I spent my entire holy week at my mother’s province, Bais City (for those who do not know where it is, it is located in Negros Oriental, Philippines). For a city, it doesn’t really feel like a city like New York, Sydney, Manila, or even Cebu, it feels more like a town to me. If you are wondering why it’s called a city, my cousin who took up Political Science explained to me that in order for a place to become a city, they must generate a minimum income of 100 million pesos (this is the latest minimum according to the Philippine law). Since I’m already talking about my 'hometown', might as well talk about its must-sees and must-visits.
What I really like about my hometown is its simplicity, a good way to rest your mind from the 'real' city life. The city does not have malls, yes you heard me, we don’t have malls like other cities. We only have two central plazas, our tiangge or public market (the new public market is almost complete by the way and the design is pleasing actually),our public basket ball court, our local Catholic church, a public school, a private school, and our city hall which are all in walking distance. One of the fun things you should also try is riding a ‘pot-pot’ or a bike side-car taxi with a honk which is very cheap, although I rarely ride them because I feel sorry for the drivers carrying your weight. If I do ride the pot-pot, I make sure that I pay them more than the riding fee.
Bais is widely known in the Negros Province for its dolphin watching and the white sand bar beach (a large stretch of sand occurring only during low tides), although the sand bar is not actually part of the city but belongs to the next town, Manjuyod, it is still strongly affiliated with the local tourism. To let you see what my second hometown looks like, here is a link:
Even if I am a local, I never had the chance to visit these two main attractions. Although I almost had the chance to visit Sand Bar for the first time last Easter Sunday, it was cancelled because our ‘pumboat’ or a motor-run rowboat was too small to travel a long distance, plus the sea was ‘wavey’. The last thing I don’t want happening to me is to die drowning; especially that I have a case of acute asthma attacks, so stamina will be a really big problem when I’m trying to swim back to shore…. Shudder…. So me and my cousins just settled with Lag-it, a very popular and free ‘beach’ in barangay Okiot (actually, we don’t call Lag-it beach because it is actually a fisherman’s area).
So Holy Week was pretty much not so exciting for me in Bais City, other than going to the beach, since I was just reading a book and watching Discovery or NatGeo the whole time, but I had a great time altogether. Although I think my cat, Cookies, might have more exciting experience than me since he can’t stop exploring the neighborhood and meeting new animal buddies
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