Riverbend Journal

  Twenty-three years ago, my first trip to the Philippines ended with a visit to the Sagada region which is known for their rice terraces sometimes referred to as an eight wonder of the world. It was such a beautiful place and so far away from all tourism because it was difficult to get to. Back then, we spent a long day bouncing over dirt roads scratched into the sides of mountains and through small creeks and waterfalls. Twenty-three years later, the road is now paved though as you can see from the screenshot above from my phone about midway through the six hour drive, it isn't a straight shot. In fact, it is so twisty and curvy and up and down, that our average speed the entire distance was likely only about 35 miles per hour, about the same speed we traveled twenty-three yeas ago, and this time on a paved road with not a lot of traffic! We rented another van from John Wayne, loaded it with some luggage and food and headed off north up the central mountain range of the Luzon pro...

Twenty-three years ago, we decided to drive up a particular mountain near Baguio that offered an excellent view of the surrounding mountains and overlooked an area known as "The Mines" where locals indeed mined. There were large scars upon the land. Twenty-three years later, the mines aren't visible anymore and instead houses dot the landscape.  Twenty-three years ago, you walked down a rough trail from a pull off to a rock outcropping where you could take in the view of "the mines". Twenty-three years later, the trail was a sidewalk that led you down the hill in a zig zag pattern so that you had to pass by a maximum number of vendors trying to sell cheaply produced souvenirs. Even if you were in the market for a cheap souvenir, you had to watch your step as there were people everywhere and random steps everywhere. And for all of this, you had to pay a toll just to visit the area. Twenty-three years ago, there was a lone Igorot native in the area who kindly pose...

  After my BIL returned home from his week of work in Manila, we spent one weekend day going to visit "The Mansion" which is a cross between the White House and Camp David or creating an analogy for the current occupant, a cross between the White House and Mar-a Lago. In all my previous trips to the Philippines, it has been a summer home for the President of the Philippines and technically still is though the guards won't say that specifically. However, recently the main structure you see in the photo above is now a museum and open to the public with approved reservations which my SIL had obtained. The Mansion was actually built by Americans for American leaders after the Spanish American war and was completed in 1908. During World War II, it suffered greatly from bombing but was eventually repaired before being turned over the Philippines who then converted it into the summer home of their President. Not quite two years ago, it was renovated again and opened up to the pu...

  Upon returning from El Nido, a stay at the farm near Tarlac and our aborted trip to see the Hundred Isles, we spent a week close to our home in Baguio. My BIL, who was also our driver, returned to Manila for a week of work and my wife spent her time going out and meeting various groups of her friends and former classmates. As a husband, I sometimes went and sometimes didn't, depending on venue and what my wife was requesting. None of it was terribly exciting though so I won't bore you with the details.  At some point though during that week, I took my kids and their cousins out to eat at a local eatery called "Good Taste". It was quite the experience and I could come up with nothing quite like it that I've ever been too. First and foremost, the restaurant is massive and consists of five floors! At least the one floor we ate on, level five, could seat probably 300 to 400 people. I would say it was only half full when we got there so maybe around 200 people. I hav...

  Judging solely by the number of pictures taken during any of my trips to the Philippines, transportation is easily at the top of my fascination list. A lot of that has to do with me spending a lot of time using it in one form or the other and some of it has to do with it being very different from where I have spent the bulk of my life.  If I had to boil down transportation to something more specific, the Jeepney (seen above) is perhaps my favorite of all. In the mountains of Baguio City, they used to rule the mass transportation market and still to this day play a significant part. They started off as discarded Jeeps left behind by America after World War II but are built specific to the Philippines now. I would call the above Jeepney the second generation of the vehicle and on my last trip, I saw my first glimpses of the third and even fourth generations.  The third generation is a more aerodynamic version of the second generation Jeepney's and lack all the colorful cu...

  After two nights of sweltering in the heat of the lowland rice country, we were ready to move on and the plan had been to drive north to visit the Hundred Isles regions of the Philippines. We did drive north but we fell just short of the Hundred Isles. Perhaps due to the less than desirable sleep, we didn't get as early of a start as we had hoped. Above you can see why traveling can be slower than expected in the Philippines because when you are not in traffic, you are still sharing part of the road with rice being dried by nearby farmers. The fellow above was using a tricycle arrangement of some sort to stir the rice as it was drying in the sun. During my time in the Philippines, I see very little infrastructure for vehicles and humans that we take for granted. There are very few parking lots and in most towns, you simply park in the lane closest to the buildings along the road. That lane of the road also counts as a sidewalk too as there are no dedicated places for walking and ...

  After three nights on El Nido, we had the waiters float our breakfast on the tiny pool just so my daughter could get a pic for her feed and then they carried it inside where we ate it and then headed out the door with our bags. Julie our van driver was already waiting for us to take us to the airport. We arrived about 15 minutes before our flight's listed boarding time which turned out to be about 10 minutes more time than necessary to get through the check-in process. I could get used to life in the islands. We waited for ten minutes and then were boarding the plane and after verifying there was no caribou our chicken on the runway, we were in the air and heading back to the main island of Luzon and the former Clark Air Base, now known as the Clark Freeport and Economic Zone. As we neared the coast, we flew over what appeared to be huge fish farms and indeed, in the coming days I would drive near this part again though I really never got a good photograph. Photography has always...