Banaue on a rainy day

The fog covers the sleepy town of Banaue on a rainy morning in November. The houses are engraved on the slopes of the mountain, descending (or ascending) on each other.They appear even more gray on this foggy day, which, on a sunny day, are as gray-looking as they are now-- the locals are very sparse with the use of color and paint.

Made of a combination of wood, cement and galvanized iron,  only the red roofs of these houses appear colorful. There is only one kind of house design here, the rectangular-shaped, and I would think that the people have not given much thought to the designing and painting of houses, as much as they did in planting rice and maintaining the rice terraces in good form. This is understandable,  producing rice for food is a basic need and one which will come first before the desire to paint or design ones house.

From my window, one can see the road that winds down through the town, with small buildings and houses on both sides. There is a church on the right, as could be seen in the white cross that stands on top of the building. This is the same road that led us to the more isolated village of Batad, where a more panoramic view of terraces could be seen .

It is as ordinary as any other Philippine provincial town, except that Banaue is surrounded by its terraced mountains and its ricefields, which altogether makes it an enchanting small town engulfed by mountains and fields.That their forefathers were able to come up with an amazing system of rice terraces that exists to this day should be remembered when one considers how un-ordinary the people here are.