Road Trip Part 1: Revisiting Baguio City

My first Baguio City Experience was sometime in October 2001. I went there with three (3) of my friends but we only stayed there for the whole day. We took the bus, left the terminal at around 10PM and arrived in Baguio at 4AM. It was very cold, the cool wind really made me chill when I went out of the bus. We slept for a while, went out to walk around Baguio the whole day and then went straight to the bus terminal going back home.

This time, after seven (7) years, I went to visit the City of Pines again. My friends and I agreed to take the bus, leave on November 28 (Friday) since the November 30 holiday was moved to December 1 and we won't have to go to work for four days. But eventually, most people have thought the same way we did and so when we arrived at the bus terminal at around 10PM, we were surprised by the huge crowd gathering inside the terminal. To make it short, we were not able to leave that night. We had to wait for the 5AM bus to take us to Baguio City. It was a very long wait, we were all very sleepy and tired but we decided to just stay there and wait.

We arrived in Baguio City the following day (Saturday), a little after lunch time. With my heavy back pack behind me, we walked the streets of Baguio City and had lunch in a restaurant named "Zola". After satisfying ourselves with the food, we then had to find a place to stay. As we have already expected, it was hard to find a place to stay since there were really a lot of people in Baguio that time. It being a long weekend and we found out later on that there is a Nursing examination going on that time.

We eventually found a place in Camp Allen with the help of a cab driver. It was a small hotel named "Robol 88", it's got a rooftop where we can have fun while seeing everything around us. We paid the accomodation for a day since we were still unsure of our plan for the next day. We slept for a few minutes and went out to take a walk. It was a very long walk but I did not get tired, I enjoyed every moment of it, seeing a lot of people, enjoying the cold weather, seeing beautiful flowers and breathing fresh air.

It was the most pleasant long walk I had. We went to SM Department Store, bought some small things to give to our friends back home and sat outside SM. It was already past 6PM and it was really very cold out there.

At around 7PM, my friends, Randy, JC and I decided to have dinner in a restaurant nearby. Randy said that the food there was great and so we decided to try it out. We ordered buttered chicken, lumpiang shanghai and rice and we were really surprised with the amount of food we saw on our table when all the food were already there. They really gave us big servings and we never.. however we tried... we were never able to finish everything. But the thing that they served us sodas without ice is something that really amused me. We looked around on the other tables and we found out that all of them are satisfied to be drinking their sodas without ice and there we are trying to figure out why they served it without ice. Eventually, we requested for ice from the waitress :)


On our way back to the hotel, we bought a small bottle of strawberry wine just to try it out and then we bought some bottles of beer from the convenience store. We decided, despite the coldness of the weather, to drink on the rooftop. It was very very cold, I had to put on a warmer jacket and socks. But my hands are still very very cold as well as my face. The cold wind kept on blowing but we stayed on. The strawberry wine tasted very good... we should have bought a bigger bottle :)

When we finished the wine and a few bottles of beer, we decided we already had enough so we went down to our room and slept. At around 3AM we were awaken by the ringing of one of our cell phones. Our other friend called to let us know that he is already at the bus terminal. I was so sleepy so I just let the two guys fetch him from the terminal. I slept like a baby till morning :)

(photos courtesy of Randy and Elbert)

to be continued...