I had been travelling for over four hours by now but it was still a long way to Singapore. It was a one hour and a half bus ride from the new KLIA LCC-T (Low Cost Carrier Terminal) to Kuala Lumpur. I reached KL Sentral Station at about 10:15 p.m. and took another bus from there to the Pudu Raya Bus Station. From there, I took a bus to Singapore which was about six hours. For dinner, I had nasi lemak on the plane and mee rebus at the stopover midway between KL and Singapore. This is the second time I've done this border crossing to Singapore so it wasn't much of a hassle. I got there at 4 a.m. after 12 hours of non-stop travel!
As soon as I got down, I gave my SSEAYP friend Leon Ong a ring. Hehe! He had thought I was arriving the next day but he went straight to fetch me at the Golden Mile Food Centre where the bus dropped us off. And of course, since we were in Singapore, we went straight for food. Hehe!
Breakfast was soya... tau huay and soya milk. I hope I got the spelling right but that is taho to us Filipinos, although the Singapore version does not have syrup or sago, just boiled peanuts. After breakfast, we went straight to Leon's flat and it was off to bed for me.
Obviously, I slept the whole morning. I had been to Singapore several times before so I've seen most of the sights. Things you shouldn't miss include walking tours around the colonial district or even better, a boat ride on the Singapore River which comes complete with a narrated recording of the history of the former British colony and the buildings you pass by; and trips to Sentosa Island, Clarke Quay and Boat Quay and of course, Chinatown and Little India. In the evenings, there is the Night Safari at Singapore Zoo.
Anyway, I had breakfast take two when I woke up prepared by Leon's mom since he was at work. After lunch, we bought my bus ticket back to KL. Driving around Singapore is indeed refreshing. It's an urban jungle. Not the concrete one but literally, the island is very green with trees! You have modern buildings right beside virgin forests. I hope Mayor Atienza learns to follow the Singapore example. He should stop cutting trees at the Arroceros Forest Park and should even start planting trees all over Manila! I also wonder where Bayani Fernando got this idea that trees cause slow traffic. I still remember that Katipunan incident where he wanted to get rid of all those big trees. I heard Singapore even imports big trees for their downtown areas.
Check out the photo of the East Coast Parkway (ECP). In the middle island, you have trees and bougainvillea shrubs in full bloom. At the sides, you also have trees and flowering shrubs. All pedestrian overpasses and flyovers have hanging bougainvillea shrubs on either side and ivy crawling up the concrete posts. It saves up on paint since the green ivy does the trick of covering the concrete. I laud Bayani for the cadena de amor but I think he should first make ivy crawl up the MRT posts then let the cadena vines to grow over them so that even if the cadena vines dry out which happens quite often, it's still green underneath. Maybe the NLEX and SLEX could also learn a lesson or two from the ECP.
Another thing is the urban planning is nothing but excellent! You feel there is so much space despite the fact that land is scarce in Singapore. In the Philippines, it's the opposite. We have so much land but everything feels so cramped up. Sigh! Can our mayors please create forest parks in their jurisdictions. We need trees to breathe! At the same time, Singapore was able to eradicate its slums thanks to the Housing and Development Board (HDB). Maybe Gawad Kalinga and the HUDCC could learn a thing or two from the HDB.
And all over Singapore, you had centuries old buildings and shop houses freshly painted. Hello again Mayor Atienza, please see how Singapore does it. They don't go around demolishing old buildings like the Jai Alai, YMCA and San Lazaro or plan trashing the Army Navy Club and Elks Buildings. In fact doing that in both Singapore and Malaysia is a crime. The trend in most old cities all over the globe today is urban renewal and renaissance or "re" which stands for restoring, regenerating, rebuilding, reviving, resurrecting these old urban centers, not demolishing old buildings like Mayor Atienza does.
Later in the afternoon, we met up with Dawn Pereira, another SSEAYP batchmate and went for some kaya roti at the Ya Kun Kaya Toast along China Street. Yummy! Hehe! I had a Horlicks drink to go with it. I wonder why those Horlicks candies are no longer available in the Philippines. I used to love them as a kid.
After that snack, it was off for early dinner. I really consider Singapore and Malaysia as food havens since there is so much to eat thanks to the mixture of many cultures which includes Chinese, Malay and Indian. The photo of the hawker centre above is in Ang Mo Kio. It is however a regular Singapore scene which you can find almost everywhere. I definitely had to have some char kuey teow which is a fried noodle dish with scallops. But aside from that, we also ordered oh-luak which was oyster omellette with wansuy and green onions, and chendol for dessert.
Then is was off to somewhere I haven't been to before. The best place to take a photo of the Singapore skyline is a bridge which is rarely visited by tourists. You park at Suntec City and it's a short walk from there. Wow! Great view!
And we weren't done eating yet since we met up with Singapore PYs Vincent and Francis. I had satay which is the Malay version of our barbecue, ice-cold sugar cane juice, chai tow kway the Chinese version of carrot cake and roti john. We were done eating at 10:30 p.m. since I had to catch my bus back to KL which was the last bus for the night. The first one in the morning was at 7:30 a.m. and I would be late for my flight if I took that one. So it was less than 24 hours in Singapore but it was most worth it.
I arrived in KL at 4 a.m. Tired from all that travelling, I got myself a room at a backpackers place for less than US$10 which was good enough for a few hours of sleep and a shower before I left for the airport. Zzzzzzzz!
As I mentioned in my earlier entry, it's fun seeing the things down below from a bird's eye view. From the DMIA, you see a different landscape. The most prominent of these attractions is Mount Arayat which towers over the central plains of Luzon. I was able to recognize the City of San Fernando as well. From there, you also see the towns at the Pampanga River delta and Manila Bay.
Then Corregidor came into view, like a little tadpole swimming at the mouth of the historic bay. Since we've touched on the island, might as well talk about it. A few years back, I got to take an alternative route to Corregidor, faster at that. We're all familiar with those fastcrafts which leave from the CCP Complex. They charge quite a hefty amount if I remember it right. But if you are vacationing in the Subic or Morong area, you might want to consider visiting the island since it is only 30 minutes by pump boat from a certain barangay in Mariveles.
At that time, I think the boat ride costed us PHP1500 total. Imagine the savings if there were more of us. I and a brod, Felix Lopez dared another brod Ryan Tan that we could meet up with him and his family in Corregidor. He thought we were joking since we were in Bataan, hours away from the port in Manila. Hehe! So to make the long story short, we were able to reach the island just as they were about to depart. The good thing about pump boats is that you had your own departure time.
So after Ryan left, we had our own tour of the island. I contacted Col. Art Matibag, head of the Corregidor Foundation, who was kind enough to lend us a vehicle around the island. I had met Col. Matibag when we were actively pushing for the preservation of the San Fernando Train Station which is a very important Second World War site.
Corregidor is actually part of Cavite City although it is closer to Bataan. The other island you see at the tip is Caballo Island. Known as "the rock," it was host to Fort Mills during the American colonial period which is when most of the artilery was placed there. Today it is one of the most important Second World War shrines in the country having been the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, the Battle of Corregidor.
Some of the more popular sites on the island are the batteries, the Corregidor War Memorial, the Corregidor Lighhouse which is one of the few remaining Spanish structures left standing, and Lorca Dock where MacArthur uttered his famous lines, "I shall return!"
Anyway, we flew down the coast of Cavite and Zambales, then over the island of Mindoro. Sigh! And we all wonder why we have all these landslides. The forests were all gone. Just a few patches of green. I hope the DENR focuses on protection of what's left as well as reforestation.
From there, we made a right turn toward continental Asia. Didn't see much since it was dark. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur at about 8:30 p.m. after a four hour flight.
I will be flying in a while to KL from the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Clark. This is my transition post of sorts. Hehe! From backpacking in the country, it's time to visit our Southeast Asian neighbors and see what they are doing right. The plan is, from KL, I will take a bus to Singapore and back, after which I will take an AirAsia flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. From there, I travel by bus to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor.
From Siem Reap, it's another bus to Bangkok in Thailand from where I will take another bus to Vientiane in Laos. A few hours north is the UNESCO World Heritage town of Luang Prabang. Then its back to Bangkok where I take an AirAsia flight back to KL and back to Clark. Let's see how things go.
I purchased the Lonely Planet book Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, and from the data I read, we can see why the Philippines is doing badly with regard to visitor arrivals. To Secretary Durano and our policy makers in the DOT, the advertising is good but unless we sit down with the tourism industry players and work out ways to lower costs of traveling here in the country, the funds spent for advertising would be a waste. At the same time, target backpackers. They are the reason behind the bustling tourism industry in Southeast Asia.
Please see the data below of the average daily budget spent traveling in Southeast Asian countries. I'm not surprised that Brunei Darussalam is at the top, and so is Singapore since the cost of living there is quite high. I'm also not surprised that East Timor is on top since they do not have the necessary tourism infrastructure to bring costs down since they are just a new nation. But the Philippines having the same cost as Singapore?! Hmmm, now Mr. Secretary, that is something we have to consider.
Budget per day (US$)
Brunei Darussalam: 30 to 50
East Timor: 25 to 25
Philippines: 25
Singapore: 25
Vietnam: 23
Indonesia: 15 to 30
Cambodia: 15
Myanmar: 12 to 20
Malaysia: 12
Thailand: 11 to 15
Laos: 10
Silay City, this genteel and elegant town north of Bacolod was once an important commercial hub thanks to the introduction of the horno economico (sugar mill) by Yves Gaston, a Frenchman turned Silaynon. What Bacolor was to Pampanga (Athens of Pampanga), Silay was to Negros (Paris of Negros) since it was the cultural and intellectual hub of the province.
I began my day by taking a walk to the Provincial Capitol of Negros Occidental which was just a few minutes from our house. This magnificent structure was designed by none other than renowned architect Juan Arellano and was declared a national historical landmark in 2004. Indeed, it is one of the most monumental provincial capitols ever constructed in our country. Sigh! Reminds me again of the current state of Philippine architecture. Our government engineers don't know the meaning of aesthetics and build structures that simply have four walls and a ceiling! The less materials you use, the more goes into the pockets... Oh well!
From the capitol, I took a jeep that would drop me off further down the road where jeeps and buses to Talisay, Silay and other northern towns and cities are located. The trip was about thirty minutes and costed me only PHP10. Now that gas is so expensive, prices like these make you want to commute even more. The only thing I didn't like about it was the heat and the drivers stopping too long to attract passengers. In fact, it became so annoying when they'd even back-up to try to lure passengers!
As soon as you exited the city limits of Bacolod, you saw vast fields of sugar cane on either side of the road in Talisay City and then Silay. Sugar really made Negros a very prosperous island which explains why there are so many cities in both provinces, one highly-urbanized city and 12 component cities in Negros Occidental and 5 component cities in Negros Oriental.
I knew we were in Silay when the surroundings changed. If not for the jeepneys and other vehicles, you would think you are in another country.
I took a walk around the town and checked out the different houses. At the center of town was the San Diego Pro-Cathedral and its clock tower. Along the main street were old homes and shophouses. Wow! They don't make buildings and houses like this anymore. The designs were so intricate and grand!
Actually, the City of Silay has the most number of NHI-declared heritage houses, twenty-four if I'm not mistaken. A distant second to Silay is San Fernando, Pampanga with four. The numbers are not conclusive though. It simply shows which cities are most interested in heritage since San Fernando, I would have to admit, will not stand a chance if compared to towns like Sariaya in Quezon, San Juan in Batangas and San Miguel de Mayumu in Bulacan. At the same time, the numbers show how slow it takes the NHI to declare structures! With the speed these structures are demolished, the NHI must match that speed if it is to protect what remains of our national heritage after most of it was flattened during the liberation.
A visit to Silay would not be complete without passing by Balay Negrense, the Gaston Ancestral House which has been converted into a museum. There is another house open to the public, the Jalandoni Ancestral House, but I didn't have much time since I had to go back to Bacolod to prepare for my late afternoon flight.
Back in Bacolod, I finished some concerns with the house and I was off. On the way to the airport, I passed by the Bacolod Memorial Park to visit the graves of my grandparents for the very first time. Sigh!
The PAL flight was one-hour delayed. Just great, I shouldn't have rushed. Hehe! And now, I'm back in Manila. I've done a lot of travelling in the Visayas, it's time for a break. I got free AirAsia tickets to Cambodia during their anniversary promo last December (of course we still pay for taxes and insurance so it amounted to about PHP4500). So for next two weeks I'll be blogging about my backpack trip to Cambodia and Laos. But Mindanao here I come coz I was able to purchse the PHP1 tickets of Cebu Pacific. I'm off to Zamboanga and Davao later this year!
Welcoming us in Iloilo were a few colonial warehouses and the pre-war customs building. I decided to walk around the area to check out the buildings. Wow! Iloilo still had a lot of remnants of its past scattered all over the place. It would be nice to work on an urban renewal plan for Iloilo highlighting all this built heritage. I hope the HCS gets to work on it with Mayor Trenas ASAP since I feel we could replicate the Macau urban renewal success story in Iloilo!
A few meters away from the port was the San Jose Church in downtown Iloilo City. The city is actually composed of several districts which include Jaro, Molo (which was the Chinatown or Parian), Villa de Arevalo (a former capital of Iloilo province which today is called as Villa for short), La Paz (most known for its batchoy), and Mandurriao.After brunch, I took a jeep to Villa and got off near the UP Visayas campus where jeeps to Miag-ao were waiting. My next destination was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Church of Sto. Tomas de Villanueva.
The trip took me about one hour passing through the towns of Oton (the old church of Oton was the pinnacle of religious architecture in the Philippines but was toppled by a strong earthquake in 1948), Tigbauan and Guimbal. Finally, I arrived in Miag-ao! The facade of the church was a work of art and every inch a testament to the craftsmanship of our Filipino ancestors.
So it was back to Iloilo City to try to visit Molo, Jaro and La Paz. The church of the town after Miag-ao, San Joaquin, was another national cultural treasure. But I didn't have the luxury of time today.
At least Molo was along the way to downtown. So I got off at Molo to check out some churches and houses. I would say that Molo Church is a symbol of feminism because it is a shrine to female saints. The Church of Sta. Ana has on nine statues of female saints on either side of the church, one on every column. At the center retablo is Sta. Ana, mother of Mary. The houses left standing around the area were stunning as well.With Molo done, it was off to Jaro. But traffic was moving really slow. And by 4 p.m., I was still in the public market so I decided not to push through since I could be left behind by the last ferry which left at 5:30 p.m. So I checked mail to kill time.
Watching the sun set behind the customs building was just enchanting. On the way back, I took photos of Guimaras Island. Seeing the island, green and untouched, made me realize that the country still had hope if we took care of what was left of it.
I got back in Bacolod at about 6:30 p.m. Near the cathedral was an area called manukan country, which was a cluster of restaurants ans stalls which served Bacolod's famous chicken inasal. And when in Bacolod, you must try the chicken!I leave for Manila tomorrow. But I have only last stop before going home, the Paris of Negros.
Check out this Inquirer article which came out today for my two seconds of fame! Hehe!
Breakfast was soya... tau huay and soya milk. I hope I got the spelling right but that is taho to us Filipinos, although the Singapore version does not have syrup or sago, just boiled peanuts. After breakfast, we went straight to Leon's flat and it was off to bed for me.
Check out the photo of the East Coast Parkway (ECP). In the middle island, you have trees and bougainvillea shrubs in full bloom. At the sides, you also have trees and flowering shrubs. All pedestrian overpasses and flyovers have hanging bougainvillea shrubs on either side and ivy crawling up the concrete posts. It saves up on paint since the green ivy does the trick of covering the concrete. I laud Bayani for the cadena de amor but I think he should first make ivy crawl up the MRT posts then let the cadena vines to grow over them so that even if the cadena vines dry out which happens quite often, it's still green underneath. Maybe the NLEX and SLEX could also learn a lesson or two from the ECP.
And all over Singapore, you had centuries old buildings and shop houses freshly painted. Hello again Mayor Atienza, please see how Singapore does it. They don't go around demolishing old buildings like the Jai Alai, YMCA and San Lazaro or plan trashing the Army Navy Club and Elks Buildings. In fact doing that in both Singapore and Malaysia is a crime. The trend in most old cities all over the globe today is urban renewal and renaissance or "re" which stands for restoring, regenerating, rebuilding, reviving, resurrecting these old urban centers, not demolishing old buildings like Mayor Atienza does.
Later in the afternoon, we met up with Dawn Pereira, another SSEAYP batchmate and went for some kaya roti at the Ya Kun Kaya Toast along China Street. Yummy! Hehe! I had a Horlicks drink to go with it. I wonder why those Horlicks candies are no longer available in the Philippines. I used to love them as a kid.
After that snack, it was off for early dinner. I really consider Singapore and Malaysia as food havens since there is so much to eat thanks to the mixture of many cultures which includes Chinese, Malay and Indian. The photo of the hawker centre above is in Ang Mo Kio. It is however a regular Singapore scene which you can find almost everywhere. I definitely had to have some char kuey teow which is a fried noodle dish with scallops. But aside from that, we also ordered oh-luak which was oyster omellette with wansuy and green onions, and chendol for dessert.
Then is was off to somewhere I haven't been to before. The best place to take a photo of the Singapore skyline is a bridge which is rarely visited by tourists. You park at Suntec City and it's a short walk from there. Wow! Great view!
And we weren't done eating yet since we met up with Singapore PYs Vincent and Francis. I had satay which is the Malay version of our barbecue, ice-cold sugar cane juice, chai tow kway the Chinese version of carrot cake and roti john. We were done eating at 10:30 p.m. since I had to catch my bus back to KL which was the last bus for the night. The first one in the morning was at 7:30 a.m. and I would be late for my flight if I took that one. So it was less than 24 hours in Singapore but it was most worth it.
