Goat, Caribou, & Duck

Much of this adventure is focused on experiencing and learning about Asian cultures. We are surrounded by it every moment of every day in every way. Food is a staple in every culture and provides a unique window into the people who eat it. So being the traveling, aspiring foodies we are, we thought it might be nice to share some food stories with you. So, when Me-Ann (Anthony's cousin) and Rex (Me-Ann’s husband) offered to take us to some local cuisine, we jumped on the chance and tried these three foods in one evening of indulgence. 

Goat 

Sitting in a bahay kubo (grass hut) our hosts ordered four goat dishes. Two were a more stew like dishes cooked with some meat (rib and leg), both were excellent. The third dish, with great flavor but a slightly unusual texture, was a mixture of chopped meat, skin, and intestine. To round the meal off was a plate of intestine, an acquired taste to say the least. This was Darin’s first time eating goat so for those who are in the same boat, it tastes similar to beef but with a softer texture and flavor. We also had two soups: one sinigang, a very common and popular sour soup in the Philippines (Anthony's favorite), and another bitter soup made from fish innards - not our favorite. 

Me-Ann & Rex enjoying their goat meal

Anthony & Darin trying out some goat

Pigar-Pigar

Caribou: you have seen them in movies and documentaries, now see them hanging from a hook and on your plate! On Galvan street -yes as in Anthony Galvan, but we'll save that for a later time- in Dagupan there is a row of outdoor eateries all selling pigar-pigar. Pigar-pigar is thinly sliced small pieces of caribou meat quickly cooked in boiling oil served with some chopped vegetables. Our ordered was a little overcooked and hard but the meat had good flavor and eating out in the street at this little booth was well worth it.

Vendor preparing some pigar pigar

Anthony & Darin w/ their pigar-pigar

Our pigar-pigar plate

Balut

Those with weak stomachs might want to skip this. While eating our pigar-pigar, locals paraded up and down the street selling various foods. Our hosts ordered three balut.  Balut is fertilized duck embryo that is boiled alive and eaten warm from the shell with a pinch of salt. It is very popular in the Philippines and served from vendors walking the streets. The idea of eating a baby duck straight from the egg might strike some as odd; but once you get over that it tastes good. You eat the entire embryo and yoke but suggested not the hard white section. As for the taste, it just like a boiled egg if it were not for the bones, feathers, and head.

Balut

Me-Ann demonstrating how to eat balut

Anthony & Darin having a go w/ their balut

Anthony displaying his balut

Hundred Islands

About 2 hours NW from Dagupan, off the coast of the city of Alaminos, are approximately 123 islands. It was a 30 minute boat ride to the start of our tour and it was beautiful sailing going from one island to another.

The view from Governor's Island

In the waters at Governor's Island

Bahay Kubo on the edge of Children's Island

3 meter jump into the water inside a cave with bats

Bat Island to the right

Sagada

Bus to Sagada

From Bagio, where we had spent the previous night in cousin Me-Ann’s vacation home, we ventured to Sagada by way of a 6 hour bus ride(440pesos/10USD). The bus left at 6:30am so we were up early, not a hard thing for Anthony as he has yet to adjust to the time zone and was up at 3:30. Darin on the other hand was only able to roll out of bed with help from Anthony. We stopped by McDonalds for a quick snack. You might imagine that the food would be the same, and for the most part it is with some twists; rice, longanisa, and sugar-laden pineapple juice give it a distinctly Filipino flavor. One egg McMuffin and two hamdesal later we were on the bus.

Six hours seemed like a long time and were a little concerned about how comfortable the ride would be. We sat at the front with our knees touching the windshield and took off. With our seats we could see a clear 180 degree sweep in front of the bus, and it was spectacular. The bus starts off at around 5,000ft climbs to 7,000ft and then drops back down to 4,000ft. The entire ride is on the crest of mountains with views of valleys after valleys. The hillsides are sparkly populated with towns here and there but farms everywhere. Rice is a popular crop this time of year at higher altitude but many other leafy greens are being grown. Farmable land seems to be a commodity and as such where there is flat land there are crops, even if it is at the edge of the road. Overall the ride was a little bumpy and not all of the road is paved but for the most part it was comfortable. The views were incredible and the bus ride itself we see as an attraction.

Sagada caves

Sagada is a small town and considered by locals to be “rustic”. The town has one major street and a church. On the day we arrived we walked around the city we saw more white people than we had seen since the beginning of the trip, it seems this is a popular destination for tourists. We made our way into a tourist adventure store and set up a spelunking trip (800pesos/19USD) for the next morning.

At the mouth of the cave are hanging coffins. The coffins are stacked up or rested high up on a cliff as to avoid rival tribes form desecrating them. The dead are place in the fetal position; they exit the world in the same way that they came in.

Jason was our tour guide, a farmer by weekdays and guide by weekend. He took us through two caves linked together. The first half of the adventure was climbing, crawling, and butt scooting. Some of the passages were only a foot or two wide and we repeatedly needed ropes to climb down. It was awesome! We had a blast scrambling through the cave. The second half of the cave was less difficult to maneuver through but had cool rock formations.

Entering Lumiang Cave w/ coffins

Anthony "rock climbing"

Darin w/ our tour guide, Jason

It's a turtle

A Day at the Spa

Sagada sounds

One might imagine that a rural town would be quiet and peaceful with crickets and the occasional dog. Not the case, at bed time there is a cacophony of dogs barking, kids screaming, saws, hammering, cars, footsteps heard through the thin walls, and yes more dogs barking. The morning is much of the same but with the added roosters who start well before sunup, the traditional cartoon rooster at the first rays of light is a bit exaggerated. But, with all of these sounds we both slept well and had no trouble going to bed. On another note, country music is extremely popular!

Sagada ATM

Forgetting to pull money out when we were in Baguio, we tried to pull money out of the only ATM machine in Sagada. Unfortunately, it was a regional bank and it wouldn't access our US accounts. So we count our money and realize we didn't have enough money to last us our planned 3 nights in Sagada. So we cut our trip a day short and head back to Baguio. But even the two nights we got to spend in Sagada was well worth the 6 hour bus ride.

Converter and Ziplock

With so many hours on buses and planes, I start thinking of things I should put on this blog. On our way to Sagada, I thought it would be good to provide some tips that I should jot down so that if I ever were to do this again, I would have it recorded somewhere. Or if someone else were to travel for an extended period of time, then I would have tips ready for them.

Tip #1: Get a universal electrical adapter that is also a converter. We brought with us an electric clipper so that I can maintain my mohawk and so that Darin can shave down his head and beard. While bringing the clipper would add weight to our packs, we thought it would save us money in the long run. Well so far, it has cost us more money since the clipper only runs on 120V and it goes kinda haywire if connected to the 220V that is provided in the Philippines. So we went ot a hardware store and bought ourselves a converter. But the only one they had was kind of heavy and bulky. We bought it anyway though I am already thinking that I want to buy a smaller converter in Japan and chuck this one when we do.

Just to expand a little on this tip: I ended up bringing a converter that has an input for a ground pin so that I can plug in my little netbook as opposed to the adapter/converter that only has the two pin input socket. And I also brought an extension chord (w/ the ground input pin) so that we can plug in more than one thing at a time.

Tip #2: Ziplock bags. I brought a few of them. Some of the larger size and some of the sandwich sized ziplock bag. But I've already used up all my spare bags. I've used it to organize all my cords. And I can think of other uses for them already and I've run out. :( I can use them to keep things from getting wet and use them to store wet clothes when packing. And I can organize even more with them if need be. Perhaps I can pick up some more later.

Northern Luzon Cities

I figured it would be best to update my list once a week as oppose to doing it every time we visit a new city, so without further ado, here is our current list:

Countries Visited: 1

Cities Visited:

1. Dagupan City, Philippines

2. Lingayen, Philippines

3. Alaminos, Philippines

4. Baguio City, Philippines

5. Sagada, Philippines

Tally

My sister and I have a running friendly competition to see who's been to more continents, countries, and cities. While I am currently winning the continent count, my sister has me beat in both countries and cities visited. But by the end of this trip, I should pass her up. So I thought it would be kind of nice to keep a running tab of countries and cities. But we have rules. Layovers don't count and neither do quick drive throughs. So while we had a layover in Hong Kong and we landed in Manila, neither city will count in my tally. Unless we spend some time there sometime later in our trip.

Countries visited
1. Philippines

Cities visited
1. Dagupan City, Philippines

Finally here (or there)

It's Day 2 of our trip. Day 0 was the day we left (Mar 16) and that was spent mostly on the plane. And sadly, Day 1 turned out to be a lot of travelling as well. We left at 1 AM on Mar 16 and was on our first leg of our plane ride for 14 hours. With a 15 hour time change, Mar 16 quickly flew by. Below is a picture of us in the plane. I managed a wopping 2.5 hours of sleep on a 14 hour flight. :(

After a short layover in Hong Kong, we jumped on the plane again and was pleasantly surprised that we got upgraded. Yay!!!! See Darin below in his cubbie? Too bad that flight was only a 2 hour flight. We could have used that in the last leg. Oh well.

Once landing in Manila, my cousin Me-Ann, picked us up and we drove up to Dagupan Philppines. What is normally a 4 hour drive turned out to be 6 hrs, because of the traffic getting out Manila and road construction along the way. So after 27 hours, we reached our destination. Hopefully, there will be very little of that kind of travelling until the end.

Hello! Kumusta ka! Sawatdee Klap! Konichiwa! Ni hao! Annyong!

Hello and welcome to Darin and Anthony's travel blog. This blog will chronicle our 3+ month trip through Asia. "Did you say 3+ month trip..?," I hear you saying. Yes, 3+ month trip. Darin was in between schooling and Anthony decided to leave his company after 11 years, so what else is there to do but travel through Asia. Isn't that what any sane person would do? In the next three months, we'll share our laughs, our tears, and our insanity from the constant travelling. Below are some of the common questions we've gotten. So now you can stop asking us. Just kidding. Continue to ask the same questions as everyone else.

Q: "Where are you guys going?"

A: Tough to answer this since we haven't planned it all the way through so it's changed and can continue to change as we go along. But we've always had the following countries in mind: Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, China (Beijing in particular), and Japan. We've also talked about possibly going to Laos, Singapore, Indonesia, Bhutan, and Burma. If we have the time and money, we'll add them as well. And the newest addition as of this morning is Seoul, Korea (which replaces Hong Kong).

Q: "Do you have a return date?"

A: That's the beauty of being unemployed, there is nothing to come back to (except you, of course). So we've bought one-way tickets to Manila and we'll work our way through Asia. When we run out, we'll come back. Or when we're absolutely tired of travelling and need the comforts of home.

Q: "Are you going to India?"

A: I don't know why we've gotten this question a lot, but we have. Sadly, we were both just thinking of travelling through Eastern Asia and we would prefer to save India another time when we can focus our whole trip to India.

Q: "How are you able to travel for 3 months?"

A: Well, we're both unemployed at the moment so we both have the time to do it. And the root of the question really is, how we can afford to do such a thing. I think the term is, "saving". We've been saving for this trip since last July.

Q: "Do you still have family in Asia that you'll visit?"

A: This is more directed towards Anthony, since he's the Asian one. But yes, he does, and we are planning on visiting them in the Philippines. And also family in Bangkok, but he's not Thai. He just has a cousin in Thailand.

Q: "Are you guys going to post pictures on Facebook?" "Are you guys going to write a blog about it?"

A: Well what do you think?

Q: "What are you going to do when you get back?"

A: Get a job. Since Anthony left work to go on this trip, he'll have to start looking for something when he gets back. Darin will be using this time during Asia to figure out what he'll be doing.