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It's very rare that I go to trips around the Philippines, my family sucks at planning vacations and I personally would rather bury myself in front of my computer doing geeky things than take the time to go out in the sunny beaches or even camp out in the wild.
So a three day road trip to a nine hour trip to Ilocos for photography class was a novelty only closesly repeated by my Palawan experience, way back when I was twelve.
Ilocos is a picturesque city really and I love the Vigan longganisa. But before that the trip. We left UP at nine in the evening, it was a trip broken every so often by stops into Select stores well into the evening. We arrived our first "photograph" place at four in the morning the next day -- the grotto.
I wasn't able to go up to the Virgin Mary -- I was the last one to leave along with a close friend of mine from the crowded van. My back was aching because of the bar that was digging onto it for the nine hour tripand my body felt fully bruised, so naturally the first few moments of the Ilocos trip I lagged behind everybody else.
My friend had the bigger problem of being in a photography field trip slash finals with only one roll of film (I had four) and her camera suddenly blinking low battery on her. She missed the first few pictures of Ilocos. Luckily for her, we were able to find batteries for her in Vigan, but she'd already missed taking pictures of the grotto, wild goat and the bridge that connected Ilocos Sur to Ilocos Norte.
Let me say at this point that we didn't have breakfast yet, I missed taking pictures of the sunrise and we went straight from roadtrip mode with no-REM sleep into full awake mode with camera at hand. I could barely focus my camera to see if what I was really seeing was all blur through the lens or that was just the semi lucid state of my eyes.
Thankfully, our professor finally got around to the breakfast part of our meal, got us to a nice inn where we had tapsilog for breakfast and water which didn't pass the light test. But to hell with that, I always said that if bacteria doesn't kill you, it'd build your immune system. (Little note to Philippine visitors, always bring a mineral water bottle with you. As a rule of thumb people usually don't trust waters in the provinces becuase sometimes even Filipino's can't ingest water in the remote areas. For example in Masbate, water carries traces of sulfur higher than normal consumption levels that would make non-locals sick. Besides, Philippine food is great and all but not necessarily easily ingested with people with ... lesser immune systems. Especially people who live in extremely sterile first world countries.)
Anyway, after having been sidetracked with the food, we took pictures of Vigan pottery while they were making it. Really nice, it had a really big kiln and the pottery wheel. Some of us even dabbled in trying to make pottery. After taht we visited the late President Ferdinand Marcos' tomb. It was quite a propaganda for the Marcoses, not that the Marcoses didn't really hold Ilocos at the tip of their fingers. You'd actually realize what a great orator Marcos was. He had powerful words that resonated with the Filipino psyche (All written across the walls before the meuseum where we viewed the late president's "body" under the glass... a snow white of sorts... with eerie music as background). He had ambitions for the Philippines, just not enough will to carry on without corruptiong with that much power.
Afterwards, we took pictures of several churches with little "village" type encasements. I got to see a garrote, a torture chamber, carriage walkways, wells all built within the Spanish era so it had Spanish terms all over it. It made me itch to write a colonial story at par with Jose Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Small plug for that, if you haven't read it in the language you favor, go to the bookstore NOW, they're wonderful reads a must for any Filipino/Spanish Colonial enthusiast.)
We visited two more churches and went up a grand lighthouse, only to find out it was closed. After a cell phone call to the lighthouse keeper, who wasn't there at the time, we were granted permission to scale the walls of the lighthouse. Ha. That was an experience of breaking and entering in the worst proportions. But we did manage to scale a wall twice my height. After all, going through the steep little steps of the lighthouse just to find out that it was closed was such a waste of energy that we had to break a few rules to see the view on top. Haha, don't worry we didn't actually burglar the lighthouse and the keeper knew we climbed over one of the fence (so now he needs to put chicken wire or something to ward off intruders.)
Anyway, enough of that, after the lighthouse, we actually went to Pagudpud resort. Lovely waves, lovely sunset, I took a panoramic picture of that. I promise I'll post pictures, but this being a film class, this was all on negatives and none on the digital camera.
The next day we went to another beach the Blue Lagoon and took more pictures there. I hope the girl who took my picture when I was standing on top of the rocks, the wind billowing over my loose thai-pants would develop nicely because I'm vain enough for that. Haha.
What else? TO finish the entire trip we went to Crisologo Street. A street of cobblestones that sold Antiques in Ilocos. Cars couldn't pass by that cobbled street, only calesas, which are horsedrawn carriages remnants of the Spanish colonial period. We took night photography there, bought some scraves, chichacorn, langgonissa and Bagnit. All food which you'd want to get your hands on when you get there.
OK enough of the tourism plug. I'll post pictures eventually when I finish developing them off the contact prints.
So a three day road trip to a nine hour trip to Ilocos for photography class was a novelty only closesly repeated by my Palawan experience, way back when I was twelve.
Ilocos is a picturesque city really and I love the Vigan longganisa. But before that the trip. We left UP at nine in the evening, it was a trip broken every so often by stops into Select stores well into the evening. We arrived our first "photograph" place at four in the morning the next day -- the grotto.
I wasn't able to go up to the Virgin Mary -- I was the last one to leave along with a close friend of mine from the crowded van. My back was aching because of the bar that was digging onto it for the nine hour tripand my body felt fully bruised, so naturally the first few moments of the Ilocos trip I lagged behind everybody else.
My friend had the bigger problem of being in a photography field trip slash finals with only one roll of film (I had four) and her camera suddenly blinking low battery on her. She missed the first few pictures of Ilocos. Luckily for her, we were able to find batteries for her in Vigan, but she'd already missed taking pictures of the grotto, wild goat and the bridge that connected Ilocos Sur to Ilocos Norte.
Let me say at this point that we didn't have breakfast yet, I missed taking pictures of the sunrise and we went straight from roadtrip mode with no-REM sleep into full awake mode with camera at hand. I could barely focus my camera to see if what I was really seeing was all blur through the lens or that was just the semi lucid state of my eyes.
Thankfully, our professor finally got around to the breakfast part of our meal, got us to a nice inn where we had tapsilog for breakfast and water which didn't pass the light test. But to hell with that, I always said that if bacteria doesn't kill you, it'd build your immune system. (Little note to Philippine visitors, always bring a mineral water bottle with you. As a rule of thumb people usually don't trust waters in the provinces becuase sometimes even Filipino's can't ingest water in the remote areas. For example in Masbate, water carries traces of sulfur higher than normal consumption levels that would make non-locals sick. Besides, Philippine food is great and all but not necessarily easily ingested with people with ... lesser immune systems. Especially people who live in extremely sterile first world countries.)
Anyway, after having been sidetracked with the food, we took pictures of Vigan pottery while they were making it. Really nice, it had a really big kiln and the pottery wheel. Some of us even dabbled in trying to make pottery. After taht we visited the late President Ferdinand Marcos' tomb. It was quite a propaganda for the Marcoses, not that the Marcoses didn't really hold Ilocos at the tip of their fingers. You'd actually realize what a great orator Marcos was. He had powerful words that resonated with the Filipino psyche (All written across the walls before the meuseum where we viewed the late president's "body" under the glass... a snow white of sorts... with eerie music as background). He had ambitions for the Philippines, just not enough will to carry on without corruptiong with that much power.
Afterwards, we took pictures of several churches with little "village" type encasements. I got to see a garrote, a torture chamber, carriage walkways, wells all built within the Spanish era so it had Spanish terms all over it. It made me itch to write a colonial story at par with Jose Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Small plug for that, if you haven't read it in the language you favor, go to the bookstore NOW, they're wonderful reads a must for any Filipino/Spanish Colonial enthusiast.)
We visited two more churches and went up a grand lighthouse, only to find out it was closed. After a cell phone call to the lighthouse keeper, who wasn't there at the time, we were granted permission to scale the walls of the lighthouse. Ha. That was an experience of breaking and entering in the worst proportions. But we did manage to scale a wall twice my height. After all, going through the steep little steps of the lighthouse just to find out that it was closed was such a waste of energy that we had to break a few rules to see the view on top. Haha, don't worry we didn't actually burglar the lighthouse and the keeper knew we climbed over one of the fence (so now he needs to put chicken wire or something to ward off intruders.)
Anyway, enough of that, after the lighthouse, we actually went to Pagudpud resort. Lovely waves, lovely sunset, I took a panoramic picture of that. I promise I'll post pictures, but this being a film class, this was all on negatives and none on the digital camera.
The next day we went to another beach the Blue Lagoon and took more pictures there. I hope the girl who took my picture when I was standing on top of the rocks, the wind billowing over my loose thai-pants would develop nicely because I'm vain enough for that. Haha.
What else? TO finish the entire trip we went to Crisologo Street. A street of cobblestones that sold Antiques in Ilocos. Cars couldn't pass by that cobbled street, only calesas, which are horsedrawn carriages remnants of the Spanish colonial period. We took night photography there, bought some scraves, chichacorn, langgonissa and Bagnit. All food which you'd want to get your hands on when you get there.
OK enough of the tourism plug. I'll post pictures eventually when I finish developing them off the contact prints.
