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We arrived in Banaue at 6 in the morning, we were greeted of the bus by a friendly guy called kris who was going to be our guide, he drove us to our guest house and we ageed to meet in a couple of hours as we had just been on a 10hr bus journey and needed to catch up on some sleep if we were going to trek the rice fields. We met at 10 and went for breakfast and togther we planned our route. We started off by driving to the various viewing points along the way, the view was really amazing, hard to describe, but i would say it looks like a rather large set of green stairs that have been very precisely cut into, also looks like a grassy pyramid and on one of the photos you can see tuten Karmune well kind of! We then stopped at the final viewing point which also appears on the 20 peso notes! We came across a few tribal elders who played mary had a little lamb on a recorder, which they do to keep the birds away from the rice. They were aged between 90 and 100, which is quite impressive. It was also here where kris showed us his beetle nut concoctions where you crucnh into a beetle nut along with ash of a crushed snails shell and some sort of leave and combined they make a blood like mixture which apparently keeps your teeth strong, i may have believed this to be more true had the person telling me had all of his teeth, but nevertheless im sure there is some truth in it.  We then went to a little hut on stilts which held some amazing carved artefacts, like spoons and rice guards which - you guessed it, guard the rice. We then went to another hut which you can actually stay in, and there was a family currently staying there, they kindly offered me and neil some green mango and nuts which was very nice of them. Next we started our 3 hr hike through the rice terraces and through villages, possibly the most memorable stop was where we paid a pound to see this womens grandpas skeleton, kept nicely wraaped in woven cloth on a shelf in the house, she then went on to tell us that her Grandpa died when he was 120, and the skeleton still had a few teeth (must have been all those beetle nuts) when someone dies at an age like that they make a real celebration of their life, where each familly member spends time with the body and eats, sings, dances until they are ready to pass the body onto another familly member, if this is a large familly it can take as long as a month until the body is ready to be buried! After 6 years they dig the body up and the celebrations begin again. If a child dies though there is no celebration, just mourning. The women also let me look around her hut to see how they lived, it was really interesting to see, although i couldnt see alot as the house was pitch black only lit by a burning fire, nice smell though.
We then continued on our journey past streams and various sections of the rice fields, we came across another village where there were a bunch of children fishing, they were anything but camera shy and preceeded to make various snake poses for me while i took their photos.Â
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