Bacolod -Philippines (part 2)
22nd June - shop workers
It pretty much rained allday again today, so nothing is new there. I took Joshua to school by myself today, I wasn't half getting stared at by the other mothers at the school gates! I then sat in the internet and blogged and wrote emails for a while then it was time to pick Joshua up from school. When I got home I found out thai their helper had done my washing for me, at first I was utterly embarraced, saying that she doesn't have to do my washing and that I would have done it, but when i went to collect it off the line I was utterly gobsmacked. Old t.shirts that were ready to be thrown away and jeans covered in stains looked as good as new. All my clothes were spotless. She had even managed to get years old stains out of Jennas Jeans that Jenna had scrubbed with a vanish stick. I was so thankful, it just shows you what a bit of elbow grease will do, and how crappy wahing machines are (especially my filthy one I was using in Korea)
That evening while the family and their helpers had dinner Jenna and I offered to work for a couple of hours in their little shop that they own at the side of the house. People here are very poor and can only bye small sized things, like odd sashets of shampoo, or single polos and cigerrets, it seems very strange to us but people earn about 50p a day! So with the help of 6 year old Joshua (our translator) we sold single cigerets, sweets and small sashets of washing powder. I t was pretty fun actually, although we spend most of our time watching a small mouse on the floor or lizards mating on the celing or Josua dancing around! We had planned to go out for a few drinks but due to the torrential rain outside we decided against it and instead opted for an early night.
23rd June - The Mudpack Festivle
We were thankful that we had an early night last night as we were awoken early and all bundled into the van along with our swimming things, food, drinks and foldup chairs. There were 12 of us in total: Brian, Fatima, Joshua, Fraderick (Fatimas brother) Ian and Melnet (Fatimas cousins) Grandpa, Prezel (their helping lady) Thelma (their pregnant friend) Big Joshua (Joshuas little friend) and Jenna and I. The Jeepney was packed as much as it could be but everyone was in good spirits and excited for the day in the mountains, ahead of us. After about an hour we arrived. The theme of the festivle was to: 'Earth our minds, water our hearts, air our minds and fire our spirits'
We found a nice shady spot and all settled down to watch the days events. First was a kind of pagent contest. With 10 girls all dressed in highly decorated bikins came and talked about what their city represented. They had flowers, feathers and other natural things attatched alover them and all did their speaches in English, which was nice. I think the men enjoyed this more than me, but the costumes were all very interesting.
The next entertainment was 6 'Drummer tribes' whereby 6 groups of boys (with between 10 and 15 people in each) covered them selves from head to foot in different coloured clays and muds and used wooden drums, flutes annd other instruments made of only natural things to make music. Each 'tribe' performed for about 5-10 minutes and they were fantastic. Jenna and I couldn't help ourselves from jigging around on the spot. Some of the boys in the 'tribes' cant have been any older than 5 years old, but they were all so very impressive. By the end of their performances the rest of our clan had gone back to the van. On our way back up there I spotted a long hald of bamboo filled with all of the different clays and muds. There must have been about 10 different colours, and I was assured that they were all natural. I persuaded the reluctant Jenna that we should paint ourselves up as 'tribes men' before we went to join the others for lunch. In the end she agreed and we were helped by others to draw patterns alover our faces and arms with these interesting shades of clay. We were also asked to pose with yet more Koreans that had found their way here too. How I love to shock them with the little Korean I know.
We joined the other 10 at the van and all enjoyed the foods that we had brought with us. As clouds gathered in the sky fro the daily afternoon rain Jenna and I decided to go and see in we could go and find the waterfalls that we could see in the distance. Just around the corner we found a trail that led the way to "the 7 falls" We all begun the climb the step in the mountainside and up and down rocks to the first sighting of waterfalls. Despite the rain it was beautiful. We were not able to swim in this one and there was a large sign saying that you could only swim in the 7th fall. Th rest of our group gave up here and headed back down to the Jeepney, but Fraderick, Ian, Prezel, Jenna and I were determined to go swimming. It was mid day, so it was boiling hot and I think I actually sweated most of the mud and clay off as we climbed. It was really difficult at times, dancing accross stepping stone rocks through rushing streams, throuch high feelds, past villages and numerous water buffello. Each time we got to the next water fall we were tempted to turn back and call it a day, but our sweaty bodies were screaming for us to get to the top so that we could delve into the cool fresh water. Eventually we passed the other 6 falls and climbed the last or the 920 steps and reached the 7th Fall!!! I was delighted, what a sence of achievement. There seemed to be a lot of people in the water, about 20 or so, which seemed strance as we had only seen about one other person the whole way up. Jenna imedieately stripped of to reveal her small bikini, which resulted in everyone chearing and wooping, I was only wearing a thong under my shorts so after hearing the cheer and seeing all eyes, of the fully clothed Filipinos in the water, on me, I was reluctant to strip off. I dived in in my shorts! The water was so refreshing and cool, we splashed about for ages, going in and out of the beautiful falls as the sun peeped through the clouds. We took a sip of the water , but it had an earth taste so decided that we probably shouldn't drink any more. After about half an hour we decided that it was propbably time to head back down.
The way down was much easier (it always is) but, some of the rocks and the mud was so slippy and as Jenna and I stubbed our filthy toes for about the 100th time we agreed that flipflops were certainly not the best idea when climbing mountains! The further we got to the bottom ,the darker the sky got and it begun to fill with screeching bats! Apparently there were more than 25 species of bats at the waterfalls that we were at. We spotted three main types in the trees, the most prevalant was the 'Large Flying Fox', which is not found anywhere else in the world, They really were huge!
24th June - San-jam and Kipot Twin Falls.
Today was a special festival here in the Philippines called "San-jam" (said Sanwan) Basically what it means is 'get wet' so of course there are people everywhere you look armed with buckets and bottles of water. Most people tend to head to the water on this crazy day, so hundreds of people go to the rivers, lakes and the beach. We decided that it would be a nice idea to go to some more waterfalls. Again a huge group of us all got into the Jeepney and we all headed to Kipot. The place was in the middle of nowhere and we managed to find a lovely little shelter thing in the forrest where we could eat our lunch. It was like being in the rain forrest, the sun was shining but we were totally shaded by all the huge lush green trees and beautiful flowers. After our hot and sticky journey we were eager to get to the water, we all marched down the hundteds of steep steps to the water below. Once we got to the bottom there was a huge clearing and we were pleased to see that we were the only ones there. I looked to my left and saw the beautiful 'twin falls' gushing down the rock face, we all stripped off and made our way accross the slipery rocks to the main water pool. The water was cool and clear and we spent hours splashing about and playing with Joshua and his two little friends in the water fall. After a huge waterfight we then decided to head back for lunch. The men made a little fire and we heated up some chicken Adobo and cooked some fresh fish and boiled some bananas for desert. Once we were all full, we decided to work off our lunch by going back down to the waterfalls. However this time there were lots of other people there and shortly it began to rain very heavily, so we decided that we should head home. We trudged back to the Jeepney in the rain and made our way back to the house. Despite the rain, the streets were lined with kids excited to throw water into our Jeep, it was hillarious, they were throwing buckets through the back door, Brian and Frederik got absoulutely drenched, despite them putting up and umbrella up to shelter them. The whole way home we tried to speed past the armed Kids, but there was nothing we could do to prevent getting more drenced than we already were. Tomorrow Jenna and I are going away to Sipalay (about 4 or 5 hours by bus) to stay on a beautiful beach, I can't wait, I will write again when we get back!
- Posted by emily1183 on 01/07/2007.
- emily1183's site
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