A fluffy, egg served over a bed of white rice. If this were New York, Paris or Tokyo, they could’ve noted— next to some obscene number—“cage-free organic humanely-raised chicken eggs over locally hand-picked rice from down there” with an area pointing down the building-pocked hillside. But here, it’s just breakfast. Read More → The house, crudely built of incongruous slats of wood, sits in a small grove of vegetation. Chickens roam freely by a lazy dog, groggy at this early hour. You round the corner, now even more uncertain of your direction. A thin, sinewy strap of an old man appears with a loin clothes wrapped around his waist. He grunts a grunt you take as confusion. Perhaps you just realize how ridiculous your presence is to him, sitting atop this ridge outside of Batad. “Tappiyah Waterfall?” you stammer in between a couple forlorn puffs of oxygen. You point in the direction in front of you. “Is this the way to Tappiyah waterfall,” you repeat, this time with a hand gesture mimicking the same. Read More → One bad step from the smooth speck of rock jutting from the terrace wall sends you flailing violently, grasping for balance from a disinterested atmosphere as you hurtle into a large pool of standing water— terminating your adventures, the villages rice crops, the villagers’ rice terrace or all three. One step at a time, you maintain balance. Your eyes dart below for the next step, your eyes dart ahead at the path, your eyes dart to the periphery to pick up the wide expanse of exhilarating imagery. In short, your senses are under massive duress, happy duress, as you make your way down the mountainside, across the quilt of coloured rice terraces and up the other side. “Yeah, yeah, the Batad Junction, let’s go.” You don’t like his over eager approach, but you can’t argue with the price or logistics, so you hop in, confirming the price and details once again to be sure. It’s a long way to Batad on a trike, but, due to the vehicle’s small size, it navigates nimbly, skipping large potholes and weaving through road construction sites with ease. The distance seems far greater than the price. And sure enough, as promised, he takes the left hand turn at the Junction up the spur road which climbs higher and higher. Read More → The cold air is blasting from the ceiling vents. It’s been hours since the repetitious highway lighting streaked across the bus. Now, it is the pushing and pulling of the accelerator and brake pads as the bus climbs hills, winds around tight curves and passes the seemingly endless supplies of choking, rusty trucks attempting the same. Everyone seems asleep, bathed in the flickering light from the anonymous movie playing overhead. Some have pulled themselves under blankets, wisely brought aboard in spite of the sweat-inducing temperatures before they climbed aboard. Others are snoring, from which the sounds waves are mostly over matched by the rumbling engine. The heat slices across your skin immediately as you run from the airport terminal, across the pavement and towards the loudly exhaling public bus. You walk towards the back, happy to have caught it just in time. The purser on the bus drifts from front to back, collecting the fares. You hand him the only bill you have and he shakes his head and pushes it back towards you. “That’s all I have,” you reply, shrugging your shoulders and painting a look of feigned worry across your face. He mutters something and walks back to the front of the bus. Read More → You follow the beach, painted in yellow and red vegetation, towards the hill the taxi driver had pointed out on your first day in St Lucia. You walk across a field with overgrown bushes and thin brown grasses bending in the wind. Some goats nearby stare at you, as you make your way towards a deteriorating road, slowly chewing. Read More → The van shudders to a stop at the bottom of a steep hill to let off a passenger and take on two more. The interior, already cramped, consumes without problem. The engine whines, bellicose and begrudgingly pushing ahead. Banana trees line the foreground, leaves dancing with the wind. The city of Castries, the capital of St Lucia, has an island energy to it, which, barring cruise ships at port, is generally devoid of tourist pollution on the day you visit. The minibus skips along until the driver calls out “last stop” and with that you are out on the street wandering. Read More → The afternoon is expiring and the water taxi driver is surveying the scene the Sugar Beach Resort. A young couple frolicking nearby with floats in the water, resort goers lazily reclined under their respective palapas, an older couple taking a lazy walk at water’s edge. “You sure you don’t need a ride to Soufriere,” he calls out. You squint your eyes, grimace in feigned bewilderment and shrug indifferently. “I guess if it’s a good price we can visit Soufriere,” you respond. You realize the alternative is another anguishing hike up over the saddle from the mountainous Pitons, something that you would like to avoid, but you cannot tip your hand. His eyes light up at the notion of getting a fare on his return home. Read More → The cool night air gasps, stumbles and finally succumbs to the strength of the sun each morning, and this morning is no different. You are standing at the side of the road. They all start as a distant rumble, transform to a higher pitched hum and end as a source of stiff wind as they speed past. You are watching intently for a green license plate, typically starting with an M, the mark of a public minibus. The distant hum grows louder and emerges over the hill, and finally, after a good ten minutes, you spot the green plated minibus. You raise your hand to draw attention and the van comes to a screeching halt past you, after a half swerve off to the side of the road. You grasp the worn handle, slide the metal door back and squeeze past a handful of passengers to sit in the lone seat on the back bench. Read More → Giant mounds of red and golden Sargassum seaweed carpet the beach for as long as the eye can see. Your driver is pointing at the drab hillside in the distance. “That is where we used to play,” he offers in a thick Saint Lucian accent. You provide several conversation starters to fill the awkward silence but they all dead ends after a line or two. Staring out the window, you watch the shrubbery and small houses pass as you drive along Saint Lucia’s southern coastline. Read More → A couple of things that strike you about Japan The road, slick with a reflective sheen of rain, continues uphill. The light rain, steadily falling for most of your 45-minute walk, is beading up on your blue fleece jacket. Should you continue past the last house and see where this road continues? Are you, the obvious outsider, being watched by skeptical neighbors? The asphalt—a bit past the last house and now enveloped by tree cover—trails off into a scrubby dirt road with grass rising wildly in the middle. Up around a bend you continue. A roving foggy, mist comes and goes, impairing visibility. The dirt road soon expires in lieu of a walking path. It grows narrower. Read More → Expelled from the high-speed bullet train from Tokyo, you find yourself in Kyoto waiting for the contact of a rental property you booked. The older Japanese man appears five minutes late and leads you out to his car for the quick drive to the rental property. He gives you a map of the area, full of Japanese kanji characters, and, in broken English, a quick rundown of your new temporary neighborhood. Read More → The cold drizzle slowly collects into bigger pools and slides slowly down the fogged window. You stare out at the umbrellas making their daily commute. The reflections of automobiles flicker from the wet asphalt in adjacent lanes. It’s another spring morning in Tokyo. Read More →#058: The Road to Mayayao (Philippines)
Posted on 26 January 2016 by Tak
#057: The Trek to Tappiyah Waterfall, Batad, Philippines
Posted on 19 January 2016 by Tak
#056: A Guided Tour to Babluy, Batad
Posted on 5 January 2016 by Tak
Read More →#055: The Path to Batad, Philippines
Posted on 22 December 2015 by Tak
#054: Banaue, Philippines
Posted on 15 December 2015 by Tak
Read More →#053: Inching Through Manila, Philippines
Posted on 1 December 2015 by Tak
#052: Vieux Fort & Laborie, St Lucia
Posted on 11 November 2015 by Tak
#051: Castries City, Sandals, Pigeon Island, St Lucia
Posted on 4 November 2015 by Tak
#050: Soufriere and Anse Chastanet, St Lucia
Posted on 20 October 2015 by Tak
#049: Crashing Sugar Beach Resort, St Lucia
Posted on 13 October 2015 by Tak
#048: Saint Lucia and the Golden Seaweed
Posted on 6 October 2015 by Tak
#047: 10 Thoughts About Japan
Posted on 22 September 2015 by Tak
#046: Quieting the Chaos of Kyoto’s Kinkaku-ji
Posted on 15 September 2015 by Tak
#045: Temples, Deer & Octopus in Nara Park, Japan
Posted on 1 September 2015 by Tak
#044: A Random Walk in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo
Posted on 25 August 2015 by Tak
