The Preparation
About two months before the trip, we were grouped into small groups to think of station activities for the carnival or get some tasks done. Besides the carnival preparations, training hikes were organised to prepare us for the hike, especially the beginners. Actually it was more like a get-to-know-your-to-be-travel-mates kind of thing, pretty interesting. Special mention to Lay Hoon for all these pre-trip efforts, it takes a lot of dedication to plan an event at such scale.
For the pre-trip preparation, I was working on designing the wristbands for the carnival and also a station game. There were some last minute changes though, so I was doing the photo booth on the actual day. The wristbands was used to allow the participants to keep track of the stations they visited and claim a prize after visiting all.
Can you guess some of the station games from the wristband icons?
The Trek
The trekking terrain was quite straightforward
The cool thing about trekking up Mount Ugo and Mount Pulag was that it was a scenic view throughout the hike! This was different from my usual hikes where you only get rewarded with a view at the summit. Maybe this is a characteristic of trekking in a Corderilla region. In fact, the view along the trek was nicer than that at the summit of Mount Ugo.
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| View along the trek to Mount Ugo |
As for Mount Pulag, we took one of the easiest trails which started quite high up the mountain. We started the summit ascend at about 2+ am and reached the summit at about 5+ am. Along the way, the star view was very beautiful. I spotted Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Venus too.
Milky Way, photo by Yi Xiang
Venus above the sun! Screenshot beside in case you don't believe me.
Sunrise above a sea of clouds was beautiful
We even played a game of bridge at the summit of Mount Pulag.
The Camping
Our camps at Domolpos Elementary School. The blue one was where I stayed.
I slept in the tent with two other girls, but the tent size was the same, so it was really cramped! The tent specs indicated it could fit 3 Americans, but 3 Asian girls was stretching it already.
Me and my tent
One of the fun things was the sing song sessions! Simon brought along a guitar-lele, I brought my long-neglected harmonica. Sometimes my harmonica would get stuck when the temperature was to cold.
Jamming sessions!
We got to interact with the kids at the Domolpos School too.
The kids sang a song for us!
I lost my headlamp after the first night, so the second night felt terrible for me! Felt like a blind person.
Our tents at Lusod Village
Caught the sunset at Lusod Village.
The People
For this trip, I signed up with two of my colleagues cum hiking buddies. We were referred to as the 笨笨 / weird trio in this blog post by the two kids in the trip. I have one more colleague in the trip too, that makes it 4 of us from the same company! We were just being very crazy and speak in stupid languages. I am not always like that when I travel, but the presence of another crazy person amplified my craziness and I probably had the same return effect. The vicious cycle resulted in a superdose of craziness, and infected some of our new friends too. It was really fun, I laughed very hard a lot during the trip, which on hindsight was a very precious thing in this sometimes-not-so-fun world.
Many people told me that I am very lucky to have colleagues who take care of me. Yup, thank you you guys!
I made a lot of new friends too, young and old.
Look at the stupid people!
The Local Experience
What hit me the most was the home visit sessions, where we witnessed the unimaginable living conditions of the very poor. Many are still living in slums on the roadside or riverside, their home exterior decorated with piles of garbage which also served as some of their food and income source.
Riverside slums
Me taking a picture of the garbage filled slums
What was equally disturbing was the tessellations of election posters pasted everywhere on the streets. We wonder what had the government done for the people. Why was resources spent on printing election posters instead of helping the people?
Election posters. Image taken from Google Images
Many strong and abled youths are full-time scavengers, sometimes young kids forgoing their education to scavenge for income. That is such a waste of human resource! If only they had the opportunities to hone a proper skill and get a job to make a living for themselves and contribute to the society. They would lead a better life, the world would benefit from the human resource.
Kids scavenging at the river
During the house visits, we get to ask them any questions we like. I like to ask the kids what do they want to be when they grow up. I feel that the ambition of the young people shapes future of the nation.
Justin, leftmost, wants to serve the military when he grows up
As mentioned earlier, we planned a carnival for the locals to have some fun. Actually, we had just as much fun. Many of the locals were very friendly to us.
This woman offered to let me carry her baby and take a photo!
Conclusion
It was a very unique and meaningful trip! It opened my eyes to the beauty of nature and the people of Philippines. Thanks Simon and Lydia for organizing!
Check out Simon's post on this trip too!
An event plaque sponsored by Howard, one of the TFH participants!
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