Travel is a very important part of a person’s life. Whether you’ve been out of your comfort zone dozens of times or have stayed there ever since you can remember, one thing is for sure, we still travel one way or the other from point A to point B –be it a short bus ride from school to a long flight to the other side of the globe.
Some people look for sunny places where they can enjoy the water and the sand while the more adventurous take that infamous unbeaten path; like going to Africa not on a safari but to experience rain weeks on end or to see the sun suddenly disappearing in the horizon –without warning- when nighttime comes. Yet others travel to places that remind them of their recent past –the school they went to, the places where they dined with people they used to know or people they still know. These places somehow remind some of us the Beatles crooning, “There are places I remember all my life” or for the more modern, “Photographs” by Nickelback.
To prepare myself for the traveling I would have to do for work in the very near future, I have to look back and write about the place where I grew up and where my mother and her mother before her grew up –a place I know inside and out the way a Parisian would every café in the city of lights.
Holidays in Ilocos Norte, Philippines are quite an attraction but it’s not the food or the sidewalks made out of cobblestones that makes me feel alive when I am home, it is that feeling of security –that I am in my own turf-where almost everyone who are dear to me live.
As I walk that road going to Batac’s Hilario Valdez Memorial Elementary School with an old friend, I suddenly remembered how wonderful the weather is in Ilocos Norte during this time of year –it would remind you of a warm Spring day in the western hemisphere. It was almost dusk and there were children riding old bicycles, possibly on their way home to enjoy a dinner of either a Batac Empanada with a few sticks of the local sausage or a meal of traditional pinakbet.
The grade school I went to is already old –I never thought of it as old really since I can still remember the first day of first grade. But that was 18 years ago and the school now looks older than its picture in my mind. There is still that old flagpole standing proudly right in front of the oldest building in the compound. The hallways are still quite polished though and still great for those weekend rollerblading escapades. Just a few minutes from the school is the supermarket where my dad gets the freshest produce for his rather delectable creations.
The old church in Batac where my parents were christened and got married.
At around 6 in the evening, the town center would be quite alive –no there aren’t any decent bars where you can get a cocktail but there’s lots of food. Food, after all is a great part of our culture as with any other culture. It is a little too quiet in Batac though and if you sit in the small park in front of the cultural center, you would see a lot of folks –a few familiar faces maybe if you are from there or just a bunch of strangers if you aren’t.
Locals walking right in front of the Marcos Mansion towards the restaurants in Batac.
On the other side of the small park is a river fronting the Marcos Mansion –where the deposed President Ferdinand Marcos and his family used to live. His rather controversial wife, their children and grandchildren still go to the mansion whenever they are home. Today, it stands beside its own museum and the mausoleum of the President himself.
Right beside the park is a bridge that would lead you to the Mariano Marcos State University –a sizeable gated campus with beautiful buildings and lots of trees. Going to high school there is quite an experience but what I really remember are the late summer rains and how the pavement smelled so nice as it got rid of all the dust it has accumulated the day before, and how raindrops fall on the pines and the green galvanized roofs of the building and how my classmates then reveled on the sight of rain.
Going to Batac, Ilocos Norte is truly an experience not only to those who want to see sand dunes or old buildings but to those who want to remember the good things about this town –family, friends and all the people I once knew.
[...] north just a 12-hour bus ride away from the capital is Ilocos Norte –one of the most beautiful places in the country. You can go to RCJ situated on España and [...]