A short visit to Butuan City (Part II)
The St. Joseph Cathedral, a taste of BXU night life, a boat museum, and the bridge.
Ahoy! Here’s the short and last continuation to my short trip to BXU. You can read the first part here.
After the trip to the National Museum, it was time for my colleague’s wedding. We were bound for St. Joseph Cathedral.
I don’t have a lot to say about it because churches aren't really my thing but I’ll do make just this one comment: nothing was rushed during the wedding.
Being a progressing rural city, maybe there weren't a lot of weddings to do, so the clergy didn't have to pressure every ceremony to go fast.
A simple dinner at a flower garden followed. It was already too dark to take photos at Jane’s Orchid garden.
The BXU night life isn't as booming as Cebu City but there’s enough to do. Clubbing. Drinking. Karaoke. Live bands. After the wedding dinner, my group decided to get some drinks to cap the night. So we went to Boy’s Beer & Wine Room. Looked like a pretty high end place. Expensive liquor. So so music. Great looking crowd. And then like every Filipino, the drinking ended with unbridled squawking at Wat Ever Family KTV. It’s the first time I’ve been inside a Wat Ever franchise and I gotta say, the place was quite nice. Didn't hear very nice reviews about the Cebu branch.
Hours and hours of vocal chord pilates, and then we were home bound for some quick shuteye. Had to wake up early the next day to catch a ride for Camiguin Island! I will be making a separate entry for that one! Place is unforgettable.
Barely 24 hours on Camiguin Island and I was back in BXU again. My colleagues got a flight back to Cebu and I was left to explore some more. It was getting late in the afternoon when I got back to the city. My host and I started a search for the Balanghai Shrine, the museum for the oldest watercraft ever (built? found? made? I’m not so sure). After a couple of stops and asking locals where it could be, we found ourselves minutes deep into roads in the outskirts. And then we made it.
I thought I was gonna see some sails and colors but… it was just a museum for a very old artifact. And some wooden coffins. The museum looked pretty modern with an al fresco setup and huge glass enclosures for the artifacts. So that was a plus.
Unsatisfied with what I saw (because I was expecting great looking boats and sails), we asked the friendly guard to point us in the direction of anything else interesting about Balanghay boats and he advised us to visit the boat yard closer to the city.
Getting close to 7PM, we still went for it anyway. We got to the boat building area and, shiver me timbers, there was a boat that looked like it was in its early construction phase.
Alas, we could not get to it because the area around the workhouse was flooded and there were no lights whatsoever except from the headlights of our humble transport. Sad. I’ll be back in BXU after a few months and hopefully, see something interesting next time. And up close.
The last part of my short tour ends at the road close to the new Macapagal Bridge. Boy, I loved looking at that bridge from far away. It looked like a scene in LOST where a huge man made modern-looking structure just stands out of a forsaken jungle.
That concludes the writeup for my short trip to BXU. Will be back in May for more. Balanghay festival is coming up! See you on the streets of Butuan!
You can check my BXU Facebook album for more photos.
