My Travel Essay- final draft

Going Back To Baguio

I remember how my Papa, Mama and I often went to Baguio. Papa would drive for seven hours and we would tell stories. Mama would always bring CD’s of Tuck and Patti and the Beatles. We would always bring bags of food and drinks. But last summer I went to Baguio alone for the first time. I occupied the window seat of a Victory Liner bus and settled back with books and magazines, chips and a bottle of water.

We arrived at around 10 p.m. At the terminal, I met my cousins whom I had not seen for a year. We drove down to our house in New Lucban. The sweet smell of pine trees evoked my childhood memories of Baguio.
I put my things in the room my Papa used when he was a kid. Some of his books were still there. Papa’s parents were from Besao in the Mountain Province. They moved to Baguio when Papa was born and so he grew up there up until he went to Manila for college. That night, before sleeping, I looked out the window to the city lights that seemed to reflect Baguio’s night sky.

I woke up at 10 a.m the next day. We drank Benguet coffee and ate scrambled eggs and rice. Afterwards we went to the ukayan near Burnham Park. At around 1 p.m., tired from shopping, we headed to VOCAS for lunch. It is a café and art center located in the LA Azotea building on Session Road. Shards of wood were pegged together which made the place look like the wreckage of an ancient galleon. Metal, wood and plastic toys were formed into artworks. Even the restroom was like an artwork. Broken ceramic tiles filled the walls with a psychedelia of color. The view from the balcony was overwhelming. To the east was S.M. Baguio, looking like a Burmese temple perched on top of a hill. To the west were old buildings and below us tourists scuttled around the streets like ants. The pale sky was frothy with clouds.

Late that afternoon we went to Tam-awan, an authentic Ifugao Village that the artist Ben Cabrera made into an art community for local artists. There were six Igorot huts, each located at a different area on the hillside. We visited each hut, which housed paintings of local artists. My great-great grandparents probably lived in a house like that. As the sky darkened, we climbed the highest point of the hill to watch the sun’s descent as its last light glowed just above the pool of clouds.

Late that night we went to Kuwago, a bar located undergound in the middle of the city. The band was playing Bob Marley covers and they were one of the best bands I’ve ever watched. The bands seem better in Baguio than in Manila. It’s probably the sensuousness and inner rhythm of Baguio which renders soul to the music of Baguio artists.

Afterwards, we decided to go for a walk. The streets were lined with mats piled with socks, bags and cell phone gadgets. Vendors, armed with plastic bags of lanzones, were ready to bombard policemen who would try to arrest them. As we traced the streets with our feet I thought of Papa. This was were he grew up. This is were he and Mama fell in love. A part of myself was bound to this place. The streets were spinnning us dizzy but we were blissful. I looked around at the people on the streets and they resemble me in some way. I smiled at them. There was still so much to discover in Baguio