Stairways to heaven

It’s not often you get the opportunity to see one of the wonders of the world, so I thought as they were only 10 hours up the road I better go and have a look at the rice terraces of Banaue.

These elegant solutions to the agricultural problem of trying to grow rice in a steeply mountainous region are a meagre 2,000 years old. And while they are undoubtedly a wonder for a tourist, for the Ifugao people of northern Luzon they are still today their main source of sustenance.

The problem with mountainous regions hundreds of kilometres north of Manila is that they tend to be pretty inaccessible. So inaccessible that not even that many Filipinos make the journey. Even the bus station was out of the way, stuck as it was in a far-flung northern suburb of Metro Manila called Sampaloc.

I was pretty tired from my trip to Brunei so fell asleep in the taxi from my centrally located hotel out to Sampaloc, and the chaos that greeted me when the cab driver dropped me off brought me back to reality with a jolt.

I stood at the side of the road, the dumb white man with the rucksack on his back, just staring. This was culture shock.

Some kids were playing basketball in the street, stopping every 10 seconds to let traffic through, and so I concentrated on them - something relatively familiar to focus on.

I have to be honest, I was frightened.

There were no other tourists in sight, I was getting funny looks from the locals and I had no idea if the taxi driver had dropped me in the right place or not.

He could have played some evil trick on me and was sat round the corner with his mates running a sweepstake on how long it’d be before I was robbed/knifed/kidnapped/beheaded (the southern parts of The Philippines are off-limits to westerners as the locals tend to kidnap them and chop their heads off).

The fact Bes had given me a mobile phone with a GPS locator on it and made me promise to stay in touch at regular intervals did little to calm my nerves. And neither did the bus station when I found it.

I think it probably had more to do with the fact I’d just woken up and was disorientated than it was a genuinely dangerous place, but I was glad to be on the grimey old coach and on our way.

It was a 10-hour overnight journey in theory, but ended up taking a bit longer because the engine conked out at 4am in the middle of nowhere, so while we all woke up and wondered around in a daze the driver hit something with a hammer and we set off again.

As we climbed up into the mountains at dawn the next day we had to stop again as a mud-slide had blocked the road ahead.

God know’s how they did it so quickly this far away from anything up in the mountains, but within half-an-hour a Cat had been summoned and was moving logs and debris out of the way - presumably it‘s a pretty common occurrence.

I couldn’t see how the road was in any way clear, but when a tricycle went through our bus driver took this as a sign that he could too so he wheel-spun and side-slipped his way through the mud and we were on our way again. A brave bit of driving, but I was... nervous.

We eventually arrived at about 10 in the morning, knackered and swearing I was going to walk back to Manila rather than go through that again.

But in one of those nice surprises that always seems there to put a smile on your face when everything’s going to rat shit, some kind soul had printed a welcome message outside the hotel. Which was sweet!

That first morning was glorious, the sun was shining, my room had a heart-stopping view over the landscape below and I’d survived the journey. Happy days.

I had a quick stroll around the village and snapped a couple of pics of the terraces while the sun was shining.

And I’m glad I did, because for the next two days it pissed with rain and was permanently cloudy. The view from my room the next morning wasn’t quite so spectacular.

There was one window the next afternoon when the clouds lifted above the level of the village and I could see the terraces. I hopped into a tricycle,

And my driver Lukas drove me up through the village to the best vantage points.

They may be blessed with a beautiful landscape, but the indigenous people are certainly not blessed with wealth, despite the tourists who do make it up here. Banaue is pure corrugated iron, chickens scratching in the dirt, hand-to-mouth poverty.

A few of the locals had dressed up to get a few pisos from the gringos so I was in no mood to haggle to take their picture and handed them a fistful of pisos.

When I’d stopped thanking somebody, somewhere that I’d been born with all the advantages I have been I was able to take in the terraces fully for the first time. And they were breathtaking.

When the clouds began to descend again, closing the all-to-brief window I’d been granted to see this wondrous place, they just added an extra element to the terraces’ mystery.

The journey back to Manila was predictably hellish, but I just closed my eyes and pictured those lush ancient paddies. The locals call them steps to heaven. And for good reason.

Manila's enveloping charm

The arrivals zone of Manila is so chaotic, passengers are asked to head to exits marked with the letters of their surname. There are so many people waiting to greet international passengers that they have to be herded off into cordons and controlled by uniformed guards - the only reason I can think of for this chaos is the return of so many Overseas Foreign Workers as they’re called.

All those Filipino nurses, maids, care-givers and construction workers the rest of the world takes for granted return to their friends and loved ones through this small airport after god knows how many years away from home earning foreign dollar. It‘s a very touching scene to witness, despite the mayhem.

With their air-conned Chelsea Tractor and driver Louie, Bes and Cheska whisked me away to Bes’s mother’s house for a family lunch - Chinese as they weren’t sure if I was ready for Filipino food so soon after arriving.

They were probably right, my flight fright medication meant I wasn’t fully compus mentus and I’m sure they were all wondering who this semi-comatose white zombie was that they’d invited into their home. None of them let it show though and they gently, kindly introduced me to Manilan life.

Bes helped me with my accommodation, warning me off one area the guidebook suggested, and her mother put her driver at my disposal for as long as I was in Manila.

Initially I was sceptical about having a ‘driver’, but when the scale of Manila dawns on you, and you realise the full horror of the city’s lack of infrastructure (Manila makes TfL seem God-like geniuses) and traffic problems you realise that if you can afford one, you use one.

It’s the first third world city I’ve ever seen close up (I’ve been to Delhi, but I was there for BTW so never actually left a five-star hotel or air-conned limo), and it’s sheer pandemonium.

Lexus and Toyata Landcruisers mix with Jeepnies and tricycles on the pot-holed sweltering streets. The main city access road, EDSA, is unavoidable if you want to cross any significant distance in the city and is essentially a car park. Without the marked spaces.

Traffic lights are ignored, people cut across petrol station forecourts to dodge junctions, pedestrians wander indiscriminately across four-lane roads, lane rules are non-existent and traffic enforcers stand by essentially helpless in the face of the chaos.


But somehow it works. Not in the way Tokyo works, but it works. There’s no horn tooting, no shaken fists or shouted obscenities. Everyone goes about their chaotic life very politely. It’s amazing.


After mumbling my inadequate thanks to Bes and her family for lunch and kindness - her mother had even prepared a room for me in her house - I holed up in a hotel and spent the next two days planning my next month’s moves. I had a trip to Brunei, a holiday to Boracay with Susie and a journey up into the mountains of Banaue to see the rice terraces to plan.


Believe me, when you don’t use travel agents, are in a third-world country and are trying to keep costs down, it takes two days!


We did have time for a bit of sight-seeing though. Bes and her daughter Mica took a day out to drive me around the only tourist area of Manila, Intermuros. Actually, the ever-useful and ever-uncomplaining Louie, drove us while we collapsed gratefully into the air-conned car after each landmark fairly gasping from the heat and humidity.


First up was the execution site of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal. A park has been erected in his honour and in the best tradition of national heroes, a few lucky/unlucky guards had been detailed to guard his monument.

Given even Bes and Mica who live in Manila could barely stand 20 minutes outdoors, we forgave one of the guards when he slipped behind the monument for a quick hose down. Poor guy.

Next was lunch at a lovely Spanish-style Filipino villa where I sampled Ox tongue for the first time and wandered around the courtyard enjoying the butterflies for as long as we could take the heat.

After lunch we walked the 100 yards to the St Augustin cathedral and arrived in its cooling cloisters dripping with sweat. It’s one of the few buildings in Manila to have survived the war, and while little has been done to ’historicise’ it, it’s a genuinely interesting place - all nooks and crannies, old paintings and crypts.

Leaving the church we were hi-jacked by a seemingly affable guide who somehow got us into a pony and trap-tour of the sights we’d just seen. By the time we realised what was happening it was too late. Good job he was funny.

And that was it really, there’s not a lot else in Manila, despite it's mind-boggling sprawl.

There’s an awful lot of malls,

an awful lot of squatter villages (slums),

And weird transvestite parades.

Oh, there is the weird story of the Manila Film Centre, which Imelda Marcos had built in the 1970s to host the inaugural Philippines Film Festival.


The building work wasn’t moving quickly enough for Imelda so she ordered a few corners cut to meet the festival deadline.

Sadly that meant when a section of the building collapsed and killed a number of workers that work just continued on top of their corpses. Noone knows how many died because noone bothered to count, they just carried on working on top of them.

Locals say the place is haunted now and despite its great location right on the bay it lies unused and dilapidated as noone is prepared to occupy it.

Actually, that's not strictly true, the local transvestite show has the whole place to themselves, but they're more like glamorous squatters than actual tenants.

This is a weird place.

Family matters

After six months of wandering aimlessly around the globe following an itinerary I thought up on the hoof at a travel agent‘s desk in Piccadilly I finally had a purpose. I had came to Brunei for a reason - my grandma Zena is buried here.

She died in 1971, three years before I was born, and was out here because my grandad was head of music for the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment at the time.

You can see the resemblance - she has cool shades.

My grandad remarried and so I do actually have a grandmother alive and well in Surrey, she’s not my biological grandmother, but she always has and always will be my grandma. She was the grandma of my first memories, noone will ever replace her, and I love her dearly.

Ever since I can remember though, I have been aware of Zena and always thought it sad I never got to meet her. I know very little about her as she is rarely talked about in the family, not deliberately I’m sure, but just because she died such a long time ago and everyone has moved on.

The ‘Brunei years’ have always featured heavily in family stories over the years, and until very shortly before my trip when I actually got an atlas out and had a look at this part of the world I had no idea where it was. But as far as my childhood brain was concerned it was an impossibly exotic place - it had a Sultan who had a Lamborghini, for God’s sake - and I had to see it.

The problem with paying Zena my respects was that I didn’t actually know where she was buried. The only instructions I’d got from home were that it was near the former military barracks and behind the Chinese cemetery.

I’d emailed the British High Commission here a few weeks before arriving in the hope of some help locating the plot but received no reply. So my first stop was the Consular office, both to vent my anger at their non-response and to politely ask again for their help.

A very pleasant middle-aged woman who seemed to be suffering from swine flu listened to my questions and then disappeared to confer with a colleague.

Some 10 minutes later she returned to tell me through coughs and sniffles that she was very sorry but she wasn’t able to talk to me about military records. If only I’d asked for help earlier, they could have sought permission from the right person. And what a shame it was I was only here for a few days as they’d surely be able to help next week, but they certainly wouldn‘t be able to turn a request round like mine around so quickly.

The joys of empire.

The mission I’d assumed would be so easy and that had sub-consciously become my raison d’etre for being in this part of the world was crumbling rapidly before me. I was too angry to even mention the email they‘d ignored. What was the point in the face of such stupid bureaucracy?

To add insult to injury she told me that even if they had the right permissions there had been a flood some years previously and the file had probably been destroyed. Great, thanks.

She suggested I try the Catholic church, but my grandad had had a humanist funeral so I couldn’t imagine he would have had Zena buried in a Catholic cemetery.

She must have seen how crestfallen I was, because she furtively leaned forward, scribbled on a scrap of paper and said, “I’m not sure, but if you show this to a taxi driver, I think there’s some kind of cemetery around there.”

I wasn’t sure if she was breaking the rules or she genuinely wasn’t sure, but it was the only lead I had and I forgave her giving me whatever tropical disease she‘d sneezed over me.

I set off to find a cab driver - no mean feat when there are only 43 in the whole country (seriously, there’s only 43, the Sultan subsidises car purchases and so most Bruneians own two or three) - and eventually found a rank by the bus station.

I showed my piece of paper to the cabbies. Half a dozen of them passed it around among themselves, turning it upside down, pointing in different directions to vague points on the horizon and chattered away to themselves in Malay.

Eventually one seemed certain he knew the place and I gratefully jumped in his air-conned cab.
We drove for about 20 minutes heading out of the city and into the suburbs. As the houses grew thinner and the jungle thicker the driver pointed across me to the trees on our left. Flashing between the foliage were the unmistakable shapes of crosses and headstones. Well it was definitely a cemetery, but was it the right one?

We headed up a dirt road and found ourselves halfway up a hill - to the left and up the slope countless brightly coloured graves covered in Chinese writing.

To the right down the slope fewer, more sombre Christian-looking graves… but also covered in Chinese writing. Oh no.

I asked some locals lunching in the shade if this was the English cemetery, “This one Chinese Buddhist,” he said gesturing up the hill, “That one Christian,” pointing behind me at the lower one.

Oh well, the sign over the gate said Christian too, so it must be the right place.

It wasn’t a big graveyard, but without any official records as to the location the only thing I could do was be methodical, begin at the beginning, walk in straight lines and look at every headstone.

For the first 15 minutes every grave I looked at was dated within the last 10 years and made of brand spanking new polished black marble - and every inhabitant was Chinese. Although I was able to quickly discount these, I did come across a few graves marked only with white-painted wooden crosses on and faded, illegible writing.

Some didn’t even have crosses and as I realised I didn’t know what kind of headstone was on Zena’s grave I had to scrape leaves and debris off a number of headstone-less graves searching for names.

Nothing.

I’d read on the internet while trying to research the cemetery that vandals had targeted it a few years ago - what if Zena’s was one that was destroyed? It didn’t bear thinking about.

I was getting more and more desperate, I’d looked at nearly every grave in the place and found nothing at all to even suggest I was in the right place, let alone the right grave.

I’d walked every aisle but one and turned into the last line not believing I’d come all this way to be frustrated when I had seemingly come so close. I was so disappointed I was hardly even looking at the headstones anymore.

Then as I looked at the fourth to last grave in the row I saw to my right the word ‘Morgan’.

Then ‘Capt F. Morgan’.

I walked closer, not believing what I’d seen and there she was. Difficult to read through the black staining, but it was definitely my grandmother: ‘Zena Winifred Morgan, died 3rd November 1971, Aged 51 years, Beloved wife of Capt F. Morgan, The Royal Brunei Malay Regiment’.

I stopped in my tracks, put my hand over my mouth in shock, and the tears came.

I don’t know if it was relief at having found her when it seemed I never would, sadness at seeing my grandad’s name and remembering him again or just grief for a grandmother I’d never met, but I just stood there with tears streaming down my cheeks reading and rereading the headstone.

I sat down on the marble at the foot of her grave, pulled myself together and had a little chat about who I was and what I was doing there. Silly, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I promised I’d be back the next day to give her a bit of a wash and scrub up. If in doubt, be practical. T’was ever the English way.

Despite being fearful of more tears I actually woke up the next day with a big grin on my face. For once I wasn’t doing what I wanted, I mean I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t doing something solely for my benefit, which I had been for this whole trip really.

It felt like work. I had a reason to get up in the morning and a task to fulfil by a certain time. But it was also about family - something I’ve come to appreciate more and more since I’ve been away from them.

This grave held my Dad and uncle and grandfather’s mum and wife, it was a long way from England and a bit dirty. I wanted to make it look good, find some nice flowers and take some pics for Dad and Andrew. It felt right.

So, it was up early to the local supermarket for a bucket, a pack of scrubbers and some cleaning products. I scoured (sorry, couldn’t resist) the shelves wondering what the right cleanser was for scrubbing old-age stains off headstones.

If my Dad and Andrew got their sense of humour from Zena then I’m sure she would have found the fact I seriously considered toilet cleaner hilarious. But however funny it seemed at the time, I just couldn’t bring myself to use bog bleach!

I settled for some basic cream cleanser, bought a little bucket, a stiff scrubbing brush, a packet of scourers and a three-litre bottle of water and headed out to find a florist.

A very pleasant Malay lady put together a beautiful little bouquet there and then, even including a couple of the dark red roses that were synonymous in our family of my grandad and the Parachute Regiment.

I headed back to the bus station looking for the nice chap who’d taken me the day before, but he was on a job. However, all the drivers waved at me and knew where I wanted to go and why. Apparently the crazy Englishman visiting the grave of the grandmother he’d never met was the talk of the rank.

Anyway, the very charming Mr Goh drove me out to the cemetery again and sat smoking a cigarette in the shade while I set to work weeding and scrubbing in the sun.

Brunei is hot and humid at the best of times, but at midday it’s REALLY hot. I had to take my sunglasses off because the sweat from my face was collecting in a pool in their concavity. The mosquito repellent and sunscreen I’d plastered myself in was similarly dripping into my eyes and pretty soon I was blind.

When I first put the cream cleanser on the reverse side of Zena’s headstone to check the effect of it, the stone went green. Not a good sign. Though of course it could have been the insect repellant.

But after a few more scrubs and rinses the cleanser seemed to be doing its job, and pretty soon Mr Goh and another local took pity on the half-blind, mad-dog Englishman and started to help out.

Within an hour or so we’d pretty much done what we could. I only had enough cash to have Mr Goh hang around for an hour, so I laid down the flowers, touched the foot of Zena’s grave, said goodbye and left.

The Sultanate of Swing (Sorry!)

Noone told me Brunei was a dry country!

Well, my cab driver from the airport to my hostel did, but it was a bit late by then. I could have bought myself a bottle of something at Manila Duty Free (you’re allowed to take one bottle of something into Brunei). Bugger.

Brunei isn’t exactly on the traveller trail, and after an hour’s stroll around the capital Bandar Seri Begawan I could see why. It’s a very, very quiet place. I guess this is what a world without booze looks like.

After fending off a particularly unconvincing transvestite offering me a massage - “Don’t worry, very cheap,” and I could see why - I checked into the KH Soon rest house. The guidebook had said it was “basic, airy and clean”, and it was certainly basic.

I took a quick evening stroll around the block, as I’m wont to do on first arriving somewhere, and saw this - the Omar Ali Sifuddien mosque. And to quote from the guidebook, “one of Asia’s finest”.

It’s not old, having been built in the 1950s, but it is very expensive. Very expensive. If there’s one thing the Bruneians aren’t short of it’s money. The carpets are from Belgium, the glass from England, the marble from Italy, the granite from Shanghai etc. You get the picture.

One of the things recommended to me by old Brunei hands (my Grandma) was a boat trip around the water village and the river, so I strolled down to the quay, haggled pathetically with a couple of touts and jumped into a long boat.

Although I’m sure I overpaid, one of the joys of travelling independently is that you’re not herded around in a big group like the other I saw waiting on the quay.

I smugly got into my own personal boat, eschewing the lifejacket - I’m a qualified sailor you know!- and we set off into the jungle.


My guide and driver kept their eyes peeled for the famous Bruneian Proboscis Monkeys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proboscis_Monkey

I just sat slack-jawed as the mangroves, jungle and a crocodile slipping menacingly into the water (he was too quick to get a pic of I’m afraid) whizzed past. This was travelling!

Eventually we found a family of monkeys swinging through the branches at the edge of the river. I’d never heard of them before arriving in Brunei, but it was great to see them doing their thing in the wild.

Bandar began life as a kind of primitive Venice, with most of the residents living in huts on stilts. There are a few canals running through the modern city.

But the highlight is the Water Village itself,

which while at first glance looks primitive actually has its own firestation,

police station, electricity supply and many of the huts have satellite dishes. Well, this is Brunei after all!

I strolled back down to the riverbank for dinner that evening and had a fresh coconut with me noodles. Who needs wine when you’ve got coconuts!

I spent a couple of days in Bandar, mostly to do with Grandma Zena's grave, but I did check out the market before heading off for the Empire Hotel and Country Club.

The Empire is what some might call the folly of the Sultan’s brother Prince Jefri. He decided at some point that Brunei needed a world-class leisure venue and spared no expense in making it happen.

Obviously money wasn’t a problem and the place is truly impressive.

The only problem, from Prince Jefri’s point of view, is that noone ever bothers to visit. Whether because Brunei is dry or not I don’t know, but the place was spookily deserted.

From my point of view though, it meant I had a six-star resort all to myself. There wasn’t a soul around. And because noone ever comes here, it was cheap as chips. Brilliant.

Only having one full day here I decided to make it count, so got up early (yes early, I had a lot to do!) and headed to the private beach for a swim and sunbathe, which was of course empty.

Then it was back to the room for a quick shower and down to the Marine Centre for a bit of sailing. A qualified coastal skipper I may be, but I’ve never sailed a dinghy before in my life. I managed a whole hour of tacking out and around the bay and only capsized it as I was returning it to the centre. And then only because I was trying to pull the daggerboard up. Honest!

A spot of lunch and another shower later (you need three or four showers a day here as just walking from one building to the next is enough to have you dripping in sweat) and I picked up one of the resort’s buggies, which ferry guests around the town-sized resort, and went off to the empty golf course for a bit of driving practice.

I’m still hopeless.

After dinner in an empty restaurant,

I made use of the resort’s cinema, which of course I had to myself,

and watched the new Star Trek movie from the comfort of a leather armchair.

All in all a thoroughly satisfying day, thoroughly surreal, but satisfying nonetheless. And at only sixty quid a night I couldn’t really complain.

After the blue patch in Hong Kong, my time in Brunei had reinvigorated me - the luxury of The Empire, the jungle boat safari, but most of all visiting Zena - it felt good to be on the road. I am missing family and friends terribly, but the few days I spent in Brunei make it all worth while.