Baguio,
On My Own
I
like the idea of motion. I like moving around so much a newly-cleaned room ends
up messy after only a few minutes. However, I’m not exactly the most active
member of the household. That is because motion, for me, is outdoors, pure kinetic
energy needed to stay alive outside the home. We move inside our homes, yes, but
the movement is restricted by the furniture placed in strategic angles. Home means
rest, time out. Motion means bustle, the game itself.
I
like motion because I like the hum of the engine underneath me. I like to feel
the wind whipping my face. I like to follow all the white lines in the middle
of the road.And somehow, as a bonus, I get to go somewhere I’ve never been
before, and see people outside my small circle.
Baguio
meant all these. It meant exhausting travel for someone who liked exactly that.
And it was a long-postponed trip. For two years now our school publication has
received and declined invitations to the Organization of Student Services Educators,
Inc. (OSSEI) Journalism Training because of either lack of funds or lack of
sufficient preparation. Now, Jill, Ronmar, and I were going. It’s all
happening!
To the Capital
The
country mouse gaped when he visited the city. The educated country mouse, too,
gaped, when he visited the city. There really isn’t any difference between the
two: when you come from the country and you look at the capital city for the
first time, there’s not much choice but to stare with your mouth open. Simply ain’t no place like Manila, as
the Hotdog song says.
Manila
doesn’t disappoint. It opens your eyes to more than you imagined. From above, its
cluster of houses that don’t look like clusters but tight clumps of residences
seemed dreamy. At home, the houses are scattered from among the greenery. Here,
it’s the greenery that seemsas an afterthought.
Oddly
enough, it’s not the people who welcome you to the city. The buildings do it. On
the taxi to Binondo, the buildings lined up one after another as though the
city was only composed of these structures and nothing more. The city seemed only
for business. And it was preoccupied with height. The dozens of buildings
seemed to competewith each other for supremacy in elevation. Probably because
there isn’t much horizontal space left, the people here take comfort in
altitude, with apartments piled up like unwashed dishes in the sink. Here
indeed, was the metropolis.
We
stayed for a while in Binondo, in the house of our former layout artist, Kuya
Kenneth. Our layout artist could not meet us himself since he was at work so it
was arranged that his sister was to do so. When our taxi finally stopped at the
Philippines Pan Asia building in San Francisco Street, I was surprised because instead
of the usual scene of native-meets-tourist at the lobby, there was no one in
sight. As it turns out, we were summoned to Kuya Ken’s house. Yes, summoned. There’s
no other word to describe the hand-clapping and ssst ssstswe received from the people in the upper floors of the
building across the street, the people who turned out to be Kuya Ken’s family.
Kuya
Ken and his family lived in the fifth floor of the building. It was an
exhausting five flights up with our hand-carried baggage. Once there, however,
we were treated to classic Waray hospitality: pleasant conversation, good food,
and a warm bed. So while the women of the family gathered in the living room to
watch a Walang Hanggan replay, we
dozed off in preparation for the more exhausting travel later in the day.
It
wasn’t an accident that we stayed in Binondo before taking the trip to Baguio.
For three years now, Kuya Ken’s mother’s house served as official stopover to
the An Lantawan delegation to OSSEI. As
Kuya Ken said, his mother has seen three batches of EICs: Kuya Jed during the training
in UP Diliman, Ate Estelle during the training in Tagaytay, and me, on the
training in Baguio. It was becoming quite a tradition for us. Here was our
mother figure reminding us to take care whenever we left the house, either to
go to Divisoria, or finally to the terminal for Baguio: ‘Mag-ingat kayo, maraming loko-loko dito sa Maynila.’
During
our stay however, we haven’t met any loko-loko.
It seemed that Kuya Ken and his family lived in a Waray community in Binondo;
even the guard was from Waray country. With Kuya Ken and his family for
company, we were relatively safe.
Later
in the afternoon, Kuya Ken’s big sister went with us to Divisoria to show us
around. I wasn’t new to the concept of Divisoria but the real thing was really
more than I imagined. There doesn’t seem to be any idle piece of land in
Manila. Every square inch of this cramped city is used for something, more
often commercial use. In Divisoria, even the lot behind one mall is another
mall.
We
didn’t stay long in our sightseeing trip. After Rizal Park, a quick tour of the
malls in Cubao, and a shout of ‘Good evening, Araneta!’, we were off to the bus
terminal. Baguio awaited us.
The City beneath the Cliff
You
don’t just know it’s Baguio because of the welcome sign. Baguio jolts you into
awareness. The sudden swerving of the bus every few seconds awakens any
traveler from stupor. And then, when one opens one’s eyes, the city beneath the
cliff appears. It is a city of scattered pinpricks of light, unlike Manila
whose light merges into one strong glare. The lights from Baguio’s scattered
houses high up on the hill give off the feeling of a hundred-eyed giant on the
lookout for your arrival.
We
arrived in Baguio at about four in the morning. We hired one of the cabs
waiting for us at the terminal and went to Hotel Supreme, the venue of the
OSSEI training. However, we couldn’t check in yet since the registration was
scheduled at ten in the morning so we just deposited our bags and asked the
guards for instructions to the nearest coffee shop. Luckily, one of the guards
was Bisaya so it was easier to ask for directions. Somehow, you can count on
someone from back home to help you when you needed it.
And
we did need help. We were on our own in this trip to Baguio. No advisers, no
chaperones, just us, a bunch of teenagers, who incidentally looked like kids,
from Visayan country. We didn’t even have any map of the city. We were in for a
true exploration of the city.
Umali Kayo!
If we had only been looking to experience
the Baguio cold, we were in for a disappointment. September was too early for
the biting cold Baguio is famous for. The cold was only the normal cold I felt
back home in December mornings, except that it stayed like that throughout the
rest of the day. The fog, however, was fantastic. On the short jeepney ride to
Burnham Park, we almost walked into the fog itself, sort of like walking in a
tear-gassed area, except that it doesn’t hurt the eyes. Here, even regular
speech is enough to fog my eyeglasses.
It wasn’t long before we learned that
Burnham Park was the center of the city’s transportation route. Everywhere we
went, Burnham seemed to be the final destination, where the jeepney queues were
located. It was propitious that we went for Burnham before any other tourist
spot in the city. It gave us a sense of direction in a city we hardly knew
about.
The sign along Harrison Road that says Umali Kayo, which, a taxi driver later
told me meant Halikayo! in Ilocano, seemed
to genuinely welcome us into the city.
The Grotto
The stairs were still
wet from the night before when we started the long climb to Lourdes Grotto
after going to Burnham. The hill is so steep that it looks only three flights
up when viewed from the basw. In reality, it is six to seven flights to the
top. Under normal conditions, you could reach it in about fifteen minutes.
In the first five
minutes: a sense of competition. Whether traveling alone or with a bunch, you
drag yourself up the hill, fake light step after another because you don’t want
to be the person who didn’t make it to the top.
In the next five
minutes: a sense of determination to get it over with. There is no need for
pretentions as you reach the middle of the long climb, breathing heavy breaths,
treading heavy steps. In the background, a faintly audible but persistent gong
of a body slowly weakening against the colossal mountain.
Two flights of
stairs before the top: involved silence punctuated by short gasps for breath.
Counting the steps has become a triviality. You don’t need to count the steps
towards home; you just know you’re there when you’ve arrived.
At the top: a
sense of coming home, a fulfilment of the journey upwards from the earth below.
Atop the hill, there is an unobstructed view of the city below, and for an
insolent moment, a feeling of being on top of the world. But you suddenly
remember that you have come from there yourself just a short while ago,
breathing heavy breaths, treading heavy steps, so that there is no need for
such impertinence. At the top, what remains after you have unburdened yourself
of your baggage on the long flight up is your self, small amid the grand
creations around you. There is only quiet here.
The OSSEI Training
Ma’am
Bella Villanueva, the OSSEI President, said on the opening ceremony that there
are only two venues they choose for the OSSEI workshops: Baguio and Tagaytay.
They believe that these places are most conducive to learning about campus
journalism. I believe she couldn’t have been more right.
If
asked though, I wouldn’t know what it is about Baguio that makes it more
conducive to OSSEI. Perhaps it’s the atmosphere of the city, cool enough to
warm hotheads, but not too cold to freeze up the mind. Perhaps it’s the feeling
of being something other than your usual self, as we undoubtedly felt, students
who were supposed to attend the training but were more like tourists combining a
little business with the pleasure of touring the city. We even felt rich (or
lazy) enough to have our lunch delivered from Jollibeeup to our hotel room on
the seventh floor. It was a lovely dream that lasted for three days.
Every
place I go to becomes a place of changes for me, in one way or another. Baguio,
this first time, was truly a change, a small but nonetheless heavy step towards
maturity. And the OSSEI training was primarily responsible for that. If one
listened closely, one will surely pick up more than the subtle rivalry between two
of the nation’s leading newspapers, PDI and Star.
OSSEI
surely did a good job in choosing its speakers. The speakers we had during the
two and a half days training were more than the ordinary speakers in press cons
I have attended. In fact, one of them said that the OSSEI was not supposed to
be the venue for talking about skills; it’s the issues that should be talked
about, issues that concerned everybody, because after all, journalism is
everybody’s business. As college students, we should have mastered our
journalism skills ages ago.
The
speakers impressed upon us the import of what we were supposed to be doing as
campus journalists. Sir Ben Domingo was vehement about his lecture on citizen
journalism to let us know ‘kung ano ang
ating lipunang pinapasok at tungkuling dapat gampanan’. The words sounded
more portentous in Filipino.
“Don’t
shoot when your heart isn’t beating faster than normal,” said Sir Jimmy
Domingo, our lecturer on photojournalism. In Charlotte Bronte’s words, do not
condemn yourself to live only by halves. But how do you realize the moment when
you live wholly?How do you even start to live that life? I have gone to other
writing workshops before, including those in creative writing, and it was only
during the OSSEI workshop that it hit me. Living, by halves or by wholes, is a
choice between what you really want to do and what you’re doing now. Perhaps
it’s because I’m nearing the finish line of college and am about to enter the
world of work that these words feel more important. What do I really want to do
when I get out of school?The OSSEI lecturers were people who have already made
their choice and are happy by it. What was mine?
The City of Vertical Motion
Still,
Baguio wasn’t the place for such deep thoughts. Everywhere you look, from the earphone-wearing
joggers and the persistent fortune tellers in Burnham Park, the fog descending
on the city almost at all hours of the day, the guitar- and harmonica-playing
men in Session Road at night – it seems Baguio doesn’t allow you a moment’s
thought, except perhaps when you’re atop Lourdes Grotto and looking at a more
congested, colder Kabul that is Baguio City. Baguio,perhaps because of the
cold, seems to be the city of vertical motion, where people are always walking
on streets sloping downwards or upwards. Even the crossings in the overpasses situated
everywhere in the city seem to be unnatural; you either go up, or go down in
this city. There’s nothing in between.
By the evening of the second day, Jill,
Ronmar and I were quite comfortable with the notion of being on our own and
were feeling brave enough to wander around the city at night and tick off some
of the must-see places on our list. We didn’t lack for company though. Some of
our friends from other schools also attended the workshop. There was Ate Shara,
a fellow from the Lamiraw workshop I attended last year, Ate Jen, who also
attended the same workshop, and Kuya Kim, a former Associate Editor of An Lantawan.
Outside
Hotel Supreme, we were joined by Kuya Kim’s group from Eastern Visayas State
University-Tanauan Campus. We went to the trade center of the city in the areas
of Session Road and Harrison Road.In Harrison Road, especially, we sampled the
street-long ukay-ukay stands
responsible for Baguio’s reputation as the Ukay-ukay
Capital of the Philippines.
Every night without fail, the vendors would
set up their stands offering everything from Baguio’s multi-colored woven fabrics,
beads, and wooden figurines, to jackets, bags and other accessories. The
swirling mass of people in Harrison Road at night is so packed closely together
that there is a danger of accidentally hitting someone with every small twist
you make. I amazed myself by haggling with the ukay-ukay vendor about the bag
and the sunglasses I bought. I amazed myself by even buying those things at
all.
The next day, our third and last day in
Baguio, was the day for unrestricted tour, well, sort of. As recommended by our
friends from Zamboanga City, we went first to Bell Church which was just about
a hundred meters north of Hotel Supreme and almost directly in front of the
welcome sign to La Trinidad. Bell Church was to us, ourmakeshift Chinese
Temple, since we didn’t know where the Temple is.
And since we were practically standing on
the doorstep of La Trinidad, our next stop was the Strawberry Fields. In the
Strawberry Capital of the Philippines, rows of strawberries that stretched to
forever were the equivalent of our rice fields in the province. But again, our
timing was off. The planting season has just started. However, we were treated
to a draft of fog that didn’t just descend from the mountains to the city but
which enveloped us till it was too misty to see.
From La Trinidad, we boarded a jeepney back
to Burnham before riding again on the jeep for Scout Barrio. A local told us
the jeep went on a route that included Camp John Hay. Once there, we
transformed into nouveaux riches who were out to see the camp for ourselves. We
bought our snacks at the 7-11 store and took pictures of the pines like any
other tourist. Except that seeingthe Korean nationals leisurely sipping their
coffee in the café beside 7-11 busted our bubble. We were just students who
visited the camp on foot while the others whished by on Isuzus.
We visited only two more spots in the city because
it was already getting hazy. PMA was a quick visit and a long walk along old military
machinery. Mines View, when we got there, was only a smoky monument.
Before the Mines View monument itself, there
is a small portion of uneven rocks which served as a butte in the cliff. In the
small space was a wishing well with statues of two boys. The wellwas a memorial
to the coin-catchers who used to position themselves to catch the coins the
tourists toss to them. The onslaught of rain, however, prevented me from
reading the whole of the coin-catchers’ story in the signboard posted on the
well.
I turned my attention to the white horse
with the pink mane and tail whose handler demanded ten pesos per picture and
asked him about the story of the boys in the wishing well. He indulged me with
the story I already knew from reading the topmost part of the signboard: local
boys who sidelined as coin-catchers. After paying for two pictures with the Nicki
Minaj-like horse, I tossed a few coins to the boys whose real stories were denied
me. The taller boy caught one.
Baguio, On My Own
At school, I became nicknamed Dora the
Explorer when I starred in a small production featured during the English month
celebration. Ours was a presentation of the cartoon character who liked to
explore places with her sidekick pet monkey Boots and her trusty Map in her
small but otherwise spacious Backpack. The nickname, I believe, isn’t just
because of the lead role and the identical haircut. Like Dora, I like to
explore as well, especially on my own.
Oftentimes, in other trips, I’d restrain
myself from being lost in a given place and moment. In these trips, I was only
a member of a crew with no power to dictate the group where to go. In this trip
to Baguio, I was determined to try the city, or at least some small portion of
it, literally by myself. I wanted to see the city as I would have seen it if I
were alone, with no one to point out sights to me, and only my senses to guide
me. I wanted to be my own map.
On our third and last day in Baguio, I went
to SM immediately after the morning workshop to buy books. Booksale was already
closed when we arrived at the mall the night before with Kuya Kim’s groupso I
went back at noon of the next day. I planned on just taking the jeep for
Trancoville and walking the rest of the way from Session Road up to SM. That
way, I could fully indulge my senses on the busiest road in Baguio that I have
seen so far.But I had to be back as soon as possible for check-out time at noon
so I took the taxi instead, cutting the time short but alsodefeating my purpose
for going out alone.
Lucky for me, the driver of the taxi I rode
in was up for an informal interview of the place. I was hesitant to ask
questions at first because as far as looks go, he looked like the usual kanto boy I see back in Tacloban,
complete with pierced ears and defiant mouth, except that he looked more
respectable inside the taxi he was driving. If Jill had been with me on this
short visit to Booksale in SM, she would have chosen an older, more
respectable-looking driver than the one I chose. However, I had loose standards
in what looked respectable so I hopped into the taxi the minute I got out of
the hotel.
I armed myself with the precaution of
knowing the driver’s name, Mr. Johann Christopher Singh, through the displayed
ID on the taximeter. After that, I basically threw caution to the wind and
asked him some questions I’ve been meaning to ask some of the locals since I
arrived. Mr. Singh, who was only several years older than me, answered my
questions generously and gave me sort of an informal tourist map of the city:
where to go after one place, and what was the best stuff to buy. From him, I
learned that a Good Shepherd pasalubong
item was generally more delicious (and more expensive) than the others because
the business was run by nuns in an orphanage and that cars in Baguio were
driven in low gear to be able to climb such steep roads. Mr. Singh even told me
that if I ever wanted to try the nightlife in Baguio (which I assured him at
the outset that I didn’t), I should look out for taxi drivers who had friends
in tow because more often than not, those drivers were in connivance with their
friends and were up to no good.
After buying the books in SM, I went back
to the hotel in time for check-out. The driver of the taxi I hired was older
and more respectable than Mr. Singh. But he wasn’t so sociable either.
My quick visit to SM was the only time I
was alone in my stay in Baguio. The rest of the time, I contented myself with
snippets of conversation with the man who peddled strawberry taho in Harrison Road, or the man who
taught us the way to the Scout Barrio jeepney queue. What amazes me about
Baguio is that the people whom we have met and asked questions from were
charitable with what they knew. So far, I haven’t seen one hostile creature in
this city, except perhaps the dogs barking from above us when we were talking
towards the jeep for Trancoville. Baguio jolts one into awareness that a city
like this could be as friendly.
In the third floor of a mall, outside the
shelter of the tent-like covering, two lovers stand by the railing, looking out
on a view of the city. However, they do not notice the lights in the distance.She
leans on the fence and turns her back on the city, her eyes on her lover. A current
of cold air wafts from the trees in the cliff, causing a few people to shiver involuntarily.
She looks at the tight clasp of her lover’s hand on hers and gazes into his
face, shadowed by the mall lights behind him. Will he bridge the short distance
between them and hold her in his warmth? He pulls her to him and lets her head
rest on his shoulders, slowly swaying to the rhythm of music only they can
hear. The few people around them clutch themselves and continue to shiver
imperceptibly.
Somewhere in the city, a young husband goes
home to his young wife at night. The husband who has up until now been labeled
as nothing more than a kanto boy
because of his unremarkable looks gives his wife a day’s worth of earningsfrom
ferrying people to their destinations. He comes from Laguna 164 miles away and
has lived in the city for seven years now with no plans of going anywhere. He
was ferried here himself. And he will stay because he has already found what he
was looking for.
In the terminal, a young woman sits in one
of the benches, waiting for a young man to meet her before she boards the bus.The
hands that earlier held themselves in silent expectation now embraced him who
came at last to see her before she goes. He starts talking of silly things,
anything to make her laugh. It is only a temporary parting, but a separation still.
In the terminal, beside the trickle of people slowly entering the bus, they
hold each other and wait for the hour of leaving. When they do separate, it is
not a tearful goodbye but a farewell, hopeful of a reunion to come.
Another young woman sits on the seat that
was previously occupied by the young woman.She, too, waits for the hour of
leaving. However, there is no one to wait with her yet. Or there had been
someone, in a not so distant past, someone she chose to leave when the crowd of
passengers surged towards the van, which was why she was here instead, her
solitary hands rubbing themselves to keep warm. If she were a writer she would collect
these portraits of love and store them deep within her so that the next time it
was needed, she could fashion a similar portrait for herself. But she wasn’t.
So she entered their stories, knowing at the outset that she was only the
viewer, whose life, however akin to those portrayed, was still outside the
frame. When she boards the bus, she sits next to the young woman, who is now
looking out the window at her lover. When she looks at the window, she gazes at
her reflection, dark against the soft light of the bus. Staring harder, she sees
him, which was why she was finally taking this trip to somewhere she should
have been before, to someone whose arms she should have been held in.
Who was happiest in that city’s mist?
Long Day’s Journey for Home
We arrived in Manila at about five in the
morning and after sleeping in the terminal for about an hour, set out for a
breakfast in Jollibee and a quick visit to Baclaran Church before we headed for
the airport. In Baclaran, surrounded by the inevitability of water, people
outside my own tightly-knit world are close enough to touch.
Rohinton Mistry writes: Remembering bred
its own peculiar sorrow. A short plane ride bound for home lengthens because of
the persistence of memory: either those carried or left behind.
---------------------------
"Is
it lack of imagination that makes us come/ to imagined places, not just stay at
home?/ Or could Pascal have been not entirely right/ about just sitting quietly
in one’s room?// Continent, city, country, society:/ the choice is never wide
and never free./ And here, or there.../ No. Should we have stayed at home,/ wherever
that may be?//”
-Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of Travel
Earlier, I have said that OSSEI was, for
me, a choice of sorts. Suffice it to say that I have made my choice by writing
about my Baguio experience, albeit belatedly, instead of letting it pass by.
P.S. I’m afraid this is an unbelievably long piece on
a three-day journey. However, I believe that the beginnings of something are
always of some importance to us, in one way or another, so that everything is
infused with a special significance. In my future travels (I hope there’s
more), I hope to write shorter pieces, but for now, for a first travel outside
Visayas, a first travel without an adult, I think this long piece will do. J
