South East Asian Trips

Banaue is world-famous and is a 'must.' Its rice terraces are a World Heritage Site, beautiful stairways to the sky that ascend steep mountainsides, occasionally punctuated by small homes. Original terracing dates back a long time, although there is much new.

Banaue, Ifugao is famous for the Banaue Rice Terraces which is the 8th wonder of the world. Built by the natives of the region over 2000 years ago with the use of the crudest wooden tools. While in the area, you can go to Sagada and see the famous ancient burial caves and hanging coffins, astonishing limestone formations at Sumaging Caves and the Bontoc Museum.

Ifugao is home to a thriving ancient culture and host to the famous rice terraces carved from the base of the mountainsides to the top, which appear to be massive green stairways reaching to the sky. The famous terraces had been inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1995 as "a continuing cultural landscape" and likewise considered by the U.S. Association of Civil Engineers as an engineering marvel built by unschooled and free men not of slave labor.

It was a credit to the inherent wisdom of the Ifugao forefathers that a forest and watershed management system was instituted to help sustain the terraces that serve as the basic food source of the sturdy Ifugaos.

The Ifugao native huts could probably be among the world's first prefabricated houses that do not use a single nail or metal to fasten their parts.