Baguio, the Summer Capital - Part Two

In two years in Morocco, I had plenty of people stay with me – some of whom I had met before and a couple of whom I hadn’t – it was expected that if PCVs were passing through, you would put them up. But I never stayed with someone I hadn’t met when I was just passing through – I wanted to meet the local PCVs there and get the insider scoop, but I didn’t want to just crash.

Well, this is a new experience in a new country and when Kate gave me Travis’s number and Travis, the Baguio-area PCV, said I was welcome to stay in his extra room, I accepted the invitation. He and Janet, an Australian volunteer (they have a similar program, ten months long, only in Asia-Pacific) met me at the bus station. We walked down Session Road, the main drag, stopping at some ukay-ukay (used clothing) stores, and then went to the market to look at craft items – nothing I had to have, but maybe weavings and wood carvings are in my future. We then went on to their town in the province of Benguet – surrounded by hills decorated with Benguet pines, which grow only there (well, I just fact-checked that, and the current thinking is that it is the same species as another common Asian pine, just with a different name in the Philippines – but maybe current thinking will change again!). We went to their local market. It seems more fun than my local market – a big building with lots of stalls, selling not only food but clothing, crafts, household items, and food specialties of the region – jams, jellies, cookies and brickles – but maybe I should give my local market another look (I started walking outside the market between my bus and my jeepney home, on the fruit-stand side, both because I would then buy more fruit and because the air inside is a little close).

I had brought with me (per request) wine and interesting conversation. Janet did some prep and Travis cooked – delicious vegetable curry. Cooking together and then sitting around and talking was one of my favorite memories from Peace Corps Morocco – and here in the Philippines there was a big contrast with the night before, when, more my usual experience here, on the way home, wet from being caught in the rain, I met some of the other PCRVs at a loud bar…. but Travis has an apartment more conducive to PCV hanging-out than I or any of the other PRCVs do. His extra room was cozy – nice to curl up under covers with cool fresh air.

The next morning it was still pouring so it wasn’t up and out – we cooked a leisurely breakfast of scrambled eggs and garlic rice (sign that he’s assimilated – has to have rice with every meal!) and then read some Walt Whitman poetry (he was recently using it in the classes he teaches) and looked at his pictures of the Ambassador visit. Quite an accomplished volunteer! He extended his COS date from August to October – I caught him just in time! – and he is going on to Peace Corps Response!

Still raining – he wasn’t inclined to leave the house but he recommended that I go to a museum – an indoor option and a worthy destination. The BenCab museum (bencabmuseum.org) had some interesting contemporary paintings and even more interesting authentic Ifugao wood carvings, as well as a garden with a rice terrace, a pond and Ifugao huts, in a dramatic mountain setting and, on a clear day, a view of the South China Sea (I did see that on the way home, from further down the mountain).

I then went on to Burnham Park, laid out around a central lake (which had boats of a shape and a size that you might get if you crossed Boston’s swan boats with Central Park’s rowboats – but, uncharacteristically, I didn’t go for a ride) with paths, grassy areas, seating areas, a sunken playing field – in other words, it felt familiar. I went back to the craft market and again didn’t feel inspired, and then I had a great dinner (if spaghetti bolognese was my dinner out of choice in Morocco, so far it’s been pumpkin soup here – I think I will look for a recipe and make some for myself!). I strategically took a bus that would give me mountain vistas while it was light out but didn’t leave any earlier than that; the ride back was shorter than the ride up (my grandfather used to call that the law of diminishing returns – I never got the joke until I took Economics in college) and I got home at a reasonable hour (i.e. before midnight). For some strange reason, the daytime bus going up had lights over the seats but the one going back in the dark did not – I read using the flashlight on my cellphone. Another great excursion and another dimension of the Philippines!