To live. You have to have faith.

Only after packing my bags and picking my route do I have time to realize that I am nervous. This will be my first trip outside the developed world since I left Tunisia 3 years ago and my first trip out of the expat friendly district of Makati since I arrived here 3 weeks ago.

As I leave Makati for the next district where I will find my bus, one thing is very clear: I’m not in Kansas anymore. The taxi driver affirms this by warning me to be careful of the people there and insisting he escort me to the ticket counter of the open walled bus station. The comfort he provides leaves as soon as he does.

Though the people at the station would probably go out of their way to help me, as the only foreigner I still feel vulnerable. I suspect many people there are wondering what the hell I am doing out of Makati? Learning that my bus won’t leave for four hours at 11pm doesn’t help matters. Perversely, though I am nervous, I am also glad to be finally getting a taste of the different.

Placing my back against a wall I tell myself that things will be okay. My faith erodes somewhat when the uniformed security guard goes off duty leaving me even more alone. My situation soon improves though when three fellow foreigners approach wearing enormous backpacks and speaking that distinctively North American English. Fresh graduates from Toronto they are three days into their first trip outside the western world. We decide to stick together at the bus station and as we navigated Vigan, a UNESCO site and the “finest surviving example of a Spanish colonial town”, and San Fernando, home of the Philippines surf culture. Only when we part 30 hours after meeting do I realize how much security they provided.

As I arrive in Baguio, the scene reminds me of India: so many people move so quickly past me and towards me on the sidewalk that I opt for the street instead; the buildings are dully painted including with pictures of Ronald MacDonald; and electrical wires are strewn everywhere. In the street little boys straighten cartons of cigarettes, women pick dead leaves off fruit, and young men cook chickens all in hopes of making a sale. Nobody, including taxi drivers, security guards, or other strangers can tell me where my bus station is; most seem not to know it even exists. Only after slipping through alleys so busy that I have to turn sideways to pass between jam packed jeeps and tables of fly swirled pig’s heads do I see the odd assortment of buses that is my escape from the city.

Amidst the noise of people retching, and the smell of same mixed with bus exhaust, the ride to Sagada is no more calming; each new hair pin brings a new chaotic scene of a car passing around a turn, or someone replacing a tire on one side of the road while a scooter parks on the other. I think about the remnants of rock slides, and baldness of bus tires, and the way the mountains must eat away at the brakes. I wonder how the young driver can stay aware for 8 hours, and how tired the turns will make his arms.

And then I tell myself again that things will be okay. Right then in the middle of this mountain route I have but no choice to tell myself this. Instead of worrying I enjoy the views of rice terraces harnessing mountains with gardens; and of women holding up their wares for sale to the bus windows at every stop. These same stops where I shoe flies from my bread before buying it and having faith that I can eat it. The same stops where the only water is probably unfiltered, but you have to have the faith to drink it all the same.

This same faith sees me trusting two 13 year old boys to take me on a tour of ancient burial caves containing hundred of coffins in Sagada. This same belief that it will be okay brings me to climb with other locals to the roof of an otherwise full WWII era jeep to get some of the most amazing mountain views I’ve ever seen (and where I, appropriate to the conversation, meet a women who after 11 months living in the mountains in Besao, a town of 1000, will soon return to America to become a priest).

In fact it was this same faith that saw me leave Makati in the first place to meet many fine strangers, experience very different towns, and see jaw dropping views. Faith isn’t unique to travelling in the developing world or travel at all. It helps us get through life in general; faith that she is the one, that the kids will be okay at daycare, to buy that house, or to take that new job. It is this faith that make life interesting, if not worthwhile.