Bacolod But Briefly

My Negros Oriental Tour: Bacolod City, NegOcc

Yes very briefly hehe! I left San Carlos at exactly noontime and was just about checked-in at Bacolod Pension Plaza before 230PM. That means travel time was faster than 2.5 hours. Probably because there were not so many passengers getting on and off our bus, or probably because there were not so many vehicles along the roads to block our way, or both! Immediately after dropping my things in the room, I opened the box of Napoleones that I picked over at Robinson’s and devoured its contents I finished two bottles of coke to down them all! Pigged out? Hear this… after that a-la tazmanian devil bolt down, I slept like a log and woke up at 8PM hahaha!

So I asked around as to where I could find Pipeline Bacolod. Of those I asked, no one could specifically tell me where that place might be. Some even asked me back what it was! So I txtd a crew over at Pipeline Cebu and she told me details. It was actually easy, just took a cab to Rolling Hills (Bacolod) – yes, like in Mandaue it is also a funeral home – crossed the road, walked a few meters down and voila I found it! What’s in Pipeline anyway? Nothing but a bar with pool tables (billiards), good music, good food, good crowd and jolly crews. But of course, being new, the Bacolod branch is swankier. Ah, if I haven’t done so yet, am going to write a full article about these two branches of Pipeline anyway, so hang in there if you can wait. Otherwise, go there and enjoy!

Make the long story short, from dinner to drinks and some ambitious continuation of my ambitious desire to learn pool, I ended up calling it a night at Pipeline shortly after 3AM. Hah! Not a hectic Bacolod run eh?!

Woke up about 1030AM and (that late) Bacolod Pension Plaza was not serving anymore breakfast. So I tapped the grumbling dear tummy and told it to wait just a little more as it was going to be lunch soon anyway. To kill time, I tried calling up PAL and Cebu Pacific alternately for any chance I could get on their planes to Cebu that evening. Hah, why was I trying the easy way out?! Probably the mind (and the sexy body) was already saying enough of the almost half-a-month roaming half of Negros! More than half I think! Bumigay din hehehe! But I could not get through to any of both airlines’ contact numbers. And no way would I go to the BCD airport to become “chance passenger” since it is very far away (its in Silay City) - about 15 kms away!

CNN was bothering me, so I pressed the remote to mute and did some quick thinking. Notes to self… if I got on an evening flight to Cebu, what else would I be doing in Bacolod from noon (check-out time at hotel) till afternoon (departure to airport)? It was too long a time to be wandering around malls and too short a time to be appearing at any of my Bacolod friends’ homes (this was a Sunday).

Warning btw, to those who have friends in Bacolod:
This city (ok, add Iloilo) seriously retains the good old ways of friendly visitations and visiting 'protocols', if there's still something like that anyway hehe! You tell them you ‘were’ in the city since yesterday… how dare you not tell them ahead of time and how insulting you just told them now, aren’t they good hosts to you as visitor you did not let them know earlier that you were already in town?… AND you will get an endless litany of ‘how dare yous’ hehe! Yeah we know those are just expressions of fondness! Lambing lang... though I think only the Ilonggos were awake when heaven showered us with this trait hahaha!

Here's more, you tell them you can only visit for an hour or two... how dare you too!... you announce you are around and you won’t accord them the pleasure of entertaining and pampering you with their food, their coffee, their stories?... and yes, you also get an endless litany of ‘how dare yous’! AND your “insulting” actions (or is that inaction?) of not letting them host you properly can be recalled even decades later, with a lot of how dare yous! Yep, you will literally never hear the end of it!

All told, never let an Ilonggo know that you are in town if you are not ready or don’t have the time to let them entertain you! AND, be they septuagenarians, your colleagues or born yesterday… they wont be happy if they were not given time to entertain you for AT LEAST a full day! Ah they as a people are I think the last remnants in this country who take ‘entertaining friends’ all too seriously as it has been in our/their abundant past! I hate them and love them for this!

That is why I did not tell anyone of them, my BCD friends, that I was in town - even if one txtd me she thought she saw someone that looked like me walking around town last night haha! OMG, by this revelation, I’m sure I will get a lot of ‘how dare you’ messages via txts, emails or calls! I hope the paragraphs above will suffice as explanation to all of them. But knowing them… I better start it now… how dare me… yes, HOW DARE ME! Sorry guys, I did not intend to hit Bacolod in this sojourn. It was just another spur-of-the-moment thing! OMG, I know it’s a lame excuse… I’ll just brace for impact hehe! And I better lambast myself now.. “kalain sa akon wala man lang ko naghambal nga ara gali ko…” and so on and on. I know I wont hear the end of all these! Ah how dare me! Sorry gid guys ay hehehe!

Anyway… and thus… because I could not get through on the airlines' phones in the first place…

I told myself why don’t I go back to San Carlos and head home to Cebu as planned? Meaning take the bus that goes via the RORO crossing to Toledo and continue on to Cebu City?! I realized, if I flew from Bacolod to Cebu, I would have breached one crucial part of the original plan – that was to head home to Cebu from San Carlos via the bus route passing through Toledo City! Thus…

I checked out of Bacolod Pension Plaza and took a cab to the Ceres bus station. Another note: there are two Ceres Stations in the city so you must tell the cab driver which town/city you are going for them to bring you to the correct terminal. Just like Cebu, right?! Two terminals… northbound and southbound. I fortunately arrived at the Ceres terminal 30 minutes ahead of the aircon bus departure to Cebu! Homeward bound, yey!


If you want to read the chronology of all stories on this tour, click the following:
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