April 14-17, 2022. The first part of my trip was devoted to spending quality time with my family, celebrating my mom and my brother’s birthdays staying in a proper luxury boutique resort in Dauin, a town south of Dumaguete, and doing day tours in provincial capital and its surrounding towns of Valencia, Bais and Manjuyod.
How we got there
It takes just above an hour by plane from Manila to get to Dumaguete, the capital of the province, and the gateway to all the other places in this part of Central Visayas. From the airport, we had a pre-booked van in order to go to the resort in Dauin, a dozen or so kilometers to the south of Dumaguete.
What we did
For our first day, a friend of my mom’s friend toured us around some parts of Dumaguete. After stopping by a the Catholic church in the center of the city, we went to Valencia to drive around some of the mountain attractions. We made several stops including one at a road side where sulfur steams out from the ground.
A little more than a month before I officially assume my role as Foreign Service Officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs, I decided to go on a 15-day sojourn to places in Central Visayas that I have not been to before: Dumaguete and its neighboring towns in Negros Oriental; Moalboal in southern Cebu; and the island province of Siquijor.
It was sort of my way of reviving a type of eagerness for the country I am now duty-bound to serve. Something like going on a trip with someone you love to rekindle a love affair that has staled for a while, I wanted to experience a renewed passion with the Philippines by seeing more of it, especially of those places I’ve never visited before. Also, of course, I just simply love traveling, and a half-month backpacking trip before I start work, where I might never be able to do extended holidays anymore, sounded like a good idea.
This trip began with a proper vacation with my family during Holy Week break in a luxury resort in Dauin in Negros Oriental, a town a few kilometers south of Dumaguete known for its exceptional diving and diving resorts. None of us in my family were scuba divers, however, but it did not mean we did not have a fantastic time. It was also a celebration for my mom and my brother’s birthdays. During this trip we also had the chance to see dolphins swimming in the wild, gliding through the calm waters of Bais, and spend some time at the Manjuyod sand bar.
The week after, I stayed behind while my family flew back to Manila. I then began my trip to Moalboal in southern Cebu, with the objective of learning scuba diving in order to get a license and earn certification as an open water scuba diver.
The week after was spent in Siquijor, an island province in Central Visayas known in my generation and those preceding mine for its mystical folklore, but is nowadays renowned for being a young millennial backpacker’s paradise and now forms part of the backpacking circuit in the Philippines many Western backpackers now undertake.
I eventually find myself back in Dumaguete for the final days of my trip where I catch up with friends from law school who have made this part of the country their new home.
August 31 – September 1, 2019. Typical of traditional Catholic Filipinos who find themselves visiting France, a trip to the town of Lourdes is a must. It was a necessary pilgrimage for my mom who was a devout Catholic.
We took the TGV (‘train à grande vitesse’ / high speed train) from Paris directly to Lourdes, far south of France, near the Spanish border. The distance was more than 600 kilometers but it took us a little less then five hours to get to the town.
August 21-26, 2019. My parents wanted to send me off for my grad studies and joined the trip to Paris. Only that they also took that as an opportunity, more like a nice excuse, to fly through the U.S. and spend time together us three, and to also see some relatives and some of their friends. People of their generation really have an amazing penchant for America that a trip to Europe could become an excuse to have a side trip over there, even if it meant passing by the other way around the world. Of course, I did not mind. I would be gone for a year and I loved to have spent time with them before saying goodbye.
We landed at the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday (August 21) after a long-haul flight from Manila (with a layover at the Taipei airport in Taiwan). We were picked up by Tita Gigi from the airport in L.A. and we drove straight off to St. George, Utah where we spent the night before making a day trip the next day (August 22) to Lower Antelope Canyon in Arizona.
My parents are not big fans of walking and the heat of the desert but they enjoyed the amazing views below the ‘canyon’ with amazing ‘out-of-this-world’ red rock formations. It was desktop-screensaver beautiful! We made a brief stop-over at the Glen Canyon dam traversing the Colorado River.
We drove that same afternoon all the way back to Las Vegas, passing through Zion National Park, taking a few photo stops along the way. In Las Vegas, we stayed with the family of one of my mom’s hometown childhood friends who have since immigrated and settled in Nevada.