INSANITY PH
Preamble to Ramble
Ready? The Philippines, as of Sept. 2015, has 1,490 municipalities and 144 cities for a total of 1,634 distinct places in 18 regions.
Get set? With the unintended effect to distract or irritate readers, I am attaching the reference (x) after every name of the town and city. The variable x indicates the order I have visited a particular place.
Restart! “You’re insane! How many towns and cities? You have to be insane,” said a Danish teacher after I told him that I intended to see all of the Philippines’ 1,634 towns and cities. By the time we had met at the no-frills Ganduyan Inn and Café in the heart of Sagada (716), perhaps the most popular town in all of Mountain Province, I already reached almost half of my goal. Coming from the context of Denmark which has only 98 municipalities, he’s perfectly right. A great degree of insanity is needed in hoping to be the first Filipino to see all of the PH at the city and municipal level… and before I reach 50.
Restarting my travel clock to Zero on March 27, 2013, I hopped on a bus and headed to San Ildefonso (1) in Bulacan, the first of nine towns in three Central Luzon provinces. It’s not that I have never been to Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga. For the most part, I simply traveled across them heading elsewhere in North Luzon, with needed rests at the bus and gas stations along the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX).
Overland travel has always been an integral part of my childhood and adolescent years. I have gone as far north to Cagayan in my parents’ hometowns of Pamplona (306) and Abulug (307) wedged between the tempestuous Babuyan Channel and the green of the Apayao highlands. Summer outings included a couple of days at the ageing, ridiculous line of beach resorts along the gray shoreline of Bauang (528) in La Union. Baguio City (398) — the “Summer Capital of the Philippines” — also formed part of the anticipated itinerary. A trip to this mountain city had always been a gleeful, welcome treat, with its cool clime, color, and wealth of temperate vegetables and fruit, and the trademark sundot kulangot (or the sticky sweets packed in tiny sago palm shells).
Preamble to 2013
My different former professions happily required tons of travel and field work. As a tour guide in the mid-1990s, I accompanied European guests to see the chaotic charm and swarm of Metro Manila and other parts of the country. The standard itineraries include: the jeepney factories and the Bamboo Organ of Las Piñas City (31), the splendid view of Taal Island Volcano from Tagaytay City (386), the cloudy vegetable gardens of Buguias (696) in Benguet, and the world famous rice terraces of Banawe (721) in Ifugao. I also brought tourists to marvel at the historic and cultural attractions in Zamboanga City (771) and Cebu City (567), and the natural wonders in Bohol such as the Chocolate Hills in Carmen (1029), the jade-colored river in Loboc (1035) and the creamy-dreamy beaches of Panglao (995).
After the Asian Financial Crisis hit the region in 1997 and badly affected the PH tourism industry, I embarked on a non-consecutive series of trips around the country that lasted for almost a year. In July, I re-explored Cagayan and marveled at its linguistic and cultural tapestry: the Sambali Festival in Itawes-speaking Piat (322) in honor of the miraculous 16th-century Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario; the Ilocano and Ibanag river towns of Iguig (297) and Alcala (299), coastal town of Buguey (295), and the upland Malaueg-speaking town of Rizal (318) for their industries and old Spanish-era churches. I also visited the ruins of the church in Pudtol (311) in neighboring Apayao.
In September of the same year, I backpacked for 21 days across the six provinces of Bicol in time to see the Peñafrancia Festival in Naga City (133), Iriga City (143) and a couple more towns in Camarines Sur. Starting from Daet (161) in Camarines Norte, I made way down to Gubat (751) in Sorsogon, then crossing to Masbate from Legazpi City (661) in Albay before heading home via Catanduanes. The following month, I flew to Bacolod City (1106) for the Masskara Festival, explored the heritage homes of Silay City (1107), and the sugar trains and the Mural of the “Angry Christ” at the chapel of the Victorias Milling Company in Victorias City (1109). For the next ten days, I traveled across to neighboring Negros Oriental and then to Siquijor, Cebu, and back to Bohol before flying back to Manila.
For two weeks from November to December, I explored the provinces of Occidental Mindoro and Romblon. I hopped on a flight to San Jose (762) in Occidental Mindoro and traveled on the perhaps one of the worst roads on the island at that time to Sablayan (759) to see Pandan Island. After a couple of days, I returned to Manila and flew to Alcantara (785) on Tablas Island in time to catch the ferry to the Romblon Island to see the capital Romblon (792). A week spent exploring the province also brought me to Sibuyan Island, immersing in the quaint lifestyle of the townsfolk of Cajidiocan (793) before doing the tedious circuit back to Romblon and Tablas to catch the plane to Manila.
Throughout January 1998, I explored all the provinces on Panay Island, starting in Kalibo (862) to witness the Ati-Atihan Festival and revel in the drunken, drum-beating excitement of street- and snake-dancing. I balanced the trip with a few days of cooling it off in Malay (855) on the fine white shoreline of Boracay Island. From Aklan, I spent a couple of days on Capiz to see Roxas City (599) and the towns of Panay (604) and Dumalag (670) for their churches. The break in Capiz allowed my schedule to cover Iloilo City (797) for the competitive pageantry of the Dinagyang Festival and visit the beautiful churches in two former municipalities, the Molo and Jaro districts. The month-long trip allowed me to see the magnificent carved coral and limestone façade of the old churches in Miag-ao (828), San Joaquin (829), and Tigbauan (799), to explore the tiny cove beaches in Nueva Valencia (803) on Guimaras, and to witness the weaving of colorful checkered patadyong cloth in Patnongon (837) and manufacture of sticky sugar muscovado in Laua-an (835) in Antique. I certainly did not leave for Manila without having my first taste of noodle and innards soup La Paz batchoy and the famous sweet mangoes of Guimaras.
The first quarter of 1998 also brought me to Kalinga to see indigenous music, dancing, and produce at the Ullalim Festival in Tabuk (479), which proudly became a city nine years later. On the way to Bontoc (718), I glimpsed at Tinglayan (720) and a view “topload” (or from the rooftop of a crowded jeep) of Taungay, the range of mountains referred to popularly as “Sleeping Beauty.” After I had irreverently spent Holy Week drunk from Mindoro Sling and dazed by the army of stars on the night sky at the White Beach in Puerto Galera (237), Oriental Mindoro, I began preparing for a trip across Mindanao.
I reached Zamboanga City in late April after two days at sea on board the Superferry 8. Taking advantage of the relative peaceful situation in the Southern Philippines that came after the signing of 1996 peace agreement between Manila and the Moro National Liberation Front, I headed far south as BASULTA (Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi) and other parts of Mindanao. I visited the towns of Lake Sebu (1195) in South Cotabato and Glan (1202) in Sarangani, and the cities of Cotabato (1183), General Santos (1216), Koronadal (1214), Malaybalay (1067), Cagayan de Oro (943), and Iligan (926), where I witnessed the 1998 Centennial celebrations.
Until 2001, I extensively explored Sulu and Basilan, using what would later become Lamitan City (872) as my base. I would frequent these two predominantly Muslim provinces but by the year 2000, they became the epicenter of extremist activities and operations of kidnap for ransom groups. This prompted me to stay away from Sulu but not Basilan, where I learned to speak Yakan.
The shift from tourism to development work, research and advocacy on children’s rights and peace issues in particular, provided me opportunities to go on overseas assignments from Bangkok to Bogota. For the next 10 years, I visited more PH provinces, towns and cities, but with research on child protection issues and conduct of training and workshops as the main reasons for travel. Using the letter T as an example, these include the towns of Tubo (812) in Abra, Tarangnan (645) in Samar, Talibon (1011) in Bohol, Tampakan (1213) in South Cotabato, and the cities of Tabaco (741) in Albay, Talisay (1104) in Negros Occidental, and Tagum (1047) in Davao del Norte. With the exception of spending Holy Week in Marinduque in Torrijos (192) in 2010, all of my local trips were work-related.
By the end of that year, I had been to all but six PH provinces, contently settling for the provincial level. However, the idea of visiting all of the country’s cities and municipalities seemed like a far more challenging and noteworthy quest. The idea of the restart began to bubble after the end of a one-year consultancy on February 2013 for a mining company in Benguet.
Simple rules, variables, and a map
I didn’t have a clear plan where to begin restarting my PH travel clock. I initially planned to visit only the cities and towns in Luzon bisected by the Pan Philippine Highway, also known as the Maharlika Highway and classified under the Asian Highway Network as AH26. It later grew to include all the 771 towns and cities of Luzon. I began with the nearby Tagalog-speaking province of Bulacan, one of the first eight provinces that broke off from three centuries of Spanish rule in 1898. The historic province seemed like the best place to start due to proximity. After all, I also haven’t really seen much of its 21 municipalities and three component cities.
Every traveler must have primary rules. I follow one, among others: I could never consider having been to the town or city if I had not seen its nucleus — the plaza mayor and the structures, monuments, historical markers, and novel points of interests around it. While I often prepared a laundry list of towns and cities and a couple of attractions to complete on a given day, I also left things to chance and variables like the weather and the schedules, availability and modes of transport. Most importantly, I relied on local knowledge, which complemented and updated the tons of helpful advisories I got from the best of PH travel bloggers.
To show you where I have gone so far, here’s an equally insane map detailing my PH travels of 272 non-consecutive days for a total period of 31 months. The next updates of this map shall come at the end of March 2016 and December 2016. (Blue are the areas I have so far covered, with purple for places where I had stayed for the night. Red lines attempt to trace the routes of the flights I have taken while the blue lines trace my travels on water. A smaller orange map shows where I have actually been, including the towns and cities I have been to before the 2013 restart.) I based this travel map from a PNG image I got online in 2008, primitively and easily updating it as I please using Paint.
Just 402 to go
2016 begins with just 402 to go, or 20 cities and 382 municipalities to be exact. By the end of 2013, I had already seen more than half of Luzon, ending the year with a record full-day 14-town and 1-city trip from Sta. Catalina (423) in Ilocos Sur to Bangar (437) in La Union. While I had innumerably traveled up and down this section of the North Manila Road, it was first time to stop in Santa Lucia (433) and marvel at the large dome of Saint Lucy Church.
A series of work-related trips under a UNICEF-supported project in 2014 allowed me to revisit the Visayan provinces of Eastern Samar, Capiz, Cebu, Iloilo, and Leyte, which were all affected by super typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in November 2013. As part of the project, I had also been visiting the transitional sites and evacuation centers in Zamboanga City (771) but I was yet undecided to expand my insanity to Mindanao. By the end of December 2014, I had seen a little more than 60 cities and towns in the Visayas. A visit to the upland agricultural town of Dumarao (671) finished the Central PH leg, with Capiz as the first province to be completed in the Visayas. In my spare time, I also visited 213 more towns in Luzon, ending my travels for the year to see the mountainous towns of Aguinaldo (711) and Mayoyao (712). Both are located in eastern part of Ifugao and outside the more popular tourist routes in the province.
A decision to change careers after the first quarter of 2015 provided opportunities to see more areas in the Visayas. It also inspired me to finally include Mindanao into the insanity equation. Consultancy work for an Iloilo-based company and ample free time in between assignments allowed me to visit 520 more cities and municipalities: with 90 in Luzon, 249 in the Visayas, and 181 in Mindanao. Almost three years later after the restart, I already visited 75% of the 1,634 cities and municipalities in more than 75 provinces. The 2015 travel calendar ended with a day-trip to another mountainous town, Don Salvador Benedicto (1232) at the foothills south of Mt. Mandalagan in Negros Occidental. With just 402 to go, shall I manage to complete the PH in 2016?
Ready for 2016?
“Shall you have a blog or book?” Friends have been encouraging me for years to write a book about my travels. But it has taken me time, actually a lot of time, to think of what to write about and how to go about it. Procrastination and laziness took the best of me as I waited to reach half of total number of PH towns and cities. Thankfully, I have tech-friends who have been very helpful. Thankfully too that there is the very friendly Medium for writers like me who lack the gold of time, the sheer patience of a spider, and the stoic mental circuitry to run and maintain an entire blog.
Strictly speaking, the articles I’ll be sharing are not intended to be a travel guide, and I couldn’t provide spoon-fed, on-line advice on travel logistics. I am preferring to leave this realm to the preserve of more experienced and tech-savvy travel bloggers. But if inquiries are on the really obscure towns and the really unbeaten PH tracks, especially the ones that post zero results after an earnest search, any nicely written request would not be left unanswered.
With the current record of completing 39 provinces and all of the cities and lone municipality in the bustling and crowded National Capital Region (NCR), I have yet to finish 31 provinces. There are 10 others that I have not visited since the restart. Weather permitting, the travel list for January 2016 , includes the Province of Cebu, hoping to visit its remaining 16 towns, particularly those in southern section of the mainland and the Camotes Islands. Who knows? I might just throw in the whole island of Siquijor.
Stick around! Mine are stories of more than 40 years of travel. I hope to inspire your own insane but safe explorations anywhere in the world.
Salamat! — Marco de PH
Writing from: Quezon City (213)
