We walked back to where we came from. We visited the big church there. I wanted to take some pictures but I did not, on account of the serenity of the place. I felt that I had to respect the place. Some people were kneeling and praying and I did not want to disturb them. We took a walk on the green grass, under the pine trees. My travel buddy wanted me to do a jumpshot. It took me eight tries before he was satisfied with the result. He said that I did not jump high enough; I said that he lacked the photographer’s skills that’s why he did not know how to capture the right angle.

We did not get to see the hanging coffins. Lee said that the fee was too expensive. It was not really that expensive if, unlike us, you have a good budget.

We went to the famous Yoghurt House to have lunch. The aroma coming from the kitchen, just behind the counter, was making my mouth watery. I busied myself by looking around and I secretly scrutinized what the people were eating.

Everything in the restaurant was wooden—the chairs, dining tables, and even the window shutters. The floor was of course wooden and it was so shiny that I suspect even a fly would slip when it lands. There were wooden figurines that showed how the people of Sagada lived hundreds, thousands of years ago. There were vintage paintings on the wall.

After a short wait, our lunch arrived. I don’t remember the name of the recipe, but let me just describe the food way I remember it. My food was all mixed vegetables—snap beans, diced carrots, and the biggest, freshest, juciest, sweetest, reddest tomato I have ever seen and eaten—all generously sprinkled with yoghurt. The rice served was the famous upland rice. No amount of adjectives can describe the taste and aroma of this locally grown rice. It is a lot more delicious than all the rice I have eaten in those buffets in the five-star hotels I had dined in. (When I had a small business many years ago, I would reward myself with a buffet in a five star hotel of my choice once a month. I don’t do this anymore; my business went south a year before I started working for Lee.) I also ordered a big cup of steaming black coffee. Coffee for lunch? With fresh vegetables and yoghurt? Yes, of course, because…why not? Ha ha ha.

Lee’s food was a very big piece of chicken leg. The sauce was a color between orange and brown with some ground black pepper. It came with a side dish—fresh lettuce, diced carrots, some other green vegetables whose names I did not know, and of course, they were also sprinkled with a generous amount of yoghurt. He obviously liked the upland rice.

We ate lunch leisurely; there was no need to hurry. We were hours and hours away from the demands of our job, hundreds of kilometers away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I don’t even understand myself now why I did not take pictures of the food we were eating. Maybe because at that time, my focus was just to live in the moment, enjoy the time, and just feel the experience. I did not anticipate that after that travel, I would become a storyteller.

Lee had finished eating his meal and he was just waiting for me to finish everything on my plate. To kill the boredom, he started playing “mmok-ppang mmok-ppang”. This is a Korean term which literally means “closely watching somebody eating”. And so he started watching me eat—from the way I would put the food in my mouth, to the way I chewed and swallowed and to the way I would wipe my snout with the napkin. I retaliated by watching him in return and by imitating the way he blinked, the way he breathed, the way he twitched his nose. Pretty soon, he was on the receiving end of the joke he started. I turned the tables on him. Ha ha ha. I took it to the next level by motioning my fork with a piece of food stuck on it in a circular motion right in front of his face and I would exaggeratedly chew and swallow my food a few inches away from his face, much to his annoyance. When he said we had to go back to our accommodation, I continued the “mmokpang mmokpang” game, albeit now on  much higher level, by putting a bottle of water one inch away from his face, while I continually uttered “eeh, eeh, ehh” with an equally exaggerated facial expression, while we were walking on the road. When he would turn to the other side to avoid my annoying face and action, I would simply go to the other side or hold his face so that he would not be able to move. He kept on saying “Hajima, hajima” (Stop it, Stop it) while laughing in an annoyed way. We reached our accommodation while walking that way.

When we reached our accommodation, we took a nap. At 3 pm I was woken up by the chill that started to creep into my room. I went to the veranda to see the sun setting behind the mountains. There, in the distance, were the majestic mountains, in different shades of green, kissed by the rays of the early afternoon sun. Just then, Lee also came out of his room and joined me. We agreed to look for another accommodation house and after that, we would go and visit the famous sunset over Lake Danum.