The coffee shop that honesty built.

Honesty2.

This is one coffee shop where no one mans the store.

Softdrinks, instant coffee, candies, biscuits, noodles, chips and other snacks on sale. Write what you bought on a notebook and deposit your payment in a makeshift drop box. No change allowed.

It is so-called because this place expects your total honesty. I was tempted to pay for more than what I got. I felt like Papa Jesus was behind me

Nice tourism pitch actually. If the government put up more stores like this, then the Philippines would be known as Asia’s ‘most honest’ place.

One of my earliest visits to Baguio was not a pleasant one. I was a young cub reporter covering the aftermath of the disastrous July 1990 earthquake where more than 400 people died. I remembered that it took forever to reach the city because the major highways were closed. Session Road looked like a picture of devastation and most pitiful of all was the Hyatt Hotel ( also the site of a casino) which crumbled like dominoes and buried scores of people. The stench of death was clearly palpable above ground where we were and heard stories of who tried to escape, who died and who lived. I did have a picture but I was too sad to keep it.

It’s now nearly 20 years and there’s no longer a sign of that tragedy in Baguio, except horrific memories perhaps. Visiting Baguio this first week of January with my loved ones, I felt safe in the arms of Mother Nature. The Baguio climate in January is just lovely. Erase that: it is the best. For those of us who are tired of the humidity in Manila, the cool weather (below 20 degrees Celsius) provides a welcome respite.

We devoted a full day in the lovely confines of Camp John Hay with its tall pine trees and greenery. A portion of it is absolutely posh (because the rich have vacation houses inside the camp). However, Camp John Hay is also one great public park and you could while your time away here having a picnic and renting a table for just P100, going for bikes and games at the arcade, outlet shopping, hiking, eating and doing a sundry other things.

Chocolate de Batirol.

Chocolate de Batirol is a nature-inspired coffeeshop inside Camp John Hay’s Scout Hill Area. A must-try is of course their native cups of hot chocolate in different flavors. Mr. Z and I had the traditional blend and the Baguio blend which tastes more like strawberry. Too bad we had a full lunch so we weren’t able to try their native desserts like the bibingka, turron de langka and suman sa lihia. Still, Chocolate Batirol proved to be a cozy chill out place even though it is small, with plants, vines and artworks all over. Other hang outs in John Hay include Cantinetta, the House of Waffles, Mile Hi Diner, Starbucks, Carlo’s Pizza, Dencio’s, Hotshots, Brothers Burger and the outstanding Le Chef at the Manor.

(more…)

Back to the city groove after a mercy flight from Asian Spirit that got us out of rustic Batanes.

Now it’s time to continue with snippets of my neglected travelogue on Baguio City.

I wish I can say am tired of Baguio but it certainly was a changed city when I got there this time around. The change was evident in Mines View Park, a famous tourist landmark near Hotel Elizabeth which has this splendid view deck for admiring the city landscape. Mines View Park was so called because it was here where one can see the gold mines of Abra and Benguet from a distance. It is like being on the Tagaytay ridge (sans the volcano), except that Baguio weather is cooler and much more perfect in January.

Gone are the kids who hustled you for alms.My impression of Mines View now is that of a well-organized tourist landmark with clean comfort rooms and nice quaint shops displaying the best of Baguio handicraft. The best thing about it I guess are the photo ops you can have for ten pesos per shot. No “commercial” photographers to hustle you either…. we were just too happy to have our pics taken with my Sony Ericsson camera phone.

Photo above shows my twins riding a pretty pink pony. Same-colored ponies can be found in the Baguio’s public horse riding site Wright Park.

(more…)

Tree-shaded highway.

Road sign.

It is a long way to Baguio City. Five to six hours by land at the most. This is the reason why I’ve resisted going here since being part of a media junket three years ago. I just have this thing about visiting places and revisiting them once again. I’d rather go elsewhere I’ve never been.

This time was different though. I was about to show the sights to my twins, and Mr. Z, for the first time. He was a driver in a foreign land, all right, and I tried futilely acting as the navigator. The instructions my brother barked over the phone seemed simple: go straight through the North Luzon Expressway and exit through this and that. Except that we tried the countless alternate routes along the way and we ended up not being sure whether we saved time by doing so or took the longer route.It was night time when we reached the great zigzagged road that was Kennon.

(more…)