North Luzon by bus

The second time we arrived to the Singapore airport we were prepared. We did not have a visa, but we had two flights: one cheap one to Taipei within 21 days of arrival, which we would not use, and one in 57 days. We would get a 21 days stamp upon arrival to the Philippines, but we could extend our stay later on in an immigration office, which are plenty around the country. Problem was that this could take a week or so, and we would have to do that within 2 weeks in order to avoid overstaying and being fined. But we would worry about that later. We checked in to the flight succesfully. And yes, already at the airport they did check that we had a flight out. If we didn't, we would have had to buy a ticket on the spot. Glad to have taken care of this stuff succesfully, we boarded the plane and stepped out in Clark a few hours later.

We got out of the plane and while getting organised we met an English guy, Paul, who was among the very few westerners on the flight. He had no specific plan, he just knew that, like us, he would go around North Luzon while trying to avoid Manila. With him we jumped on a jeepney, a Filipino version of the Thai songthaew, which took us to Angeles city. First we thought about staying in Angeles overnight, but it really wasn't that attractive. It was crowded, there was a big girly bar scene with old expats hanging around drinking beer all day, and it just didn't seem special in any way. So changing the plan and circling around the city in jeepneys and tricycles we finally made it to the bus station and hopped on a bus towards Baguio.

We arrived some time after dark. It was cold, also in the bus, because Baguio is in the mountains, in the altitude of about 1500metres. After looking around and haggling with the semi-aggressive touts, we made up our mind and took a cab to a hotel mentioned in our guidebooks. They were so expensive that the three of us squeezed ourselves into a twin room with tiny beds. Didn't matter, we were tired from the journey. We had a quick look around the city and decided to keep moving the next morning.

Our next destination was Vigan, which was an old and beautiful Spanish colonial town. We were hunting for a cheap place to sleep for a while, and since all the hotels were either crazy expensive or fully booked, we found a random homestay kind of place for a good price. Great! Vigan seemed like a nice place to hang out for a day or two. Also, what was surprising, Philippines reminded us of South America. A lot. There were empanadas, jeepneys that looked like a miniature version of Bolivian buses. And the language, Tagalog, is mixed with English and Spanish. Also people jumped into the buses to sell whatever snacks they had made. With the colonial history and some altitude here and there, we felt a bit like being back in South America. We had a fun day walking around the old town, sightseeing and enjoying a couple (and a couple more) beers in the evening. It was fun to actually to hang out with other traveller after spending a lot of time between the two of us. We couldn't really plan anything, the Lonely Planet Philippines had been so expensive in Singapore that we hadn't bought it. Paul had one, so we were also happy to borrow his book. In Vigan we found a bookshop that sold the Rough Guide, a book we'd never used before, but that would have to do it now. It was the only one they had.

Next day, unlike we had planned, we got kicked out of the hostel because they had a booking for our room. Why not let us know that any earlier? So we quickly packed our bags and we had to decide what to do next. It all happened kind of fast. Briefly consulting the new guidebook we decided that we could do a little loop around the north. On the maps there was a big road from Laoag towards Sagada, where we wanted to see some rice terraces. So we jumped on a bus to Laoag. Not the smartest decision we had made. It was an okay place, but not much for a tourist. After a night there, we found out that to go to Sagada we would have to go all the way back to Baguio! It wasn't possible to go straight from there, even though a road was clearly marked on our map. None of the locals seemed to know of its existence. Sagada is only famous for tourists because of the landscape and rice terraces. Nothing to interest most locals we guessed. It would be at least seven hours on these mountain roads again! We wouldn't make it to Sagada in one day, because from Baguio that would be another 7 hours and the buses only left in the morning. For a second we thought about hitting the northern beaches first, but with no decent accommodation mentioned and the catholic Holy week (the biggest and busiest holiday of the year) coming closer, we wanted to be sure we can find a place to sleep. Paul had already made up his mind, he would go to Sagada. So we followed him, thinking that it would be smartest thing to do.

On the way we slept in Baguio again, Paul sharing the room with us. The next day we hopped on an old, kind of uncomfortable bus that took us more or less safely to our destination. We were finally in Sagada! Now it was time to rest! And plan. We had been moving every day since we arrived to the Philippines, spending most of our time in buses. We really had to figure out what we wanted to do in this country.

We enjoyed our time in Sagada. We spent a few days just resting, planning and enjoying local scenery. We found ourselves in a mountain town with pine tree forests around us. At times it almost looked like home. We wondered what else this country was going to offer. It had been absolutely different to anything in Asia so far. We hiked up the up the hills to get a view over the numerous rice terraces in the surrounding region. We also hiked to a small waterfall nearby.

One day we dedicated to do a tour, exploring the famous hanging coffins and caves. Old burial coffins had been hung on the sides of the hills and inside the nearby caves. Before the tour we were told that sufficient gear for this sort of activity would be shorts and flipflops. It wasn't. The caves were wet and the flipflops got very slippery as they got wet, and climbing down the rocks in the dark of the caves was so scary that we skipped the last part and instead waited sitting in the dark listening to the bats. The guide and Paul, who was actually wearing shoes, went deeper into the cave. In the end it still was worth the few euros that we paid, but next time we'll take proper shoes no matter what people tell us.

After a few days we kept going to Banaue, where the biggest rice terraces are located. The next morning we took a tour. A jeepney took us to the beginning point of the hike. And what a ride that was! We got to travel on the rooftop of the jeepney, not because it was full, but because we always wanted to try that! We got an amazing view and cheers from the locals, who probably don't see too many white people travelling like that. Or maybe they just thought we looked silly flying up an down on the bouncing jeepney, who knows. Dodging the occasional power lines we made it without any bruises. With numb bums we started the hike down the stairs on the mountain slope.

The rice terraces were breathtaking. We went to the Dragon's backbone rice terraces in China. They were bigger, but we were there just after harvesting and on a foggy day with fires burning everywhere. This time we got a beautiful clear view over the terraces, which were full with water and green rice growing everywhere! Just as we had hoped. We also hiked to a waterfall, where we went for a quick swim in the cold water. Perfect on a hot day! Back to town we travelled on the rooftop again. Because we could.

Paul was in a bit of a hurry because he only had three weeks in the Philippines. He decided to take an overnight bus to Manila, where he could get a boat to Cebu. Feeling like we had seen enough of North Luzon, we took the same bus. We didn't want to go to Cebu because of the busy Holy week with its rising prices, but we had to head to the south anyway. We had other plans. In the early morning, still dark, we arrived in Manila. We got a taxi from the bus station and negotiated that Paul should be dropped off at the ferry terminal first. It was weird to see him disappear into the crowd in the dark after spending a week with him. We hope he made it to Cebu safely. But we had other things to worry about now. We had to find a bus going to the right direction. We waved our goodbyes as our taxi was hushed away by the officials.

 

Jungle city

After few weeks of doing nothing on the Malaysian islands we started to think about when to go to Singapore. We already had a flight booked out of there, and we should get visas to the next country before that. We should allow at least three working days for that process. And Singapore itself should be an interesting place, so 4 days would be ideal. Problem was that we didn't remember when our flight was nor what day it was. We had planned to go to Pulau Tioman first. We kind of had a feeling that we should start moving soon.

After a quick check on calendar and plane tickets we noticed that we would have only one full day for Tioman, and even that would mean packing our bags right then and jumping on the ferry an hour later and hoping to find available seats for the evening's bus. Sounded like too much of sudden action after none in two weeks. So instead we stayed for two more nights, skipped Tioman island and left towards Singapore in an overnight bus like it was how we had planned it anyway.

Malaysian buses are generally quite good. Most of them would be the most comfortable buses ever with their soft, huge seats and not too many karaoke videos. But of course, there always has to be at least one thing that ruins it all: thanks to air conditioning and its full power button, it's more like a survival camp in Finnish winter than a nice drive through a tropical country. But we had learnt our lesson already with these buses. This time we were prepared. We had tape! So before starting to sleep, we taped the air con holes closed, so tightly that no air came through. Still cold, but a lot better! From now on we will always carry tape in buses.

We arrived at the border town early morning, only half-frozen and super sleepy. We had breakfast and hopped on a bus and only a short drive away was the Malaysian border. We got our exit stamps and using the same bus tickets we jumped on to the next bus, which drove over the river to get our Singapore stamps, and the next bus dropped us off somewhere in central Singapore. Only one metro stop later we were already at our hostel.

We rarely stay in dorms. That is because double rooms are mostly same price or sometimes even cheaper than dorms, and it is more convenient being able to leave everything in room, be as messy as you want and be sure nobody turns on the lights or invites people to party when you'd just rather sleep. On these travels we stayed in dorms a few times and Singapore was one of these exceptions. It is too expensive for us even when you sleep in a dorm. For about 15 euros per person we managed to get beds in a small 4 bed dorm in Mercury backpacker's hostel on Lavender street. And small it was. You could barely turn around without bumping into something. We also had the privilege to share it with two Thai ladyboys, who spread their luggage everywhere, always turned the much loved air con full power, woke up in the evening and went out after spraying the whole room with perfume, came back around 5 in the morning, after which they chatted and ate chips for at least an hour, eventually falling asleep to stay in bed until next evening, when they started the routine all over again. What a reminder of dorm life. We could't but feel a bit too old for that. Nicely enough the hostel staff let us switch rooms the next day. And we got a 4 bed dorm just for the two of us for the next nights!

Our main task for Singapore was to visit the Philippines embassy to get a 59-day visa. That would be our next destination. As soon as we arrived, we started to get prepared. We took passport photos, printed pages from online bank and took our credit cards with us to proof that we have sufficient funds. The Philippines are very strict with many things. First of all, you can't even board a plane without an onward ticket. So we had to buy a flight out of the country. So we bought one from Cebu, 3 days before expiry of the assumed 59-day visa. To visit the embassy to get the visa, you have to be properly dressed, which means no sleeveless shirts, no flip-flops and no shorts. All that in Singapore hot and humid weather. Thanks for that.

Sweating like pigs in jeans and shoes we left for the Philippine embassy. First thing we noticed was that the dress code did not seem to apply, everyone was wearing whatever they wanted. A bit pissed off about that we got our numbers and started to queue. After a few minutes of wait and discussion with the lady at the counter we found out that we wouldn't get the visa anyway, because the requirement of proving sufficient funds means having an official bank statement showing all transactions made in the last 3 months and the amount in the account should never be less than 2000 dollars. Okay, we did not have that. So we left the embassy, wondering what to do now. We already paid for the flight within 59 days, but without the visa we could not use that. Without visa we had to have one within 21 days or we couldn't enter the country.

We decided to leave it for a day and instead enjoy sightseeing in Singapore. The bus ride through the city-country had been stunning and we were anxious to see more. Singapore is super modern and clean, but also beautiful and green with trees and parks everywhere. One second you feel like you are walking on a paved road through a rainforest and suddenly you are in the middle of the most modern city you can imagine. We bought ourselves the Singapore tourist pass, which allowed us to use all public transport for 10 dollars a day. And we used that a lot. It's amazing how you can go through a whole country by metro! We walked around the city admiring the architecture and wondering how much money did they pour into these buildings. Just when you walked into something that was ridiculously over the top, you turned around and saw something even bigger and crazier. The botanical gardens were also absolutely beautiful, you could easily spend a few days there. Like everywhere you go in Singapore, you see that someone had way too much money, but you also have to admit that most of the time it was used with style. Must be the best architects in the world behind these things.

We had been afraid that Singapore would be very expensive. We weren't wrong there. But we were lucky enough to find a cheap food court close to our hostel. And what a variety! Local, Chinese, Indian, Western, Japanese and Korean food for about 5 dollars per meal. A nice change after eating pretty much the same things for a few months now.

One day before our flight out it was decision time. What to do with the Philippines? We needed a flight out within 21 days, which would be the amount of visa free time we would be getting upon entry. We knew that three weeks would not be enough for us. We could extend our stay in an immigration office when we were already in the country, but first we needed these tickets. A visa would have been easier, because we did not know how long these extensions would take and if we'd get stuck to a place we didn't really like for a week or so. But now we had no other option. We went to the airport thinking that we could buy an expensive but fully refundable ticket, which we could return as soon as we had entered the Philippines. Easier said than done. We tried the ticket counters with no luck. We found a travel agency, which could get us what we wanted, but the ticket price would be a four digit number, and cancellation fee over a hundred. That was too much for us. Still not knowing what to do, we went to one of the airports free internet stations. (By the way, Singapore airport is for sure the best in the world. Amazing staff, good restaurants, free internet everywhere and you could lick the toilet floors if you wanted to. And it is stylish.) Air Asia saved us this time. With 15 euros each we bought tickets from Clark to Taipei. Cheap enough to throw away, we now had flights out of the country!

The rest of the day we spent in Singapore zoo. For any animal lover it is a perfect place. Animals are well taken care of with big areas for them. You feel like you are walking in a jungle, sometimes only water separating you from monkeys and other animals. Only bad thing about it is that they close early, probably to sell more tickets for the night safari next door, so we only had a couple of hours to spend there. And with our luck, it started to rain like crazy. Having paid the admission, we had to buy raincoats to be able to walk around. The good side was that we basically had the zoo for ourselves, nobody else around! The highlight of the zoo was seeing pandas, which we had never seen before!

Soon we had to leave because of closing and got back to our hostel. Happy that everything had hopefully worked out for the Philippines, and happy about having had such good time in Singapore, we were now ready for our next destination.

 

A month of books and beaches

Kuala Lumpur was a disappointment. We expected it to be similar to Hong Kong, modern and clean but expectations are dangerous when travelling and so we found ourselves in the capital of Malaysia with not much to do. The city is clearly made for cars and as a pedestrian it's often hard to find a safe place to walk, patience is needed to cross the streets and even when the green man shows it's safe to walk, it normally isn't. We heard that Chinatown is a must, especially because it was the start of the Chinese New Year. But even if everything there seemed to be made up for tourists, they were easily outnumbered by the aggressive touts. When we visited the Petronas towers we found the city deserted. Most people left for the 7-10 days holiday of the New Year and at least walking was a bit easier now. The rest of the day we just read books in the park beneath the twin towers because we could not think of anything else to do.

We now had to be careful where to go as most good places were booked out except for the high end hotels. So we skipped our island hopping plan for now and left for the famous Cameron highlands in northern Malaysia. Also there we just got the last beds in a dorm with a nice Indonesian lady who spent most of the time chatting with her friends on the phone in the middle of the night in our dorm. Probably because of bad connection she had to yell the whole time but you can't expect someone to leave the room for calls at 2am, can you? The next morning we found a double room for the same price from a hostel next door.

The highlands are very beautiful, green mountains everywhere you look but unfortunately the weather wasn't great, it was chilly and rainy so we did only one tour and were the only ones in our "group"! The driver was Malaysian with Indian roots, a massive guy with a shaved skull who normally works as a computer technician. First we drove through a tea plantation owned by a scottish family and got an introduction into the harvesting of tea leaves, pretty hard work! Then we stopped at the factory and got to see the processing of the leaves. We also tried their tea but it was pretty tasteless to be honest. The way back was war. The road is very narrow and in the widest places two cars can barely pass. About halfway up we got stuck in a traffic jam with our car being the 3rd in the front. A english tourist (who ate next to us the day before in a restaurant) with a rented car refused to drive backwards to let the bus in front of us pass. He just sat in his car, smiled and said he won't do anything at all. All negotiations of the drivers in front of us didn't seem to work out and our driver was already pretty pissed off so he ran to this guy and told him to back up, he just smiled. We waited in our car, a pretty big old land rover defender, for this guy to move but he didn't. Now our driver got absolutely mad, left the car and stormed up the road to the rental car and we thought now it's gonna get bloody. He didn't hit the guy but almost, screamed into his face and threatened him, but he was still smiling. We overtook the cars in front of us and with full speed we drove towards the guy, stopping only centimetres away from his car, our driver yelling out the window that he will now pass and that he didn't care if his car will be wrecked but the other guy just smiled stupidly and said "yes, yes, thank you".

We didn't wreck his car and got pass and by now the traffic jam reached both ends of the road with hundreds of cars stuck just because of this one guy... All the way up the hill we had to stop because of some small people in big SUV's without control of their cars and our driver was yelling, swearing, getting out of the car to tell people to piss off, getting in again just to drive another 50m to the next stop. All the Indian tour guides in our convoy were somewhere on the road telling people where to drive, it was just crazy. The butterfly farm brought us all down again and the day was over for us (not for the driver who had another tour after ours to the same place and with the traffic jam now reaching several kilometres. We don't know if he survived the afternoon.)

After 3 nights we boarded a bus to Ipoh. There we had to change the terminal to a smaller bus and we arrived in the afternoon in Kuala Kangsar.

Kuala Kangsar was recommended to us by a Greek couple we met in Tanah Rata and its location made it an okay overnight stop. We couldn't really figure out what to do there. We visited a mosque and an hour or two walking along the river, but other than that we were just happy to get some rest. After two nights we were ready to keep going.

We didn't really know what to think of Malaysia. We weren't really sure if we liked it or not. The food wasn't really special unlike we had expected and the cities seemed busy and a little unfriendly. The best thing to do in this sort of situation, we thought, is head towards the islands. You can't really go that wrong with islands, can you?

We thought of Pulau Langkawi first. We soon figured out that it is too far to make it in one day, so we decided just to head north and sleep somewhere on the way. We ended up on other island, Pulau Penang, famous for its curries. Penang looked already much better. Something we had not expected. A little sad that we had already bought bus tickets for the morning, we left Penang after having a good meal, a shower, a good night's sleep and a quick look around. If we had known how nice the old town of Georgetown looked like, we would have stayed another night. In the morning we got up early, and another ferry-bus-ferry combo later we arrived in Langkawi, and soon forgot about Penang.

Pulau Langkawi is one of the most famous tourist attractions in whole Malaysia. It is a tax free zone where locals and tourists come to enjoy cheap booze, cigarettes and other shopping (Malaysia being a muslim country, mostly the last two). We, too, did some shopping before settling down on a beach further away from the center. After a fifteen minute taxi ride we were at our chosen location and checked into a hostel.

We hadn't really had much expectations for Malaysia, but what we had imagined, Langkawi was pretty much a match. Langkawi proved to be okay but a bit boring but we were happy not to dislike it. It was nowhere near a paradise island though, it is too developed and too city-like for that. Our luck was to be there before the peak season, when it is not bursting with tourists yet. We ended up staying for a week, mostly swimming, sunbathing, reading and occasionally renting a scooter. We went up the Langkawi cable car to check out the surroundings and visited the Underwater world. After a week we thought we'd had enough and took off to the next island.

Pulau Perhentian was more our kind of place. We arrived on the other coast of Malaysia, on the small Pulau Perhentian Kecil and we knew we had found what we were looking for. It was tiny, not many upscale resorts, nice jungle around the beaches and blue water! Exactly how we like it! We checked in a 30-ringgit-a-night bungalow very close to the beach! What a bargain! Or so we thought, until we found the holes in the walls, windows and bathroom floor, no mosquito net, moldy pillows and most of the jungle's wildlife sharing our bungalow. Leeches, frog, 10 or more snails, butterflies, countless mosquitoes and a squirrel family were happily living with us. After two nights of jungle camp we checked into Aur Bay bungalows, where we got a bungalow with a mosquito net and a lot less wildlife for the same price. But the location was better too! Our bungalow was facing the ocean and we got an amazing view from our porch.

And then we stayed. And stayed. We met some nice people, slept, sunbathed, read so many more books that Ben got a good customer discount from the only bookshop on the island. We also did one snorkeling trip, which was great! Sharks, turtles and some decent coral. And Chinese people in lifejackets, always good entertainment... And that's about it. We had planned to spend about a week on Perhentian so we could visit Pulau Tioman on the way to Singapore, where we had to be soon because we had booked a flight from there. Good plan, except that it never happened. We lost the track of time, doing nothing for about two weeks and never noticing how long we spent there. We accidentally ended up staying until we had to leave for Singapore with a bit of a hurry. I guess that means that we liked Perhentian islands, then.

 

Do's and dont's of February

This month we recommend:

Killing fields and S21 prison in Phnom Penh

Mekong river dolphins

Meeting old friends abroad

Getting out of Kuala Lumpur as fast as possible

Books, books, books. (Best of the month: Collapse by Jared Diamond)

Minttu, Finnish mint booze

Roti canai. For breakfast, lunch or dinner. Delicious and cheap.

Walking only barefoot for 2 weeks

Perhentian islands

 

This month we DO NOT recommend:

Peninsular Malaysia

Chinese New Year

Moldy pillows

Lack of mosquito nets

Snorkeling with Chinese people. Just do it and you'll know why.

Sharing the bungalow with a squirrel family

Aircon in Malaysian buses - wear everything you own