“Hey, look at this!” There she was, my friend Tonet, standing motionless before a gravestone; her eyes glued to the engraving. “It’s weird.” “What is?” I walked towards her. “Look.” Her finger led my eyes to two words in particular. Last seen. Usually, a gravestone has two lines written below the name of the departed — the date the person [...]

Coffins scare the hell out of me. I said it before and I’m saying it now — The Poor Traveler is not the Brave Traveler. There are so many things out there that terrify me. One of them is death. And most of the things related to it. The mere sight of a coffin is enough to make me shiver. [...]

“I don’t know.” That was my groundbreaking answer when my friends Dane and Ces asked me where we would be staying in Sagada. We were already on the way there. “Are you serious?” Unfortunately, I was. And it was a big problem. How could a group of yuppies travel to Sagada without any hostel reservation? The guest houses I called [...]

We missed the sunrise. Although the original plan was to witness the sunrise from the Kiltepan Viewpoint on our last morning in Sagada, we still hoped we could catch the dawn as soon as we arrived. We tried to dodge the idea of waking up really early on our last day. Unfortunately, the sun was already up when we reached [...]

“Let’s go to Sagada.” More than five years ago, just before our college graduation, my friend Tonet invited me to go to Sagada. Tonet and I had always wanted to visit Sagada for a number of reasons. “I don’t think that’s possible given that we’re too busy working on our theses. Perhaps after graduation?” I suggested. After graduating, while we [...]