Yesterday we went to the Batu Caves to check them out. It was pretty neat. We climbed the stairs and ende dup inside a huge cavern. Temples were scattered around and once we got to the end, there were monkeys everywhere. Many of the people were feeding them bananas, etc. Pretty crazy. My camera's battery was dead, so I didn't get any monkey photos.
That evening, when we went to find dinner, I stopped at a shop in the Central Market to get a henna tattoo. My first one.
-Miranda
Apparently the largest statue of Lord Murugan. It was definitely huge. See stairs to the left. Those were tall also.
My henna tattoo.
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Well, we made it to Kuala Lumpur today. We also had an amazing hike through the Batand Terraces yesterday. I'll have to write a separate blog for that and post photos of those terraces when I have time, but here are the slightly older photos I promised first. All photos were taken by Sandra (except the first one, because if she had taken it, that would have been an amazing trick.
)-Miranda
Joe and Sandra before going out scuba diving.
;)
The bus to Bantoc. Yes, those are geese on the roof. (Click to enlarge.)
;)
Rice terraces. (Click to enlarge.)
;)
More rice terraces. (Click to enlarge.)
;)
And yet more rice terraces. (Click to enlarge.)
Joe and me in front of the Banaue rice terraces.
An adorable puppy on the side of the road during our walk back to the hotel.
;)
A panorama of the area. (Click to enlarge.)
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We left the dive resort on Saturday and started our trek north towards the rice terraces. We caught a bus to Manilla, met Melissa (she has done a lot of work for Horse Isle) and spent some time with her at the Mall of Asia. From there we got on a cushy, overnight bus to Baguio. We arrived at 4:30am. From there we had to find the bus that went to Bantoc. Once we arrived at the bus station, we hopped on that bus, which was our first non-air-conditioned, uncomfy bus. There were even geese on the roof! This ride ended up being 5 hours long. We arrived in Bantoc, found lunch and then Joe wandered around looking for a place to stay while Sandra and I used internet at an internet cafe.
The day was mostly spent catching up on sleep and doing some wandering around town. The next morning, we packed up and caught the bus to Banaue. This ride was under 2 hours long, so not too bad. The views are stunning. There are rice terraces everywhere and we're high up in the mountains. Since we had the whole day, we found a hotel for the night and then went back up the hill to the look out for the terraces right next to the town. They are very neat. We've set up a 'tour' for tomorrow with a group of 4 people to help split the cost. We're going to see some other terraces, which includes an hour hike to a view, then another half hour to a waterfall. Hopefully it should be fun.
I don't have any of the photos uploaded to the computer yet. I'll get those posted once I can.
-Miranda
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The fireflies ended up being a lot of fun. We took a small boat up the river and right around when it was getting pretty dark, fireflies started appearing in the trees. They apparently live in the mangroves and synchronize their blinking with each other. It was very neat.
The next morning we got to the whale shark encounter place and headed right at 7:30. We were the first group out. Within 5 minutes, he told us to get ready! We were like, wha?? We all got our flippers and masks on then hopped in when our guide told us to. We swam along for a very short bit, then he told us to look down. All of a sudden the Whale Shark was came out of the murky water. So neat!! We ended up with about 5 encounters. It was either all with the same shark, or a couple different ones. The videos weren't great since it is huge and you can't see what your taping, but we still got some on video. This is from getting ready to go, jumping in, then seeing the shark.
Whale Shark (click to view)
-Miranda
Photos by Sandra (I'm getting lazy and not using my broken camera anymore. haha)
Rice patties.
Water Buffalo!
Moon over the river.
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We took an afternoon flight to Clark, which is about 85km north of Manila. We arrived and were going to hop on a bus to Manila. Joe went to the ATM to get cash and the card wouldn't work... Sandra tried her card and ended up with the same issue. She had Australian cash left over still, so we exchanged that and paid for the bus.
Once in Manila, we tried again and failed. Joe and Sandra ended up walking about 5 minutes to a money exchanger and changed some US cash for pesos. Manila is crazy though! People everywhere and drivers are nuts. No one works together, they're always fighting to get ahead of everyone else and they use their horn constantly. It's apparently used to tell someone you're passing them here. This ended up being even more annoying on the 10 hour bus ride down to Legaspi which was an overnight bus. Speaking of that, they keep the AC full blast, so you end up freezing. For the next bus ride we'll have to remember to grab our jacket and anything that can be used as a blanket. A nice girl from Missouri that's here with the Peace Corps was sitting in front of us and did lend us a blanket type thing to help us stay warm.
We arrived in Legaspi at around 6:30am where Joe bumped into a British couple that were basically in the same stage of planning as we were. They wanted to see the whale sharks but didn't have a place to stay for sure yet. The 5 of us hopped into a taxi for the hour or so ride to Donsol.
There are apparently a lot fireflies here at night, so we're doing a boat ride for that tonight. Hopefully that will be fun. We're going with the other couple tomorrow morning to hopefully see Whale Sharks. Two sharks were seen yesterday (don't know about today yet) so hopefully we're lucky even though it's the end of the season.
-Miranda
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