Rice, Rice, Rice, Chickens, Rice

We set off to see some small villages, rice terraces, hill tribes and more... first we took an over night bus from manila to the mountains in the north ending up in a little town of Banue.


then hired this guy to drive us an hour up an impossibly rocky, muddy road to a trail head.


We then hiked for about three hours along rice terraces and over a few hills. We later learned that most people take a local guide. Somehow we found our way. We passed some really small native grass hut villages.

Our final destination was this little village (Batad) set in a large ampitheater like valley surrounded by terraces. It was one of the most amazing landscapes imagainable. We happened to be the only guests in the little guest house. There are about 1500 native tribes people that live here. The town just got electricity about a year ago and only few of the huts have it.

we hiked around the town and found a realy nice guy who is kind of the local historan--he invited us into his native hut that he had inherited from his great grandfather. we had some native coffee and he told us all about the people and their customs. (there were wild cat skulls hanging all about, made me think of little grey)

You can't kill the Rooster

...but you can tie it up by the leg, apparently.

walked around Manila today. Beth had her 20 cent noodle breakfast. joren got a one dollar hair cut and shave, before checking out chinatown and the Chinese cemetery. rode in a bike taxi while Beth tried not to blow an o-ring. all is good now and we are heading off on an overnight bus north to explore some rice terraces, do a little trekking and see some hill tribes for a week or so.

we are mailing these two guys c.o.d. to hallmark. tina please sign for them and set them up in beth's old space. Things will be back to normal in no time.

Setting Manila on Fi-ya

In Manila just under an hour - things to do.....
1. get from airport to city center
2. find guest house, about 9 bucks a night (it is the big city)
3. go to see fire next to guest house

joren wanted to take off his pants, too. c'mon. everybody's doing it.

dragonhead-a-rific!

looking for trouble in tokyo

strutting her stuff at Prada Tokyo (no big woo). Good thing we pulled up in scott's fancy auto... they thought he might buy something or they would've tossed us out when the beaver fur hat ended up on Beth's head.





























this is beth's new friend

our wonderful tokyo host

Mr. happy go lucky helping beth with the computer machine

we stayed with scott and emiko (and jake, of course) who were amazing hosts. lots of fantastic food, company and giant beer beverages.




















sweet little jake in his fancy blue seat

Tokyo

walking around shibuya (in a jet lagged daze) (i mean, drunk)



















ancient dogs, frozen IN STONE



















joren is looking for some new tools that will fit in his backpack. this table saw makes him feel like a GIANT. (giant tard)

here we go

we left middle america in september for some time on the oregon coast. joren filled a lot of his time working and mostly i collected sand dollars. we rode our bikes and hiked a ton and ate a lot of good salmon. we even had some visitors--sarah and aaron! woo hoo tobabens! we miss you all quite a bit, but are having a great time.