Trip Report: Baguio City, Phillipines

Baguio is a 2 hour drive from Bacnotan where we are staying (in Northern Luzon). We decided to do a short road trip to Baguio City and check out a larger city in PI. We were joined on this trip by Arlene and two of her nieces and a nephew. To avoid traffic we left at 7:00 am, however we still hit school traffic in San Fernando and were stuck in it for some time. We were soon past that traffic and climbing up the mountain on a fairly steep twisty road. At the top of Quezon Hill, a hose of the car blew and we were stranded near Baguio City. Luckily, mari's cousin and our driver Alex is also a mechanic, so while he made a trip to town to get a new hose, we jumped into a Jeepney and went to the main plaza and Burnham park. We found a pretty large playground and kid cycle rental in the park. That kept the kids entertained for the next couple of hours. Maya was quite happy to be playing outside (instead of sitting in the car) and was biking around the park like crazy. PJ on the other hand was content to be sitting in the passenger seat driven around by the older kids.

Since we did not have the car and the kids wanted to be like the grandparents, we had lunch at the nearby McDonalds. After lunch we headed to SM mall since mari's dad wanted to get a new cell phone or sim card. What was supposed to be a quick trip, turned out to be a 2+ hour wait at the mall. There was a bouncy slide thing at the mall, so the kids were quite happy jumping up and down. We finally had a decent cup of coffee at the mall. Its been a long time since I've been to a large mall, but a bit sad to see that most of the food carts were selling junk food (donuts, nachos, hotdog and fries). No wonder obesity is an epidemic in today's world. While we were hunting for Mari's dad and mum, they were at an Internet Cafe and playing Bingo respectively at the mall. Finally after gathering all the troops we piled into the car and headed to Tam-awan Village. The place was quite amazing and warrants its own blog post which I'll do next.

The next day we headed to Burnham park and the kids ran around for a couple of hours. Mari's dad wanted us to visit the Botanical gardens, so we headed there next. We could not find it, and decided to goto John Hay Park. The kids wanted to go horseriding, so we rented a couple of horses and went on the trails for some time. John Hay park is definitely very nice and we could have spent a much longer time there. However we were running a bit late and had to rush to meet the rest of the group at SM mall (again!). We had a mediocre meal at Taste of Laoag (the province that mari's dad comes from) in the food court at SM Mall. PI food courts are a bit better than the ones in the US but cannot be compared to the ones in Singapore. Its hard to have a quick meal with a large group in a restaurant. We then did some handicraft shopping at Easter Weaving Room (near Tam-awan Village). Mari bought a few traditional filipino costumes for folks in NZ, her dad bought a bottle of rice wine and berry wine (which were quite good). We then headed back to Tam-awan village for a cultural show before heading back home to Bacnotan. We had a good time in Baguio and would have prefered to stay another night. However the other folks in the group wanted to head home, so home we went :(