The first destination from Manila to Siquijor is Dumaguete, home of the old and famous Silliman University. For those who plan to stay in the city, there are lots of guesthouses in the area. We chose to stay at OK Pension House along Sta. Rosa St. because it is walking distance to commercial establishments and the Rizal Boulevard, not to mention its cheap price. A matrimonial room with its own bathroom and cable TV only costs P660/night, but don’t expect luxurious service and facilities; it’s more of a 1-star hotel ). One redeeming factor though is that right across the street is Kiosqo, a 24-hour café and restaurant with free and relatively fast wifi connection.
Aside from visiting the famous landmarks within the city like the belfry, and Silliman campus, food tripping is basically one of the highlights of visiting Dumaguete. A few of the famous restaurants/eateries within Dumaguete which were referred by friends are City Burger, Jo’s Inato, Hayahay, Lab-as, Tasters’ Delight and Sans Rival. Lab-as is a seafood restobar overlooking the Dumaguete Bay and literally a step away from Hayahay, another restobar. City Burger, according to my colleague, surprisingly serves chicken, which is as good as the ones served in Jo’s Inato (or tastes even better). The latter’s branch in Quezon City closed down so we wanted to try again the yummy inasal which we have missed for almost a year now. For dessert and for those with sweet tooth, try the sans rival and silvanas and other pastries at, where else? Sans Rival! There’s a branch near Rizal Boulevard and another at the Robinson’s mall. Several ferries travel to and from Siquijor daily, EXCEPT on the 25th of December. We took the Delta Fast Ferry, with one-way fare of P160. It is relatively expensive because the vessels of the company are air conditioned. Unfortunately, the ferry that we rode on at 1:30 p.m. was the old one (has been in operation for 15 years now), with an old floor standing type aircon and barely working to cool the inside of the watercraft during a very hot noon. What’s worse is we can smell the fumes of the boat from the inside. So if you plan to take an air conditioned ferry, make sure that you will ride the new ferries of the company.
The sea travel took an hour to reach the pier at Siquijor, Siquijor. We were welcomed by Joam, the driver whose tour services we hired months before our travel. FYI, he can schedule tours of the whole island for up to 12 persons. Since ours was scheduled on the 24th, he charged us PhP 1000 for one whole day. While his fee for taking us to our hotel that is situated on the other side of the island, about 25-30km and almost an hour by tricycle, is PhP 300 which I think is a reasonable price for a special trip such as this (take note that the tricycles in the island usually travel with up to 6 passengers). You may contact him via his mobile, +639276932095.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to reach our hotel at the municipality of Maria (about 25-30 km from the pier). Hotel Agripino is managed by the provincial government so it has a relatively cheap price. Our room at the top floor with veranda and overlooking the Salagdoong Beach costs PhP1200/night. From the hotel, you still have to take a 3-minute walk down to the beach. There’s also a restaurant near the beach which operated even until the 24th and 25th.
The white-sand Salagdoong Beach stretches only up to app. 300 meters. Not all parts of it have sand as fine as that of Boracay. Waters are still and locked by two coves so that when it’s wavy or sunny on one cove, you can transfer and swim on the other. Also, even at low tide, one can enjoy swimming in the Salagdoong Beach. There were lots of people when we got there and not all are hotel guests. Since it is a government-owned beach, it is open to the public so don’t expect privacy, unless you stay there on Christmas eve like we did, when most people stay home. We had merienda in the restaurant to make up for a missed lunch and since the reasonably-priced servings are fairly big, we were so full that it we didn’t have dinner anymore and instead slumbered as early as 7pm due also to exhaustion from the long sea and land travel. 
72-km tour of Siquijor Island (24 December)
Joam picked us up at 9:35 a.m. for our island tour. Our first stop was the oldest house in the island. We travelled through the coastal road and enjoyed the scenic view of the sea and mangroves in it.
We stopped over a house that produces and sells assorted peanut products and a specialty called torta which were unavailable at that time. We stopped by the St. Francis of Assissi Church then drove off to San Juan and had lunch at a restaurant which took almost an hour to serve our food. slow. Nearby is the Capilay’s Spring Park and anyone may dip in.
At 1pm we resumed with our road trip. The way from San Juan to Lazi takes a long one hour, good thing we have our good thin and crispy home-made banana chips to munch on which we bought from a store along the way. We visited the San Isidro Church and the monastery in front, the famed old enchanted balete tree. The Cambugahay Falls houses three falls and is such a serene place. But the calmness from this site had been replaced by exhaustion as we had to climb up many steps to reach the main road.
Shortly after 3 pm, we reached our hotel then dipped in and enjoyed the beach by ourselves till sun down.
We awoke from a long sleep, not because we were tired from yesterday’s excursion but because there were several power interruptions in the area right before Chrismas eve. We dozed off after watching a movie and skipped Noche Buena.
While many visitors were crowding and enjoying the waters of Salagdoong Beach, my husband and I were busy packing our stuff and preparing ourselves to leave Maria and transfer to Larena. The idea was to save travel time to the port. Larena is about 30 minutes closer to the Siquijor pier where as Maria, as mentioned,is about an hour and a half from the pier. Joam picked us up and dropped us off to Southtown Guesthouse which he recommended upon our arrival in Siquijor. The guesthouse has decent rooms, each with its own bathroom and costing only PhP600. It also has a good location; very near eateries and shops.
Unlike the luxurious celebration of are families of such a special day, we were so impoverished! We originally planned of going back to Dumaguete on the 25th and spend the day doing our photo ops and food trip in the city but we learned too late that there are no ferries operating on Christmas day. Larena is basically a commercial center of the island and is not famous for their beaches. The streets were empty and we were lucky enough to find a karinderya operating on that day, to serve us Christmas lunch of rice and plainly-cooked pork viands… I don’t even remember what they were because they weren’t special at all. Equally pathetic is our Christmas dinner of instant noodles, which were at least the Korean Ram Yun noodle. In the guesthouse, we were unsuccessful to get an internet connection so my husband just watched movies while I lit cigarette sticks one after the other. We felt that we wasted one day of our trip but it’s definitely one way to remember our 2010 Christmas.
Back to Dumaguete… the end of our holiday (26 December)
The following day we road a Jaylan boat to go back to Dumaguete. Our flight to Manila was scheduled mid-afternoon so we still had the chance to have lunch at Jo’s Inato. Our baggages constrained us so we decided to go to the airport and to our dismay, the airport was closed for lunch break. Set in the middle of nowhere, again, there was nothing else to do but to stay and have coffee at a restaurant fronting the airport. And this marks the end of our 2010 holidays.
No comments:
Post a Comment