trip to papudgud and baguio

Hi...

We group of four people from AIM (myself, Rajan, Biswa and Komal) went for trekking immediately after submitting our HBO reflection paper. Before that we had exam and all, and I dint had sleep of more than 2hours for last 2 weeks. But we wanted to go out and started our journey to Papudgud and Baguio at 7:30. We packed some food items and boarded the bus at 10:30PM. Our first destination was Papudgud. The highway was really well maintained, much better than Indian highway, almost like our Mumbai pune express way. It was damn cold, so I and Rajan both could not sleep for the whole night. At around 2:00 AM in the night bust stopped at some junction where we had nice coffee and some snacks... It was cold there and we enjoyed our coffee. The bus dropped us at Laoag City at 9:00AM. We got fresh in the bust stop and then hired a tricycle to local bus station. From Laoag, papudgud is around one and half hour journey in bus. It was a country side and looked similar to Indian village....

Papudgud is the northern tip of Luzon and is considered as the Boracay of northern Philippine. We reached Papudgud at around 11:30 AM; all were very hungry and were searching for some restaurant around. There were very few and had nothing other than beef and pork. Finally in one small restaurant, one old lady agreed to cook chicken for us.
She took around half an hour to prepare chicken fry, it was delicious and mouth watering. We had 3 to 4 leg piece and some Philippine rice and sauce. We had a very good lunch and then we set off for saud beach in tricycle. By the time we reached there it was drizzling which lowered our enthusiasm. The sea bed was very deep and was dangerous. We enjoyed in the beach for around 2 hours and then went to a near y hotel where we sipped coffee. Hotel owner came and started chatting with us. She was a good lady and she and her husband built that hotel from the scratch around 10 years ago with very little money from her in laws. The hotel was so nice and very well maintained and has 24 rooms now. After chatting for an hour we went to beach again and enjoyed till 5:30, we had a tender coconut and then left to papudgud highway in a taxi.

From papudgud we took a bus to laoag city. We got down at laoag city and went to a nearby petrol pump, were we got fresh and then went to Jollibee(Mc Donald type chain of fast food center.) Had chicken again, but not comparable to the one we had in the afternoon. After that we took bus to Baguio.

Baguio is considered as the summer capital of Philippine. It is a hill station just like Ooty. We reached Baguio city at 3 in the night. After getting down we had a coffee and some snacks at 7 eleven shop. My friends wanted to go to a night club but when they inquired, people told that it was closed. So we went to a restaurant named volente and ordered a roast chicken pizza. Wow... it was so tasty and ordered one more. Then komaldeep wanted a jacket so went in search of that. The market was already open at 4:00 AM in the night. The market was quite bigger than Dadar market, with so many people selling and purchasing fish chicken and meat and some veggies... Many other shops were also open and few more were just opening. After roaming in the market we hired a taxi and reached the base of Mt Santo Thomas. We reached there at 5:00 AM in the morning. We stayed there for an hour as we wanted to charge our mobiles. The sunrise from that point was really beautiful. There we purchased local sugar cane wine for 25 P. The taste was ok. We packed few snacks and at 6 we marched towards the hill top. The hill top is an Air force base with radar installed by American defense. The trekking was not at all difficult but it was a walk of 8 Km along the concrete road. It was a country side walk. We enjoyed the walk till the top with some wine sip in-between. We walked slowly to the top and by 11 we reached to the top most point. The top point was around 2200 m above the sea level. We spent around an hour sitting and chatting and discussing some MBA fundas. While returning one of my friend, had cramp in his leg so we took an open jeep to get down to the base. From the base we hired a taxi to Baguio city. There we again went to the same restaurant to have that same pizza. Ordered two more pizzas and then boarded a bus to manila. The bus dropped us in Makati; from there we talked back to our college. By the time we reached our college, it was 10:30 PM and all were as tired as we dint had any good sleep and that 8 Km walk. After two days we got a bath and then went to bed. Immediately I fell asleep and woke up only after 16 hours.
Altogether it was such a joyful trip, I remembered my earlier project team, and those trecks I had with that team back in Mumbai.