Passenger Tales

Last May 15, our division went to Baguio. I was asleep for around half the trip. There wasn’t much to see since I’ve been to Baguio a few times before. I prefer seeing rice lands to houses. I only sat up and took notice of the scenery when we started our climb up through Kennon Road. I think that was the first time I passed by that road. We stopped by the Lion’s Head Statue and had our picture taken.

Going up through Kennon was certainly an enjoyable experience for me. We passed by several waterfalls and the scenery was as green as I wanted it to be. However, as we climbed higher we passed by areas where portions of the mountains were cut and instead of green you see brown and grey. A very depressing sight. I am not sure if these were caused by mining companies.

It was drizzling when we reached our hotel. We stayed at Hotel Veniz. It’s located across Burnham Park and very near the market. It’s right at the heart of downtown Baguio. After checking in and placing our things in our rooms we decided to go to SM Baguio because I haven’t been there yet. We just walked from our hotel to SM. It was an uphill climb that’s why we were out of breath when we reached SM. We played tourist and posed for our pictures in the patio until heavy rain finally drove us inside.

It was still drizzling when we decided to go back to the hotel. We did not bring an umbrella so it was fortunate that our jackets had hoods. Going down, we went inside some Ukay-ukay stores. A visit to Baguio is not complete unless you browse through the Ukay-ukay stores. My officemates bought stuff toys, not clothes. I just brought two t-shirts for my nephew. They were overruns and not second hand. We finally returned to our hotel and rested a bit before going down for dinner.

At around 9pm, four of us sneaked away to check out the nightlife. Unfortunately it was raining so we had to decide while still at the hotel what we really wanted to do. We decided we wanted to sing so we had the taxi driver bring us to a kareoke place. He brought us to The Chairman. The only available room was good for five so we had to pay for an extra person that was not there since there were only four of us. The room was spacious but the songs were not the latest. We were joking around that the group was divided between the Singing Bees and the American Idol. Only one of the group could carry a tune while the rest of us just had stout hearts and high self-confidence. Hehe. In the end, the Singing Bees won since halfway through, the American Idol fell asleep. Sometimes, it’s not the quality of the voice but stamina that wins the day (or night)

to be continued