Nene’s cozy roadside food stall in Pansol.On display are lechon manok, grilled hito, pork bbq and salted eggs. (Taken with a Nokia 6230)

The whole clan motored to Pansol, Calamba City, Laguna last Saturday for my mom’s advanced birthday celebration. The uninitiated may ask, “Where is Pansol?” Well, the place happens to be known as the Hot Spring Resort Capital of the Philippines. Being just 54 kilometers away from Manila,it is a popular place for rest and recreation. People also go here for health reasons. There’s a septuagenarian I know who attributes his “eternal youth” through regular romps in the hot springs of Pansol.

I can’t help but be impressed with my sister for organizing everything about the trip down to the last detail. Two weeks before, she assigned me all the breakfast stuff. A week after, another reminder for me plus her proposed menu.And then, a detailed description of how to go to the private pool we were getting which is just one of the hundreds of pools dotting Pansol. Really Ate Cyn, I thought we were hying off to faraway Barbados!

The kids had the time of their lives though. I now concede that they have the greatest fun when they’re brought to any place near the water. Dionne, who was frolicking in the kiddie pool, had to cry her heart out when she was told to change her clothes and go to bed since it was already 1 a.m.!

There are communal areas in Pansol but the good thing about being in the Tanchinco Private Pool is that we had the whole compound to ourselves.And that means an ultra-spacious kitchen, three huge bedrooms, parking for four cars, two pools and a quaint nipa hut in the middle which can also double as a resting place. In Pansol, you can really feel you’re out of the city because there is no cable or computers but you can never have a dearth of good things to do because there’s the ubiquitous karaoke machine. You can also play tong-its, read, or swim laps in the big pool for hours on end.

As is customary in Filipino family reunions like this, there was an abundance of food. Aside from munching on the usual barbecues, I liked my sister’s Thai pomelo salad which consisted of ripened pomelo and julienned strips of carrots, turnip and cucumber with vinaigrette dressing.

And just like anywhere in our sunny archipelago, the people of Pansol were very nice. I am featuring in photo above the roadside stall of Nene who gave me 10 per cent discount on five pieces of her grilled tilapia with free roasted eggplant to boot. With a nice lady like Nene, who can refuse?

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Posted in Munchin', Road Adventures |