Last evening, I boarded another night bus with the destination of Banaue. Banaue is a small village in the mountains north of Manila. Even though my guidebook had warned me that Banaue wouldn't be the prettiest of villages, I was surprised by how unappealing I found it to be. Part of its non-appeal may have been due to my tiredness after hours in an especially uncomfortable bus, but I can hardly imagine that this haphazard collection of corrugated metal shacks would have appealed to me in any state of mind.
Banaue is famous for the rice terraces surrounding the village - they are a world heritage site along with a few other rice terraces in the region. Unfortunately, the weather didn't really cooperate: it was very cloudy, with fog completely obscuring the terraces at times, and the sky pressing down on everything, making the village of Banaue even more depressing than it would usually be. Nevertheless, the terraces were an interesting sight.
Apparently the terraces have been in continuous use since their construction about 2000 years ago. The big feat was not only building the terraces themselves into the sides of the mountains, but also the inclusion of an irrigation system - pretty indispensable for rice farming, as I understand it.
The way the terraces were shaped to adapt to the mountains was a fascinating sight, even if the colors could have been a bit more lively ;-)
Walking around in the village, I discovered a custom that is common in the Philippine mountains - and in many other parts of Asia. I noticed several aspects of this custom just walking around, but didn't put it all together until I looked up one of them on the internet. The first thing I noticed were strange red stains on the streets and sidewalks. Then there were people spitting on the street all the time. Some people seemed to have unnaturally red lips. And finally, there were signs like this one:
I also saw the other version of the sign, forbidding the spitting of 'moma'. What I found out when I researched the word 'moma' was that the people were chewing a mixture of betel leaf and areca nut commonly called paan. The chewing makes the body produce a large amount of spit - which happens to be colored red. So this explains it all: the stains on the street, the red lips, and the spitting. Apparently, chewing paan is part of the culture of many Asian countries; according to Wikipedia, it is stimulating up to the point of inducing euphoria. But, to dispel the mystery completely, it is also addictive and has been linked to an increased risk of mouth cancer.
