Vigan
Trip Start
Jun 06, 2010
1
33
48
Trip End
Mar 30, 2011
Vigan, Luzon, Philippines
Friday, December 17, 2010
My time between blog posts is getting longer and longer. I write when I can, when I remeber, and when I'm not being lazy. Here are a few things that I remembered I wanted to talk about.
A month or so ago Rene and I had a week off from school. Because we have fridays off we have time to do weekend trips and look around the area. The week gave us a chance to travel farther outside our comfort zone and visit places that we might not have been able to visit otherwise. We thought about it a lot but eventually limited our view to traveling up the west coast of Luzon (we origonally had big dreams of island hopping.) We grabbed a charter bus outside of town and took a 6 hour drive to Vigan.
Vigan is one of the very few places in the Philippines left (relatively) untouched by World War II. By that I mean neither the US or Japan carpet bombed the region. The architecture is left over from the Spanish colonization with some Chinese influence. Its a World Heritage site and has been preserved fairly well. The streets are cobble stone and the restraunts have a nice down to earth feel. I enjoyed our time in Vigan very much.
We took a 'kalesa' (horse drawn carriage) ride around the city and had our own personal tour guide for the day. We stopped at a weaving shop and actually got to work on the loom. We went to a pottery shop and got to throw our own bowl. Granted the guy helping us did most of the work. I actually broke it a couple of times. Our poor horse was not having a good day. It was hot and he was grumpy. More than a couple of times our driver had to pull to the side of the road and try and get the horse to move. Rene and I decided to cut this trip short when he started bucking while we were in the carriage. (the horse not the driver)
We were there for haloween and got to see a parade on the road by our hotel. The music of the parade was a wierd techno mix that had a really high pitched ' bee-boo-boo-boop.' This music went on well into the night and I had that stupid bee-boo-boo-boop stuck in my head for days. In the town square they set up a huge stage and had a kind of concert followed by a haloween themed street dancing compatition. That was cool to watch.
After two days in Vigan we traveled back the way we came for about 3 hours and got off at San Fernando beach. The hotel we stayed at didnt have a beach and no one was very friendly. The highlight of our time there was the trip to the cemetary. All Hallows Eve (haloween), is followed by All Saints Day. The evening of November first every one goes down the the cemetary where their loved ones are burried and basically has a party. Ok so not really a party. Its a time to remember the people that you have lost and pay respects to the dead. Huge extended families were gathered and everyone brought food and drinks and had a feast (I even saw booze). Some people even left plates of food by the coffin (coffins are mostly above ground in the Philippines). The cemetary lit up by candles was really beautiful. Maybe that's a wierd thing to say but I thought the entire ritual was beautiful. I didnt see a lot of mourning, mostly celebrating. I propose the COC start participating. Meet you at the cemetary Midnight Nov. 1st, potluck!
Comments
Sounds like dia de la muerta. I would like to see that.