iowagirltravels-blog

[iowagirltravels-blog]

The Beginning

Have you ever had that point in your life where you're not sure where your path is leading you, but you know it's somewhere good? Well that's where my life is right now and I would like to invite you to join me on my journey. First, let me introduce myself. My name is Rochelle and I am a 26-year-old from small town Iowa living in a farming area in rural Philippines. How did I end up living on a farm in The Philippines, you ask? Well that, my friend, is a beautiful story. And like all beautiful stories, it includes love. A love for life, a love for travel, a love for learning about new cultures and new ways of life, and a love for a handsome, sweet, kind, funny Filipino man who I met on my travels. It all started when I was leaving my home-away-from-home in South Korea, where I had been living and teaching English for the past two years (more to come about that later). I was going to face my fears and solo travel around Southeast Asia with a budget and without a plan. I had a set amount of money and, when that was gone, I would be homewoard bound. My mom had been told: "Maybe by Thanksgiving?" (she was loving this). So, my goodbye day finally came. First stop: Manila, Philippines. I arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) excited to spend a few days with a Chinese-Filipino couple I had met on Couchsurfing. They were kind enough to offer to pick me up at the airport. Eager to begin what I knew would be a life-changing journey, I got a Filipino sim card for my phone, added minutes, and messaged them to say I had landed. They responded saying they were stuck in traffic, but only a couple kilometers away so they would be there soon. So, I did what I would soon find to be a very common task here in The Philippines: I waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. My first of many interactions with the Manila traffic. Hours later, they picked me up and I officially began the first step of my journey.

I spent the next three days exploring the chaotic wonder that is Manila. The very first thing I, like many other Manila first-timers, noticed, was the traffic. It's an amazing mess of every type of vehicle you could imagine. There are bicycles, motorbikes, tricycles, which are a special Filipino creation: motorbikes with carts attached to the side, buses, jeepneys (old American World War II jeeps decked out in all sorts of designs), trucks, and pretty much everything else. The most amazing thing about it all, though, is that it works. Usually. Anyway, it was a sight to behold and like nothing I had ever seen before. I arrived at a pretty terrible time, so it was slow moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Eventually, we made it back and I met the other girl who I would be staying with, a Vietnamese traveler named Ly. It didn't take long for the four of us to hit it off. In The Philippines, I've noticed, one of the most common ways to celebrate something, is to eat a nice meal. One of the best ways to do something nice for someone, is to provide them with a nice meal. The couple I stayed with, took great advantage of this cultural aspect. They took us to some of their favorite restaurants and encouraged us to try some authentic and unique Filipino foods. First, we tried halo-halo. Halo-halo is a crushed-ice desert. It's a little bit difficult to explain, because it varies so much depending on where you get it. It has sweetened condensed milk and anything else under the sun. Usually a variety of fruits. I've even tried one with corn and sweet potatoes. We also tried Balut, which is hard-boiled developing chicken or duck egg usually dipped in salt. I tried duck egg, but I chose one that wasn't very developed.

After three days of eating our way around Manila, playing cards, and seeing some amazing sights, it was time for me to move on to the next stop on my journey. I took a northbound bus at 2:00 AM so I could avoid Manila traffic. It was a long, hot, uncomfortable bus ride. The bus seemed to stop every five minutes to let off or pick up passengers. Busses here are different from anywhere else I've ever traveled. They stop many times en-route to their final destination. The passengers can get off anywhere they please, as long as the bus doesn't have to leave their route. It goes the same way for passengers getting on. There are specific bus stops, but people can also just flag down a bus as it's driving by. It may or may not stop. My destination was a small town called Rosario, La Union. It is too small, however, for any busses from Manila to head there, so I took a bus that had the final destination of a city past Rosario, Baguio, and then just got off in Rosario. On the busses, there are workers, called conductors, who keep track of people getting on and off the bus and go around collecting fares based on how many kilometers they will be riding. They also call out the stop we are nearing so that people know when to get off. A couple times, a conductor has even woken me up to tell me that we were almost to my stop. Every time we ride a bus, I am amazed at how this system works and the memory of these conductors. At one stop, half of the passengers might get off and they have to remember the faces of who has already paid and who just arrived.

So I was on my bus headed to Rosario. I had found a farm in the countryside near Rosario through a website called WorkAway. The idea of the webiste is that travelers can stay with locals who provide free housing and sometimes meals in exchange for working an agreed-upon amount of time each day or week. The family I was staying with, however, altered the rules slightly. The guests pay about $10 a day and are free to work when they choose. I felt slightly cheated when I found out about the alteration, but I had already invested a lot of time in choosing this area and messaging back and forth with them and I was excited about going there, so I decided to go for it anyway. Looking back, I'm obvioulsy glad I did. I arrived in Rosario, La Union about noon. I was quite nervous about getting off at the right stop and finding the tricycle driver who was supposed to pick me up. All I was told was that his name is Clyde. I got off the bus with a little help from the conductor and then when a tricycle driver made eyes with me and motioned to his tricycle, I assumed it was Clyde and went over and asked. It was not. I soon found out that that's a very common thing for tricycle drivers to do, so I wondered how I was ever going to know which one was Clyde. I had been messaging the man from workaway, so they knew when I was arriving and I had been told Clyde would be there when I arrived. He was not and I was introduced to another aspect of Filipino culture: Filipino time. Filipino time: IF there is an agreed-upon meeting time, which there usually isn't, expect people to be late. So late. This time it was over an hour. At one point, another tricycle driver came over and offered to help because I had been waiting there for so long. I'm sure I looked like a lost puppy, too. Eventually, though, Clyde did come and brought me out to the farm. Tune in next time for an introduction to my new home: Gumot-Nagcolaran, Rosario, La Union. My own kind of paradise.