Batad - THE Heaven

Words can make no justice to this place... Even my amateurish pics...It has to be felt... experienced... lived... The remoteness of this place... The Rice terraces... The Tappiyah waterfalls... The Ifugao tribe... all make this place a truly magical one... That’s why regarded as Eight Wonder of the World by many... One has to be there to appreciate it.... the 2000 yr old work by the Ifugao tribes...























How to Get there --> From Manila, one can take the daily buses operated by the Florida Liner or the Autobus from Cayco St, Sampalao City, Manila direct to Banaue(450 Pesos)... There are so many Rice terraces nearby, but due to time constraint we planned only Batad... The Best of them all... From Banaue, u can hire a Jeepney to reach Batad... Jeepney is a must as it’s an hour and half ride from Banaue to Batad (2000 Pesos. Two ways)... Hire a guide as well if you have to make it fast. Normal charge is around (900 to 1200). From the drop point it’s an hour or so trek to the Batad village. U can see the beauty and the hard work for your self... Pretty good food available in Batad itself... prepared by the locals... From there its another 40 mins to the waterfalls...
















Tappiyah Waterfalls: The best waterfalls I have seen till date... Secluded... Virgin u can say... Not many tourists ... actually we were the only ones when we went there...U can feel the force of it once u get in the water...

Old is surely Gold...

Got sick of watching hero footballing 200 guys... Or sick of Kuthu Songs... The so called "Punch Dialogues"... the useless costly sets... the lack of creativity... the copycats... too much Heroism... or the lack of different genres... or Just sick of "Perarasu"....

I for one got sick of all that's dished out by the new movies... Hero's bashing other hero's in the movies... all saying they are the next Rajinis... I feel much better watching the old ones than the new ones... Im not saying all new ones are bad... but mostly they are... the directors never try different things... Always the style and the theme are the same as that of their other hit movies....

But look at the varieties by the Balachadars, Bharathirajas , Mahendrans, Bhagyarajs of that era... with Viswanathan/Ramamurthy and Ilayaraja Masterpieces... Might be because I watch selected Old movies... I found there are no Blog or sites reviewing Old tamil movies... I will write about the movies I watch... might be useful to those who are interested...

Stupid, Smart and the Loser....???

Everyday I used to take taxi from my apartment in Makati, Manila to the office in Macapagal Blvd.,Pasay city. Today too I started to office early at around 11 AM ;) and took a taxi. Once getting in, I told the driver about the drop and he thought about it for a second and said "Meter plus 20 Pesos extra". This is very common over here. Sometimes they ask so much (if they see a foreigner), that you will surely be tempted to use the FOUR letter word(200 for a 60 Peso ride)... I was in no mood to give anything extra, so said "No...Only meter...". He asked me to get another taxi... I got down and took another taxi to office. The meter showed 70 pesos and I had only 100 Peso notes in my pocket... I gave the driver 100 Pesos and after a second he said
"No Change"...