sidecars.

The diesel fumes are thick and I had trouble breathing. The buildings are covered with black soot and combined with the heat and humidity it is very tiring sightseeing in Manila.

The water on the street is black!

We stayed in a new hostel near the airport that we found online. They opened in March and we were the first guests they had that arrived by jeepney. Online we were given instructions on how to get to the hostel by taxi and jeepney. The airport taxis charge 35 times the rate of the jeepney and will often tell you they don't know the address where you want to go so that they can take you to a place they know that will give them commission. They also say they don't have change so they keep whatever you give them regardless of the price. We found the jeepney drivers helpful and honest although the ride is not as comfortable as a taxi.

Beside our hostel was an empty yard with a shack and a tarpaulin set up for an outdoor cooking area. They had 6 roosters in bamboo cages and they crowed all the time, night and day. Filipinos love cock fighting.

Everyday vendors came to the hostel gates selling vegetables, plasticware, and fresh fish. Here the fish vendor is preparing the fish street side for the hostel owners a Filipina lady and her Japanese husband.

We visited a fort from the days when the Spanish ruled here and the Catholic Cathedral of San Augustin and learnt about the Filipino hero Dr Jose Rizal.

The museum had a great display of local tribal life and relics from some of the many shipwrecks discovered in waters around the islands.

On the left: apartments, on the right apartments.

On the left these are for the dead. On the right these are for the living!

The Chinese cemetery was built because the Spanish wouldn't allow the Chinese to be buried in a Spanish cemetery. It has mausoleums which have air conditioning, chandeliers, flush toilets and kitchens as well as offerings of food to accompany the dead to the afterlife. There are also tombs called apartments which are leased for 25 years. One even has a swimming pool!

Final farewell in Taipei, Taiwan

We were able to use up the last day of our Japan Rail Pass to get to Kansai Airport to catch a flight back to Taipei for the last time. Taipei was a place to get cheap flights to Japan with the national airline EVA air. We had 2 nights here before heading for Manila, The Philippines.



We reunited with George Su and his daughter Karen and her husband Rong Fu. We were hopeful of seeing Karen and Rong Fu's baby but it was not to be. Karen was finding the last few days of the pregnancy tiring but we managed a day of sightseeing together.





George loves food so we were treated to a farewell feast. We are both suffering the effects of overeating in Taiwan and Japan and are looking forward to dieting in The Philippines! We have loved both the Taiwanese and Japanese food very much.

It was another sad time to leave George and his family and we look forward to the day when Karen and Rong Fu visit New Zealand with their son to see her sister Clare and brother-in-law Graham. We hope they will also bring George, Uncle Su, and Jenny and Jack and their 3 children too.

Final farewell in Ako City, Japan

It was very sad to say goodbye to Fidel, Noriko and Anna Montoya for the last time. We had a really great time reminiscing and sharing plans our for the future.

We were able to give Fidel some tips on homebrewing beer and had a great time tasting his brews which were made from a New Zealand Homebrew Kit called "Black Rock". We had fun watching the videos he had made especially "The Terminator" starring Anna and Noriko and were very impressed with the video of Noriko singing in a recital.

Anna was a delight and is a very talented artist at just 6. We look forward to the Mandai and Montoya families visiting us in NZ one day.

Akita, Japan

While I was teaching at Te Puke High School in 2005 I met Saki Mikami a Japanese exchange student with NZIIU. (NZIIU was an organisation that I worked for co-ordinating homestay groups in 1989.) Saki is now in her first year at Akita International University in Akita.

We had 3 days left on our Japan Rail Pass ticket that we had bought in Taiwan so used it to head north to Akita.
Saki looked great and her English was greatly improved as she has all her lectures in English. A condition of her university is that she has to go to an overseas university for her 4th year of study and has to score high on a English language test as well. We visited her uni about 20 minutes from Akita city and it had some great facilities. There were about 100 overseas students of the 600 at the uni.

Akita is well-known for its 'onsens', hot water mineral baths, so Saki took us to a rustic place near the ski resorts in the mountains.

We also visited an ancient Samurai town where many of the Samurai houses have been renovated and are open to the public. We also ate the local dish of noodles at a restaurant overlooking the street with its autumn leaves. The area has revived the tradition of making wooden articles from the bark of the cherry tree.

The streets were lined with gingko bilbao trees like we have at our place. These had fruit that they use in a baked egg dish.

It was wonderful to see Saki as an independent, confident, young lady and we wish her luck in her English studies.

More Tokyo sights

Today we arrived at the local station to catch a train to Asakusa but there were huge crowds because someone had attempted suicide on the train line. We took a different trainline and had to change trains as the line was closed due to another suicide attempt.

We visited a restaurant to try the local dish called 'kamameshi'. It was like a rice risotto.

This doll is displayed for prosperity in business.

After lunch we headed off to Senso Ji Temple which dates back to 628AD. Today was a special celebration at the temple and there were many 3,5 and 7 year olds all dressed up and visiting the temple with their families to ensure them good fortune.

There were many stalls on the way to the temple selling amulets and all kinds of foods-rice crackers, sweet potatoes and moochi (a sticky rice cake filled with sweet red beans).

At the 'Thunder gate' leading to the temple.

There was a circus atmosphere with a lady and her monkey doing tricks for the crowds.

Tokyo

Nightlights A huge computer store

We have spent about a week around the greater Tokyo area catching up with a few friends and seeing the sights. Have had a couple of expeditions into the city centre and so far have managed to avoid the large crowds. There are 28 million people living in the mteropolitan area and of course it`s the largest city in the world.


Yesterday was cold and wet so we decided to go to the science museum - we needed to take a commuter train, then the subway and then another urban transport system to reach the museum in the Tokyo port area. with our previous experiences of large metro systems it didn`t take long to figure out the Tokyo transportation system even though there are many maps written in Kanji and the station staff do not always speak English.

Spent a couple of days with Tara Carr (Te Puke) and Daniel Hight (New Plymouth), a couple of ex Nova English language teachers from NZ. Nova was the largest English language teaching organisation here in Japan and it went bust a couple of weeks ago. It had over 400,00 students on its books and thousands of teachers. This photo of Tara, Daniel and Lil was taken in the Yokohama port area. They were great tour guides and helped us navigate around the city. They are off to sunny Thailand for a short holiday before returning to NZ.

We also stayed with Yoshi, Chihiro and daughter Akiho about 40 minutes from the city centre. Chihiro came to NZ in 1989 with Seishin Junior High and was a student on a homestay programme I ran. She also came to NZ in 2005 on a working holiday and I found her a job at a kiwifruit packhouse (Satara-Washer Rd) in Te Puke.

We made an expedition to see Mount Fuji but unfortunately the mountain was in cloud but we did get up above the treeline near station seven with views of the snowfield near the summit. Yoshi couldn`t come with us so we brought him back a Mount Fuji cake instead.



We ate the traditional 'hotoh' in Fuji. It is a vegetable soup with a miso-based broth served with white wheat noodles in a huge cast iron bowl. Perfect for autunm weather.

The leaves have begun to change to various shades of red and the locals are out and about to visit the lakes and parks.

The crowds on the streets are a sea of black. The business men wear black suits and the fashion bunnies love to wear black as well. When a man wears a white tie with a black suit he is going to a wedding and he wears a black tie to go to a funeral.

Even on a Saturday or Sunday we can see the secondary school kids wearing their uniforms as they go to their various sport and music clubs.

Hiroshima

We traveled by the super express train, the Shinkansen, to Hiroshima towards the western end of the Inland Sea. Shinkansen rides on tracks up above the roads and houses and so there are no crossing points. It stops at few stations and travels at speeds around 200 kph. The carriages are wide with three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other. It is a bit like traveling on a plane with comfortable waiting areas in the main stations.

Of course Hiroshima was the place where the first atomic bomb was used in anger to end the second world war. With its sea port, Hiroshima was a big military city at that time. Spent a day looking around various musuems and memorials in the central Peace Park area. The museum in particular had very graphic photographic evidence of the destruction. The city has been completely rebuilt and has transformed itself into a city of peace.

One of the major tourist attractions in Japan is the shrine of Itsukushima-jinja which dates back to the 6th century. It is at Myajima a short distance from Hiroshima. The whole shrine is built on piers and at high tide is completely surrounded by water. Because of its holy status, commoners could not set foot on the island on which the shrine is built and so the approach to the shrine was made by boat. Associated with the shrine is the Shinto shrine gate or torii, which appears to be floating in the water. This is one of the top three photographed sights in Japan!