The Trip to Calamba

While we were growing up, we've always heard of the town of Calamba from our history textbooks. It's a town in the province of Laguna where our National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal was born. Pareng Vir who hails from the nearby town of Santa Cruz, Laguna suggested we visit Jose Rizal's hometown and drop by his house and say hi to his spirit or something.

Monday - March 10, 2008

Calamba is a typical Philippine town with a good amount of traffic. We must have asked less than half a dozen tricycle drivers before we finally found Jose Rizal's residence.

It sits in a corner lot - huge house, across the Calamba parish church. Murphy's Law - we went there on a Monday, the house which I imagine got turned into a museum type structure, was closed Sundays and Mondays. So we had to be content taking pictures outside the house. That's supposed to be a lanzones tree behind Donna in our picture below.


And here are a few pictures of the Calamba church. It's shaded by at least three giant, probably centuries old acacia trees.


Check out Jose Rizal's house in the background of the picture below taken from the church grounds.


We then headed to nearby Los Banos, home of the famous University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) campus and the prestigious International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).



Pareng Vir thought of calling his old high school buddy, Manny Alejar which proved to be a highly useful and important decision to our trip. It amazed me how Pareng Vir still remembers the location of Manny's house in spite of the time lapsed from the last time they saw each other - some 25 years in the quite distant past! Before we even got there, Pareng Vir said, "This will only be a hi-bye type situation. I'll greet him and we'll be on our way." Famous last words, or so they say.

Manny and his wife Chi (not sure what this is short for) ended up treating us for lunch at this highly exotic place called Kamayan sa Palaisdaan in Los Banos, close to IRRI where Manny retired from as a resident micro biologist. The ambience in this restaurant is terrific. They serve typical Filipino cuisine but their guests sit in bahay kubos floating on rafts in a man made lake.


You see Manny has been retired for a couple of years and Chi always kept house and took charge of raising their two boys while Manny ran around the country on assignments from IRRI. You can imagine how excited he was upon hearing that his best friend from high school is in town to pay him a visit. We gave them plenty of space to reminisce all they want. In fact Manny was going to drive his car on our way to the restaurant but Vir insisted he and Chi ride with us so there'll be more time to talk. Manny is indeed a talker. By the time the day ended, it seems as if we've known him all our lives, his family, his work and their high school time together.

After lunch he took us to his former work and he gave us a tour of IRRI's rice museum.

For me, the highlight of the tour was the rice variety the IRRI engineers developed for the Mekong Delta where it gets flooded all the time. The rice they developed basically is planted and starts growing normally. But once the water level rises, the rice plants grow with the rising water for up to a height of 6.5 meters! If the water does not recede, the rice gets harvested by the farmers on boats. But if the water level goes down, the rice plants falls on the ground and start growing and having roots on its stalks. I thought that was amazing!


After IRRI, they took us to the Makiling Botanic Gardens, home of the Philippine Raptor - this is an eagle unique to the Philippines. I'm not sure why it's called the raptor. Of course, the raptor display was closed on Mondays also!


We told Manny we wanted to visit Pagsanjan Falls and of course it's too late in the day to do that so he said we should be back from Tagaytay and be in Los Banos by 8 am tomorrow to make good time. He promised to take us and show us around Pagsanjan.

Outside the UPLB campus we dropped by Chow King Restaurant and had their cool, really colorful version of halo-halo.



We went back to Tagaytay and had dinner at a restaurant called Hapag Kainan. The food was so-so but we were hungry so it went down fine. I can't seem to get enough of the great weather of Tagaytay.

Pardon me but I'm tired so I'll have to add our Pagsanjan trip on a new and separate post, if you don't mind.

The Trip to Tagaytay

I've heard people say, "It's nice in Tagaytay."

or, "Tagaytay is like Baguio."

Some said, "The scenery is great!"

"The weather is cool."

"One can see Taal Lake from Tagaytay."

A couple of weeks ago, I would have replied, "Really? Is that right?" I wouldn't have had any idea, since I've never been to the place, have no idea where it's even located.

That was then.



Myrna has been a schoolmate of mine since grade school. Along with Donna and a bunch of other friends, we went to and graduated from the same high school, Jose Abad Santos High School in the City of San Fernando, Pampanga which incidentally has just had its Centennial Celebration last month. Myrna and husband Vir Alvarez worked for a while in California and once their two kids Janina and Hans graduated, they packed it in, decided they've had enough and went back here to the Philippines to live the 'good life'. Hans married Anna in October of 2005 and they've been blessed with super cutie Andie.(Hurry up Rach and Eph!!)

Here she is with Mom Anna and pseudo Lola Donna.


..with Auntie Janina and Lola Myrna.


I was honored to have been one of the major sponsors in their wedding. Another high school friend, Imelda would have been my partner but couldn't make it so Donna stood in her behalf.


Saturday - March 8, 2008

Myrna and Vir retired about a year before Donna and I did. And we've been talking of running around the towns of Pampanga (see blog Trip to Arayat) and then spreading our trips to Luzon, etc. It so happened that Anna's Mom owns a townhouse in Tagaytay and we were invited to stay there last December. For some reason we didn't make it then and we postponed the trip to January which also didn't materialize. Finally, a window presented itself last weekend and we decided to go Saturday morning after several changes of the plan.

Donna arranged for my sister-in-law Gay to stay in the house while we were gone to feed Indo. So Saturday morning we packed our stuff and after filling the tank up, we went to pick up Myrna and Vir from their place in San Felipe.

It took us about a couple of hours to get there. We met Hans at a rest stop off the SLEx (short for South Luzon Expressway) and then we followed him up all the way to his mom-in-law's (Mama Lits) town house in Tagaytay.



It's located in a small neighborhood called Jestra Heights. As an afterthought Pareng Vir was going to have the security guard take our picture but we were in a rush to go.



Mama Lits, her husband, driver and a housekeeper were already there when we arrived, hurriedly fixing lunch. She prepared a chicken dish, beef and salad. Goody.

After lunch Pareng Vir discovered my right rear tire was about to go flat. I was already all worn out by that time from waking up early and from all the driving in Metro Manila and the SLEx, which for some reason is always packed no matter what time of day we drive through it. The major construction it's going through didn't help. Mama Lits' driver had to help out in breaking out the spare (which I was told was a bear to do) and have the tire fixed. They found - count them - two nails in it. Thank goodness it got us all the way to our destination without going all the way down while we're on the road. This was all done while I was knocked out. When I woke up, everyone's gone but the four of us.

We went to church for the evening mass so we don't have to go Sunday. We had to go back for me to take the pictures below during daylight.


After church we had our lunch leftover for dinner.

Sunday - March 9, 2008

After breakfast we went to nearby People's Park for some sightseeing. Indeed, Tagaytay is what they say it is, (please see quotes on top) and then some.


People's Park was fairly crowded probably because it was a Sunday but we were told more people will probably come during the peak of the summer.

We noticed a bunch of Colette's stores. They sell buko pies which is common in the area of Calabarzon - the southern Luzon provinces. There seems to be one on practically every corner. Donna stopped counting at 20.



And here's a monument of Ninoy Aquino in the middle of the famous Tagaytay rotonda.



There were also numerous fruit stands, flower shops and nurseries. There were so many of these colorful shops that the sidewalks look as if they're landscaped.


We also noticed quite a bit of pineapple as well as banana (we were told of the Senorita variety) plantations.


After lunch we shopped around for some plants. We can't seem to decide when we have enough! Donna got a few milflores. Myrna who wasn't planning on getting any ended up buying more than Donna. We then proceeded to Leda's place in Muntinglupa. She just had her youngest grandkid Christened and they have a lot of food. Hey, food and Karaoke! I'm sold! After dinner Pareng Vir showed us of his hidden talents by singing one oldie after another. His repertoire seems to be peppered with Cliff Richards and Jose Mari Chan songs. This we did till about 9 pm while Donna and Leda were playing kuwaho. Myrna was contented just watching and listening to us make fools of ourselves with the microphone!

Next on the schedule - Calamba and Los Banos....