Where I Went for Holy Week

Batangas. Stip, Emer, Geland and Jason Wall. Non-stop driving. Haunted bahay na pula. Banaue Viewpoint. Batad Terraces. Tapiyya Falls. 4060 stone steps. Great pictures. Ilob Riverside Inn. Sagada. Yoghurt House. Lumiang-Sumaguing caves. Spelunking. Hanging coffins. Echo Valley. St. Mary’s Church. Videoke. Emer’s birthday. San Mig Light. T-shirts. Halsema Highway. Highest point marker. Trinidad Valley. Baguio. Session Road. Nevada Square. Flu. Rest. Breakfast and taho. Dominican hill and the Diplomat hotel. Ghosts. Travel home.

BAHAY NA PULA


We departed from Batangas at two-thirty in the morning on Holy Thursday and six hours later we decided to show our American guest Jason one of the more famous haunted houses in Philippine lore -- the old red house in Bulacan. Almost covered in dense overgrowth, the bahay na pula still looked eerie despite the morning light. Based on oral accounts, the house at one time served as a brothel during the Japanese occupation of the country. Comfort women were brought here and locked inside where they were raped and tortured. Numerous TV features have been done depicting the house to be full of wandering and restless spirits.

We didn't have the chance to enter the house itself. But as one who gets to see ghosts since nursery school, I didn't enter the grounds. While taking these photos, I was hoping to catch some of them on 'film' but no success there for me. Looks like ghosts don't present themselves on digital media.


BANAUE

By three in the afternoon, our group arrived at Banaue. We got a decent room (and cheap!) at ILOB RIVERSIDE INN. After settling our luggage, we hailed two tricycles to bring us to Banaue viewpoint for our first glimpse of the rice terraces.

Dinner was at the People's Lodge and Restaurant. While waiting for our food, Gel experimented with the monochrome features of my camera.

Richard and Kath joined our group (they left Manila at midnight, arrived at Banaue at 730 am!) the following day. We chartered a jeepney the following day to bring us to Batad village where the postcard-perfect type terraces are located. It's a bumpy 90-minute ride to get to the jump-off point, followed by a relatively easy 40-minute hike to reach the village itself. The ride and the hike itself was worth the view of the amphitheater-shaped terraces.

The next 30 minutes of hiking challenged our leg strength and sense of balance since we have to walk along the ridges of the terraces and navigate through the stone steps in order to reach one of Banaue's secrets -- Tapiyya falls. We rested here for about 15 minutes while Jason took a swim to reach the falls. A group photo is in order.




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Climbing back up to our rented jeepney took us twice as long to complete. Emerson counted 2030 stone steps (that excludes straight paths) for us to reach our destination, one-way. Gel coined a good term for our Batad/Tapiyya trek -- it was an honorable sacrifice for us. The timing for this activity is good -- we trekked for four hours on almost-empty stomachs (we skipped breakfast and lunch). Christians contemplate on sacrifices and acts of penitence on Good Friday to share in the suffering of the Lord.

We left Banaue (and Richard and Kath) at 430pm. With aching legs, tired bodies but lots of pictures and a wonderful experience, we drove northwards. We need to be at Sagada before the town's curfew of 9 pm.

Trip details: Ilob Inn: 1000 pesos per night for a room with private toilet/bath. Room can sleep four (two double-sized beds). Jeepney rental to Batad: 1700 pesos round trip for the whole jeepney. Guide to Batad falls: 250 pesos for every group of 3. Food: budget for 100-120 Php/meal; the red rice is great.

SAGADA

Sagada is still charming, as charming as a certain woman I know. The cool mountain air, clean streets and magnificent location is pleasantly hypnotizing. Visiting Sagada reminded me of my day trip a year ago to Bowral, a small town in Australia famous for its cool weather and tulip gardens.

There are plenty of things to do in this laid-back town. Top on the list is to do caving at Sumaguing and Lumiang caves. Our group started at Lumiang cave -- cool, dark and damp. And you're greeted at the cave entrace with an array of stacked wooden coffins. For about three hours we descended the cave network, balancing on boulders, twisting through some manhole-sized crevices and wading across waist-deep pools of very cold water (guaranteed to shrink your balls :D). The natural rock formations and great cave 'halls' we came across were astounding.

Echo Park offers rock-wall climbing, or shouting at the ridges (for echoes), and an up-close-and-personal view of the Hanging Coffins. People who want to be creeped out can hang around at the local cemetery enroute to Echo Park.

Mass can be heard at St Mary's Church.

There are hiking trails all over Sagada leading to some falls and views of some minor rice terraces.

And of course, a Sagada tourist shouldn't leave without having a meal at the Yoghurt House, having a sip of their local mountain tea and getting a shirt which says "I got this shirt at Sagada."

Our American friend Jason found Sagada so charming that he declared that he's going back there in the future "for a month or so" and just relax.



Trip details: Rocky Valley Inn: 400 pesos/bed/night. Each bed can sleep two (a bit cramped though, so all of us got a bed each). Communal bathroom. Caving: 300 pesos per head, minimum group of 4. Comes with two guides. Meals: about 100 Php/meal, except at Yoghurt House (250 Php/meal).


Baguio: the Diplomat Hotel

The hordes of people at Baguio still mark it as the summer capital of the country. I've been making trips to Baguio with family and friends ever since I was a toddler, so I've seen it evolve from a charming urban town to a congested city. And it so happen that I came down with a case of flu, so I spent a good part of our stay there under two comforters and two blankets.

Before travelling back to Manila, Gel wanted to see the Dominican Hill. I wasn't sure what he was referring to but when we got to the site, I instantly knew that place. At the top of the Dominican Hill is the Diplomat Hotel, a condemned-slash-abandoned building which used to be a convent, then a hospital and finally a hotel afterwhich it got razed in a fire and further damaged by the 1990 earthquake. It now looks like a modern ruin, but its appeal to me is mainly because it's haunted.

As a ruin, the place is in good shape. Details of the stone masonry and wooden tiling can still be seen at some places. The bare corridors and rooms allows you to imagine several scenes of what the place could have looked like in the past. The stone fountains in the small courtyard at the center of the hotel add to the eerieness of the building. A 15-foot stone cross at the roof gives an excellent contrast to the hotel's gloom.


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