Philippine Travel Notes

My Negros Oriental Tour: Bus Ride from Cebu City to Bayawan City Cebu to Dumaguete Reaching the south bus terminal at 6:35AM, I was late for the direct Cebu-Dumaguete-Bayawan buses as they now leave 5AM and 6AM respectively instead of 6AM and 7AM. So, I took an aircon bus on its way to Dumaguete. But I got off at Liloan’s Puerto Del Sur passenger terminal (in Santander) so I could cross via fastcraft to Sibulan and make my way by multicab or trike to the Ceres terminal in Dumaguete. You might ask why did I not just take the bus all the way to Dumaguete’s Ceres Terminal and connect to another bus from there going Bayawan. Well, ah, from experience and some asking around, it is faster if you cross on your own via the fastcrafts to Sibulan from Liloan than keep riding the Ceres all the way to Bato that crosses to the Tampi port in Amlan before proceeding with the ride to Dumaguete passing by Sibulan. If you did not quite get that, just try ‘google maps’ or ‘wikimapia’ to look for those pl...

From the church, I walked the short road that leads to the jetty port. This street actually runs along the side of the church. Interesting! It is lined with a lot of little stores that sell “pasalubong”, foodstuffs and many other things - including those that have videoke machines. This also seem to be the favourite eating place of drivers and high school students from the school nearby. The only taxi service in town (not metered) has some kind of a hub here owing to the presence of the little port. The jetty is a busy crossing point to Liloan (pronounced Lee-Lo-Un) in the island of Cebu. Oops, two things to note here: 1) Liloan is a barangay of the town of Santander (southernmost town of the island province of Cebu). It is not to be confused with the town of Liloan over at the northeastern portion of the same island and of course. Take note too not to confuse this with the town of Liloan in Southern Leyte which also has a ferry port (going to Surigao), and; 2) this jetty is not wher...

Check-out from Harold’s Mansion was without any fanfare. The lady who processed my bill even told me I could take a tricycle to the town of Sibulan instead of taking a jeep/multicab so as to avoid the long wait until it gets full. Having recalled that the airport is actually in the town of Sibulan, and that it did not take me long from there to the city, then I deduced that Sibulan is just near to Dumaguete. So I opted to take a trike ride… and right in front of Harold’s Mansion! Hailed the first empty tricycle to pass by and the manong greeted me with “good morning ser, where to?”. Yep, in English! And I liked the “where to?” part of his question. Told him I am not foreigner and wanted to go to Sibulan Plaza in front of the church and the city hall. He agreed, but although I instinctively felt this man won’t fool me with an exorbitant fare, I still asked him “how much”. At first I heard the usual “ikaw bahala sir”, but I insisted on an amount. He did tell me an amount – which I can...