There was a plan. The Plan was to hike into Batad, a small rice terrace village only accessible by foot, and then spend a few days going further afield, staying in remote villages and traveling deep into the valley before popping back out onto the main highway. 
The Cordilleras in Northern Luzon is a beautiful stretch of eye candy; a mountainous region shining an unreal neon green. What's most amazing about this place is that its beauty is entirely man-made. Thousands of years ago, the Ifugao people of the region started hacking into the hills surrounding them and planting rice. They devised an ingeneous irrigation system and in the process created hill after valley after hill after valley of terraced neon green fields.
The Plan did not start well. On my way into Batad, I became aware of a certain "flippity flop" sound coming from my feet. I look down to find that the front of my precious Vibram soles (both of them) were no longer attached to my boots. I pulled out my trusty duct tape and did an emergency patch job. My muddy wornass 8-year-old boots now donned a swanky, stylish, nouveau moderne silver glean that pleased me immensely. I felt like a cosmonaut... They lasted the first half hour of a 4-hour hike. We tried salvaging the situation by wrapping plant vines and various other miscellania around the duct tape, around the flopping sole... but to no avail.
Somehow, I made it to the wedding. Did I mention there was a wedding? In keeping with Ifugao tradition, the merry couple invited the entire village and all the neighbouring villages (basically anyone willing to walk hours on end for free food and rice wine- which is, as it turns out, a fuck of a lot of people) to partake in the festivites. They drank, danced and were merry.
Back to the boot fiasco. On our way home, I rashly decided to rip the flippity-floppity soles off and I spent the last hour of the hike sliding downhill along the slippery muddy trail. RIP Merrells. It was then that I decided to abandon the Plan.
Did I mention it was raining? Boo global warming, because it rained every goddamn day. From noon to night (the only way to beat it was to get up every morning at 7am to enjoy the few precious hours of sun) And I'm not talking about a light drizzle, I'm talking monsoon. Which doesn't go well with hiking. With anything, for that matter.
I thought that the monsoon was only restricted to the mountains, so having abandoned my Plan, I wanted to escape to the beach. A sunny beach. A beautiful sunny deserted beach with turquoise waters and a few friendly fisherman...
Now, these are a dime a dozen in the phils, so I picked one that was relatively close (8 hours from Manila) and off I went... without checking the weather report. On the way down, I had a foreboding sense of dread... because it was pouring. And it turns out Bicol is not 8 hours from Manila. The entire stretch of road was undergoing perma-construction, so was reduced to a one-lane highway. Kids were out in droves carrying red and green flags but not knowing how to use them so traffic got pretty fucked up. The bus driver got really impatient. After we got through slow zones, he started driving really fast. And so we got into a car accident.
I have to say, I am a lucky lucky little girl. I was in the front seat and it was a head-on collision. Had the bus not been built like the Hulk, I'm positive my leg would have snapped off (I raised it when I realized we were about to collide- which uh, probably isn't what you're supposed to do).
Because it was one-lane traffic, we effectively stopped traffic dead. Everyone was alright, but shaken. A new bus was on the way, but couldn't get through the traffic so after about an hour- and I think this part was WAY scarier than the accident- we DROVE our mangled bus another half hour to go meet it. The front windshield was busted and cracked glass was shaking in the wind as we drove, the door was so fucked we had to squeeze our bodies through it while someone else propped it back, and nobody even tested the bloody thing- you know, to see if the gears and brakes worked.
After this, I gave up. I went back to Manila 5 days before my flight and did nothing. I stayed at my friend's house and let her maids pamper me. I played a lot of frisbee. I rode the MRT. I shopped... Oh, and guess what? Sunny. Every day that I was in Manila, it was freakin beautiful. But I didn't bite- I knew I was weather cursed, I knew as soon as I made a plan- climb a mountain, go to Lake Taal- I knew that day it would rain on me.
So. Let me recount my lifetime travel woes: I've been robbed, I've gotten a tropical disease, I've had flight disasters, I've broken up with friends, I've been hit by a motorcycle, and now a car accident! Happy day, I think I've almost done em all. I should write a book.
July 2, 2009 at 3:11 a.m.
Thank goodness you're ok. You should definitely write a book.. I love your writing style.