trip to bicol: day two. food-trip in naga.

downtown naga looked like the older districts of manila or quezon city. i guess it reminded me of some sections of cubao. but there is one distinct difference: there were no cabs. i pointed that out to vani, when we were roaming the city -- "this is not manila, i don't see any cabs."

i left sipocot around mid-morning the day after the wedding. i told mom and my relatives i'll be spending the next two days in naga.

this is how i ended up going to bicol in the first place: the weeks before that, i agreed to some rest day swaps which gave me four consecutive days off. my work schedule required me reporting to work on weekends and i needed the first weekend of may free for my high school reunion. with that arranged, i received word from my mom that my cousin was asking if i wanted to be his best man for his wedding. conveniently, it fell on the time i had an extended rest day.

and then i thought about further extending my days off by filing a three-day leave. since i was heading for bicol anyways, i thought why not enjoy it as much as i could? i told my bicolana colleague, vani, that i'm going to bicol on the second week of may. she said she was thinking about going to bicol, too. "that's great!" i told her. "why not let's go at the same time and meet there and hang out?"

so that's how it happened.

i arranged to vani in that very ubiquitious filipino fastfood called jollibee. actually, that was a bit of luck; i have only been to naga once before, we had a car, and it was in the evening, so i really have no idea of what the place is like or how to move around the city. the shuttle i took will end at the bus and FX terminal in naga (just a little outside the downtown area, i eventually learned). i was getting my bearings when i saw a jollibee store near the terminal. so i told vani i'll stay in jollibee, gave descriptions of which jollibee was it that i saw, and waited for her inside.

it felt weird, listening to the people at the counter while waited for my turn. the counter people would ask customers in tagalog while customers answered in bicolano (bicolano is the language spoken locally within the bicol region). i felt so alien having to give my order in tagalog. it took a while before vani arrived; while waiting for her, i enjoyed my strawberry and cream shake (jollibee called it frost blend) as well as the attention of a young store attendant who was interested in my phone, but most likely not in me. vani arrived some time after i've finished my shake and admitted that she had yet to try the shake in one of the local jollibee branches.

the first thing we did after getting out of jollibee was to look for an internet cafe. after two nights of not checking my emails, i felt the last remnants of internet withdrawal syndrome taking a hold of me: i needed an internet fix. we found this cafe in downtown naga and i proceeded to upload the photos i'd taken so far (until that point). and didn't i say that bicol has had frequent power interruptions? there was another power failure immediately after vani and i were done with the computers; it happened while we were paying the girl at the shop's counter.

we went to vani's house in a subdivision near the southern end of naga. i met her parents (she went to bicol to visit her mom after she go out of the hospital) and her siblings. after a late lunch, we went back downtown and took a stroll around the city proper. vani had her younger brother accompany us.

because money was limited, i didn't suggest that we explore the shops. anyways, on that day, naga's traffic was jammed because of campaign rallies organized by local politicians. the two siblings spend their time together eating; they took me to a restaurant that served kare-kare as the house specialty. the place wasn't boasting -- we ordered seafood kare-kare and it was soooo good. you could smell the peanut in the thick sause and the bagoong was really well-prepared. it was the best kare-kare i had in a long time. meanwhile, a campaign rally was still ongoing outside the restaurant and the street was packed with people. apparently, some of the politician's supporters stayed inside the restaurant. there was a point that after a speech, people outside were clapping and they were joined by some people inside the restaurant. but that was still an awesome serving of kare-kare we had there.

it was after we got out of the restaurant when i decided to take photos of the city. which was a bit too late, since it was already past sunset. near the city plaza was a franciscan church; we went inside for a bit to see the church interior (that was on my suggestion while i was in my tourist-mode). after the church, we went to a nearby mall. i saw and bought a copy of clive barker's the great and secret show from a second-hand bookstore. (dammit! second-hand bookstores almost always make me lose control of my spending.) we sat down to rest at the mall's food court before heading off to another restaurant.

actually, the extended side-trip was just so that our stomachs could partially digest the kare-kare before we could have some halo-halo. prior to going to bicol, vani had been going on about eating halo-halo when she goes back to naga; i didn't think she'd allow the chance to eat halo-halo to pass then that we were in naga. and she wanted halo-halo from a particular restaurant; her brother suggested halo-halo from chow king (a chain of chinese-themed fastfood restaurants that started in manila), but i chose vani's restaurant (geewan) instead. i haven't tried geewan's halo-halo, but i don't like chow king's so it wasn't a tough choice. and geewan's halo-halo was actually pretty good. it's a dieter's (or a diabetic's) nightmare, too, what with the sugar overload.

all in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend a day.