ash'ventures

around Cebu - Sinulog Festival

The Sinulog is an annual festival held on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City, Philippines. The festival honors the Santo Niño (Holy Child Jesus), who is the patron Saint of the City of Cebu. It is a dance ritual that commemorates the Cebuano peoples Islamic and pagan origin, and their acceptance of Roman Catholicism. The festival features a street parade with participants in bright colored costumes dancing to the rhythm of drums, trumpets and native gongs. The Sinulog celebration lasts for nine days, culminating on the final day with the Sinulog Grand Parade.

It is said that whenthe Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived and claimed the territory of Cebu for Spain, he presented the image of the child Jesus, the Santo Niño, as baptismal gift to Hara Amihan, wife of Rajah Humabon. Hara Amihan was later named, Queen Juana. Along with the rulers of the island, some 800 natives were also baptized to the Roman Catholic Church. At the moment of receiving the idol, it was said that Queen Juana danced with joy bearing this image of the child Jesus. With the other natives following her example, this moment was regarded as the first Sinulog. This event is frequently used as basis for most Sinulog dances, which dramatize the coming of the Spaniards and the presentation of the Santo Niño to the Queen. A popular theme among Sinulog dances is Queen Juana holding the Santo Niño in her arms and using it to bless her people who are often afflicted by sickness caused by demons and other evil spirits.

(Above summary adapted from Wikipedia page on Sinulog Festival at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinulog)

Below are images captured from the grand festival of Sinulog 2010.

around Cebu - Ramon Durano Foundation (Guinsay, Danao City)

I drove up to Danao City, to see the Ramon Durano Foundation. The compound houses a church built by the great Hon Ramon Mercado Durano (Durano Sr) in 1973 for the people of Danao City. Within the compound is a lavish park featuring human size statues depicting the life of Jesus Christ including the nativity scene at Bethlehem, the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the stations of Way of Cross. The garden also features busts of each Pope and Saints of the catholic faith. It also has 15 small building housing statues portraying the various mysteries of the Holy Rosary all interconnected with a giant size Rosary. There is even a piece of Rock of the Calvary, shipped all the way from Palestine.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed to see the poor and sad state of the place. The statues are vandalised and the place is abandoned. It is such a pity, cigarette butts and beer bottles lying around, weed grown all over the garden, the Holy Rosary broken into several pieces, body parts of Jesus and his disciples are missing, busts of the late Pope's and Saints with broken noses and one or both ears missing. The marbles representing Jesus' last supper was gone. The Church seems not to attract much visitors either, at the time of my visit, there was a mass going on and there was less than 10 people inside the Church.

However, even in the sorry state the place is in, it gives a sense of calm and satisfaction to visit the place, amidst the dirty surroundings.

Nearby the church is the Durano clan's resting place. The grand old man Hon Durano Sr, his wife and some of his descendants are buried there. There is also an old age home there. I hope someone could restore the place to its old glory. Maybe it has the potential to attract religious tourists to this marvelous place. Or could the Church take over and run the place?

I wonder if there is an unknown mystery as to why the place was abandoned, like a law suit or some mysterious chain of events. As I was writing this post, I came across this from MyCebuPhotoBlog, written in 2006, which shows the place is a much better condition. So what could have happened in the last 3 years? If you know something about this, please share.

around Visayas - Bohol (Tagbilaran City)

Bohol is an island which is part of the Visayas region of islands of Philippines. Bohol is surrounded by Cebu, Leyte and Mindanao across the Bohol sea.

Image source Wikipedia 

The locals call it Republic of Bohol or the Majestic Bohol and even God's Little Paradise, reasons unknown to me. It is a major touristic attraction with its beaches, historical monuments and other attractions. The most popular among these will be the Chocolate Hills and the Philippine Tarsier. Besides these, diving seems to be the main crowd puller to this island. I do not dive, so I cannot vouch for that.

Geting there is easy. If you are in Cebu, take a ride on one of the many ferry services. I took Weesam Express and it costs only about Peso 300 for a one-way trip and Peso 500 for the same trip in an airconditioned cabin. The journey takes less than 2 hours. If you take the fastcraft ferry, it takes about 1 hour. The journey itself is an experience, the water is so blue and refreshing. Even on a very hot day, sitting on the deck of the ferry, the breeze coold you off and you dont sweat a bit. But carry lots of water with you.

Once the ferry docks at Tagbilaran terminal, it is Bohol already. Take a local rental car service which costs about Peso 2000 including fuel and driver to bring you to the various attractions. You can go everywhere within the day.

Our first stop was the Luboc river. You can have buffet lunch on board one of those river boats for 300 peso. A 3 member band entertains you with songs throughout the entire trip. The trip takes you along the backwaters, which is quite an experience. They have done it quite well and the boats coordinate with each other so as not to cause any congestion in the river. The entire ride takes slightly above 1 hour. Along the banks, the boat will stop at a point where the locals will sing and dance to local folksongs and entertain the tourists. You can give them some donation or buy some local products like wild honey or handicraft products. Once the boat hits the waterfall, it turns back and the trip is over.

Next head for Chocolate Hills. The Chocolate Hills is a limestone formation of thousands of small hills covered with lush greenery. The driver told us that the legend behind the hills is that some giants were playing marbles and fell asleep. The marbles were left there and trees grew on them. So funny, wonder what happened to the giants !

You can climb about 500 steps up to the view point where you can take pictures with the hills as background. Or you can engage the services of some professional photographers who can take pictures wonderful pictures of you. For example, they give you a broomstick and ask you to jump a little high. They capture it on camera from a certain angle and the photo comes out perfectly as if you are flying on a broomstick over the hills. But it is certainly a danger waiting to happen. The photoshoot location is filled with gravel, so if you are wearing that slipper or a shoe with worn out soles, you are gonna slip and roll over the hills. I curiously asked the photographer if any one fell down. His reply "none this year Sir"! That says all ! They should have some kind of protective fence or netting there. I also saw the adventurous tourists step over the viewpoint barrier over to the hilly areas to get that perfect shot. Again, do it at own risk.

After Chocolate Hills, on the way back, stop at the Tarsier Sanctuary. If you hold your Luboc river boatride ticket, the entrance is free. Or you can pay a few peso's to watch the tarsiers. There are only about 20 tarsiers in this smaller sanctuary. I was told you can go to a bigger sanctuary, but quite far away from the City. The tarsiers are an endangered species and they are nocturnal animals, so they sleep in the day and get active in the night. They are so small in size, but with very big eyes, that remain open even during sleep. Well, it is cute and really a sight to see.

From the Chocolate Hills, we went to the second oldest church in Philippines, The Baclayon Church. The folktales go that the native laborers took the stone from the sea and stacked it on top of each other to build the church. Apparantly there was no cement, so they took the white of a million eggs to cement the stones together. I went inside the Church, oh so peaceful. There is no eggy smell, it was a beautiful sight, the altar is so simple but with many beautiful statues. Any architecture buff will fall in love with the Church.

After Baclayon Church, we headed to the Blood Compact Monument, which is the location where the local Chieftain Datu Sikatuna and the Spanish Legazpi signed a so-called peace agreement to end hostility. You can take pictures at the memorial posing with the Boholano king and the Spanish entourage.

After this, we are more of less done with the attractions. Actually there are many more attractions, but we were tired. So we decided to head to the Panglao Beach, which has many beach front resorts. I was quite dissapointed when I reached there and was actually thinking of heading back to Cebu that evening. They claim Panglao beach is the best beach in Bohol, but I was totally disspointed, there is no proper road to the beach front resorts. You have to lug your luggage to the resorts. The term resort should not be used, they are more like a backpacker's inn. Since the rate I got was cheap, we decided to stay on for the night. I wonder why they call it a beach, because this beach does not have a shore. Anyway I wandered around the whole stretch of the "beach" trying to find a decent place to eat or have a drink. I soon realized there is no disco, club or even a karoeke place. The only place I could find some music was at one of the resort restaurant blaring loud pop music. There are some snooker bars, that was the only entertainment I could see there. There was not a single bar in sight, and the tourists bought beer or alcohol from the shops and sit by the beach and drink all night, playing games and chit chatting. Major dissapointment, what is a beach holiday without a place to hang out or enjoying a live band or geting to know someone (u know what I mean!).

The next day I woke up and found the pleace deserted, except for some shops trying their luck to sign us up on island hopping trips. Apparantly all the tourists are here for the diving and they leave very early in the morning to the sea. Ah well, I don't dive, we just lazed around for a while, had a nice breakfast, cleared some emails and headed for the ferry. We declined the resort owner's offer to send us to the ferry terminal in her car and instead took the local version of Thailand's tuk-tuk. It is a motorcycle fitted with a small cabin that can fit 2 person with much difficulty. Ahh, 50 minutes later after braving through all the dust and noise, we reached the terminal. Another enjoyable ferry ride and 2 hours later we are in Cebu.

For more information on Bohol, visit the page at Wikipedia. This website of Bohol also gives a lot of useful information on the island. Another useful site is the official website of the local government.