Ligaya’s Pension House, Tubigon

My 'initial' accommodation in Tubigon. Having found its numbers from the web on the day of our departure, I called up to book a room. Dennis, the owner (a foreigner) answered my call and told me he’d reserved Room 1 for us. Further told me to just press the buzzer at the gate as we would be arriving at an unholy hour and everyone would still be asleep by then. Hmm, from that conversation, I got it that this was a small family-run pension that closes doors at night where everyone goes to sleep. Fine enough I thought, as long as they won’t lock me out until whateverr time of night I arrive from my sojourns.

So, as said in the previous blog, we were standing in front of Ligaya’s gate at about 3:35AM (don't be confused by the pic, it was taken during the day already). It was dark and the street we were on was tree-lined, eerily silent and a bit damp from the dew or it probably rained before we arrived. Easy to feel really that some unseen being might be lurking amidst the darkness of those tree leaves and suddenly pounce upon us from up there hehe. And we were teasing like a snake might come suddenly to bite us or a dog with flaming eyes might suddenly appear to attack us hahaha. Why would we not think about such ridiculous things, eh the trike ride from the pier felt we traveled very far and to a sparsely habited area of town so it seemed. I think, that trike ride covered probably just a kilometer or so from the pier, but the silence and darkness on a narrow street added to our imaginative imaginations hehe.

After the 3rd buzz, a girl, obviously an employee, finally appeared to see us and I promptly told her they were expecting us, that I called up Dennis during the night and that our room is supposed to be Room 1. Then she opened the gate and led us through a pathway circling the main house to a ‘back of the house’ house hehe. And there was Room 1, near the perimeter wall, at the end of a ‘building’ composed of Rooms 1 and 2. There was a bit of an issue with the room key. Girl inserted it on the knob but it won’t turn to open the door. She instead shook the knob, gave it a tug and a hard push, voila, our room opened hehe.

I immediately sensed my companion did not like where we were. The room smelled like it has never been used for a long time. The sheets looked like they have been there for about as long and felt a bit rough to the touch. I asked him if it might have been fluff or something about the cloth. His answer was a very simple “dust” and asked me to cover my nose then proceeded to flap each one as hard as he could. At such a time of day, I would not see any airborne dust after the flapping action, right? But after that, I started sneezing hehe. As we pushed to separate them, we wondered a bit why they had to push the two single beds together. Probably to make it one big bed thinking we were a couple who reserved for that room. But it too looked like said two single beds had been together for some bit of time.

As he shook his head, I advanced my reaction by saying “this is a six-hundred-peso room”. The response was a declarative “so we pay cheap to nurse a runny nose for the duration of our stay”. I opted not to reply hehe. He is still an employee of that 5-star hotel in Cebu, and for 8 years now, so I cannot be ‘authority’ in this field hehe. Mind you, I realized here I do not actually give particular attention at my rooms than I should. All I have known was/is that carpeted floors give me the colds. This room had bare cement painted brown so I thought that was fine enough. Okay, next time I will also flap the sheets hehehe.

I tried to recover by making a remark that the bathroom was big with a length equal that of the entire room. The reply was “brown tiles are meant to hide dirt and stains”! Argh! For a time there I silently thought “ah the rigors of traveling with someone”. But he was reasonable enough, I think. At least we laughed about the shower. We found it wise of the owners to have fitted a shower hose in the room because the height of the water pipe was just about the level of my nose hahaha. And wonderful that water pressure was/is strong that its nice using the jets to massage various parts of the body! I slept, while companion watched TV.

At 7:45AM, after another shower, we stepped out of the room and were happily surprised that the table just outside the door was already daintily prepared with cups, a thermos bottle and 3-in-1 coffee sachet. We both are not fond of coffee but we did this mix because it was a lovely morning atmosphere to sit on that table. Daylight made us realize that this was a garden in front of our room with fruit trees everywhere. This place would actually have been the backyard but they built the building that houses our room. Across us was a big nipa hut that served as kitchen, laundry area and staff house. Background music? Birds freely hopping amongst branches up the trees, chirping and chiming to greet us good morning. Nice enough for me!

After the coffee, we set out for our initial roam of Tubigon’s town center. It was taking too long for a trike to pass by the gate of Ligaya’s, so we strolled retracing the way our trike delivered us to this place earlier at dawn. There were many tricycles passing at the corner with the bigger street so we hopped on one and happily roamed center of town. Alas, we saw a big billboard advertising ‘The Monina’s Midtown Inn & Restaurant’ and directions indicated it was just near. When we looked, we could even see its roof just near one side of the church. We went out to check it out. Long story short, we liked it, companion asked that we transfer to this place, so we went back to Ligaya’s to get our things and check-out.

Since until this time I have never encountered it, I asked the girl who earlier attended to us where was front desk of Ligaya’s Pension House. She pointed us to a big single-level house across the road. So we got our things and went there to check-out. This place is called Ligaya’s Bar and the bar itself serves as their front desk. Nice place to hang around or eat meals as it is also surrounded by trees and flowering plants. Dennis was there manning the place while his son lazed in one bench busy on a PSP game. Dennis is soft-spoken with a portly decorum unlike many resident foreign retirees you see around this country who are mostly grumpy old slobs seemingly having perennial hangovers. He asked why we were leaving so early and so soon. I mustered a white lie saying it was time for us to move on. On hindsight, it was good I did not specify a whole duration when I phoned him the night before. I just said we’ll be arriving via the midnight RORO.

So after paying P600, we said our goodbyes. Hey, they don’t issue ‘official receipts’ hehe. All we got was a ‘temporary receipt’ - the kinds you buy from bookstores.

Ah, let’s go roaming…


If you want to read the chronology of all stories on this tour, click the following:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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