WOW BOHOL!

I spent the holy week in Bohol! A lot of people have been to there so I’m not even going to attempt to sound as if it’s a unique experience but the awesome sites deserve to be credited.

Now that I’m “officially” a trained tour guide, I appreciate much more having a very well trained one (Thanks Gary of Alona Kew). It was 2 years ago in Shanghai that I’ve first experience a guided city tour. It was the worst travel experience ever due to his unprofessionalism. He totally ruined Shanghai for us! We felt that we would be better off exploring the city by ourselves.

One of the places you should go see is the Man-made Forest. That area used to flood a lot, and so the governor said that each person in the island of Bohol should plant 1 tree, either a Mangrove tree (near the river) or a Mahogany tree (around the mountain). Up until now, they still practice this, for the kids who graduate from the 6th grade; before enrolling into high school, they would have to plant a tree and get a certification from the DENR.


It is also in Bohol you will find the commemorative statue of the Blood Pack between Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and Datu Sikatuna. Although the area where the statues are situated is not the exact place where the actual blood pack happened, it is actually less than a kilometre away in the town of Loay.


You cannot say that you have been to Bohol if you didn’t go see the Chocolate Hills. There are 1,268 hills. How then did these natural phenomena happen? Some geologists excavated at least 5 hills and found out that the hills were actually made from coral and shell fragments, which means that this area of Bohol was actually used to be underwater!


After the Chocolate Hills, we went to visit the Tarsiers. They eat insects like crickets (you can buy crickets to feed the tarsiers in the sanctuary). The average life span of a tarsier is 20 years. Unlike their cousins the monkeys, they are loners and do not like to socialize much. Tarsiers also do not have peripheral vision, meaning they only see what is in front, that is why Mother Nature gave them the ability to turn their heads 180 degrees left and right. Tarsiers, if you remove them from their habitat in Bohol, they will die, not because of natural causes, but because of suicide. Tarsiers have suicidal tendencies when they are away from their homes (meaning, Bohol). They have heads as soft as a new born baby and they will bang their heads until they bleed to death, and sometimes they will drown themselves in a puddle of water.

After looking at the Tarsiers we went to the Loboc River and went to eat at the floating restaurant. The river was soooo clean! They have strict rules about polluting the river and the streets. The streets in Bohol are very clean, Japan clean, Singapore clean! When the police catch a person throwing a piece of trash from the car, the driver will be held liable and will have to pay the fine. While eating in the floating restaurant, there was a duo of guitar player and singer that serenaded us. While we were cruising along Loboc River we came to another floating raft with a choir, it was a livelihood project of the community. They started singing by welcoming the tourist to Loboc, kids, teens and elders each had 1 performance, they sang and danced, and then the tourists would give donation for the “concert.”


A small separate island south of Tagbilaran is the Panglao Island. That is where we stayed. It is connected to Bohol by 2 bridges; it is very convenient to go from Panglao to Bohol. We stayed in the Alona Beach. The horizon of the beach can compete with that of Boracay, the sand was also white and the water pristine clean. Since Bohol is a coral reef area, some spots of the beach were rough because of the crushed corals, but the rest are just beautiful. It has shorter shore line compared to Boracay. As for nightlife, there is not much. It is not as festive as Boracay, but they also set up tables on the beach so you can have romantic dinner under the moonlit sky. The only thing that Alona beach doesn’t have is the Boracay sunset, although the full moon over the ocean was just as amazing.

They will soon be building the Bohol-Panglao International Airport; there are different views on this. Some hates the idea of bustling noisy airport, some do not see the need for it since Cebu is only 2-hour ferry ride away, some loves it for further tourism; for whatever reason it may be, I think Bohol is a treasure. It should be known as a model province all over the Philippines to inspire Filipinos to strive for excellence for this is how a tourist spot should work.

A Month with Mabuhay Guides

I am in my fourth week and I didn’t have time to write a blog about last week because we have been so busy! Going earlier to class and coming home later. We, or at least I, are/am at the verge of information overload.

If you would read my previous entries, you’d remember that I said passing the exam for me would be like a cherry on top because I feel lucky enough to have already gotten in this extensive training; but after last week, oh no, things have changed, stakes are higher, and now that I am so much closer, I wanna finish it! They have altered the plan and will only take those who pass the exam to Bohol (instead of all 23 of us)! We also got to meet our London trainer, a very nice lady who is as excited as we are to get the “real” training started. The thing that got me most excited was…

*drum rolls*

Our uniforms will be designed and made by RAJO LAUREL! (yay!!) I was beside myself with excitement when I found out. We will be measured on Monday, March 2 for our uniforms. We will be getting 2 sets, a sports wear set for hiking and such, and also skirt and sport shirt set with blazer.

Yesterday, we were at Boni High Street and had our personality development class there, at this posh French restaurant, Aubergine. The ambiance was beautiful, really classy and obviously expensive.

We each had Difficultly Level 5 five-course meal (haha), and taught us how to use the knives and fork properly. We learned how to tackle a salad (by folding each leaf of lettuce into bite sizes before stabbing it with a fork); eat a whole fish using a fish knife (!) without flipping it over (eat 1st layer first then remove and set aside the bone then devour the lower half of the fish); how to drink soup with a soup bowl that has handles; how to peel a prawn with knife and fork; how to twirl pasta with a fork and a pasta spoon (!), peel the banana, orange and apple with fork and knife! and all along I thought I knew how to eat! Haha. Lia Bernardo, our instructor, also gave us a quick lesson on wine appreciation which means I took 5 half-full glasses of wine, I like!

Today, we start with our London trainer! Have no idea what to expect in the training, I’m a little anxious but a little excited! I hope I absorb everything! J

A Week of Mabuhay Guides Training

It’s been a week of training as a Mabuhay Guide. So far, it has been nothing but amazing! The things I am learning right now are priceless. I wondered a week ago, how this training would change me after six weeks, but it’s only been a week and I believe I have become more nationalistic somehow. All 24 of us, are learning from THE BEST OF THE BEST; no matter how cliché that phrase sounds, there is just no other way to describe them. I am learning NEW things about a country that I was born in, grew up in, and studied in for the past 25 years.

I feel like I’ve lived in a cave for a long time, but not absolutely like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (that I have been facing a blank wall all these time), but more like I was looking at a painting by the window all these time, and understanding the world only based on the painting, and then I realized the window beside it was actually open, and I can look right through it. Now I am standing in front of this window, peering out of it, realizing, hey, there’s sunlight and it’s brighter than how I thought it would be.

These speakers we have, Mr. Felipe de Leon, Jr., humanitarian; Ms. Ning Encarnacion-Tan, nationalist architect, Dr. Florentino Hornedo, historian and archaeologist; Mr. Ramon Santos, composer, among others are like personified Wikipedia of their own expertise. They are mind-blowing lecturers that have touched each and everyone of us who are intently listening to their lecture. They fill our hearts with desire to become better people for the nation. We have no idea what our cultural identity is, which is exactly the problem why we are so crippled. We do not know what we should be proud of, we forget who we are before the Spaniards came, it is unfortunate that only a chosen few gets to know the truth.



You would also remember me comparing our situation as trainees, to be like America’s Next Top Model or Project Runway… you know what, it’s nothing like those reality TV! We do not serve our own purpose therefore we do not scheme and wish the other fails. We are learning so much that we wish everyone gets in so that we can be ambassadors and propagate what we have learned. I and my classmates are slowly getting to know each other and I think will eventually become good friends.



With this, I propose something to my mates; let us drive this passion to the next level, level as in like multilevel marketing (haha). We are 24 individuals, we are the few fortunate ones who were granted these knowledge, maybe in our little way, we can make a difference. We can each have 2 people we choose to teach our new knowledge to, and then each of them teaches another two, and then so on and so forth. I think we may be in for something big! This could be the cultural revolution that the Philippines need! Or we may also choose to become movers for change in our community, maybe starting in our high schools, talking to the youth and teach them at the early age our Culture. I may be too much of an idealist but I think we have to think big so that we can “poke”, as Ning Tan would put it, the hearts of people.