Sagada: Where Pine Trees and Banana Trees Live Together in Perfect Harmony

Immediately after leaving the rain forests of Borneo, we headed north from Manila into the mountains. We were pleasantly surprised by and completely unprepared for how cool it would be in the Cordillera. Our bus wound up and up over six thousand feet on an unpaved bumpy road and after almost nine hours on the bus (including a two hour rest at a landslide) we arrived, slightly battered, in Sagada. The sight and smell of pine trees and the best cup of coffee we've had in all of Asia were refreshing to say the least. We spent almost a week in Sagada, hiking to hanging coffins and rice terraces and just enjoying the clean mountain air. Now we are in the hip college town of Baguio--ex-military R&R area--waiting to get on a plane this weekend back down to Mindanao. This part of the Philippines has been a really nice place to be at the end of our trip. It's so different from anything else we've seen and is making us anxious to get home. Suddenly pine forests seem like the most exotic things in the world.