Dumaguete City

After 5 months of nestling in my own crazy world, I got to finally take a break and set foot on a different soil. Before the our Dumaguete-Siquijor trip, I was excited and a little bit scared at the same time. Excited because of the thought of braving through a land famous for shamans and the like in Siquijor. Scared because one of my friends has this 3rd eye and it frightens me in an exciting way that we might encounter something extremely scary because of this.

The Plan

Research.. research... We'll be landing in Dumaguete City via Cebu Pacific on Sept 7 at 8am and we'd like to spend one night each in Dumaguete and Siquijor. Upon researching further, I learned that we could day tour in Apo Island!! Swimming with turtles would be so fun. I wondered if we could squeeze this in our itinerary. So as we planned, our itinerary would be like this:

Day 1 - upon arrival, go straight to Siquijor, tour in the afternoon, Overnight.
Day 2 - take the first ferry trip in the morning back to dumaguete, side trip to Apo Island. Go back to Dumaguete, overnight.
Day 3 - tour Dumaguete. departure in the afternoon.

This is hectic, I know and I'm not even sure if this is possible (but it sounds like it) UNTIL...

Kuya Joam, our contact tourguide in Siquijor called to inform that the earliest ferry trip to Siquijor is at around 12 or 1pm. Hmmm...okay.. this ruined our Apo Island plan. We scrapped our itinerary and decided whatever! 

This is going to be an open-itinerary trip!

Day 1:

Expected departure from Manila bound for Dumaguete is at 7:15 AM. Our flight was delayed for around 30 minutes. Well, I kinda expected that such delay could happen. 

We landed in Dumaguete around 9am. Knowing that the earliest trip to Siquijor is at noon, we made a stop over at Robinson's Place for brunch. In Dumaguete Airport, there are tricycles and few taxis waiting. We chose to take a tricycle outside the airport's vicinity hoping we'd get a cheaper fare compared to P100 offered by tricycles waiting inside. We hailed a tricycle, agreed for P20 each. But when we reached Robinson's the driver charged us double saying it was a double trip! What a scammer!

11AM. We were in the Dumaguete pier and the ferry scheduled to leave at 1pm was already fully booked. Next scheduled trip was 3:30PM. We couldn't' afford wasting time, therefore, we opted to stay overnight in Dumaguete. We'll just drop by the port the next day to make early reservations for Siquijor trip.

We were surprised to see our officemates in Dumaguete Port who were bound for Bohol. They've been to Dumaguete-Siquijor before and they highly recommended Hotel Palwa.

I'm glad we've come to this hotel. It's cheap (1000 pesos for double occupancy and can choose between twin bed or matrimonial bed, excluding breakfast), clean, has free wifi, friendly staff, with hot and cold water and most of all its in the heart of the city. This is enough to satisfy my needs :).

That afternoon, we strolled around town to get a glimpse of what's a day in Dumaguete. The first thing I noticed was how clean the town is. No pollution, no traffic. Just a clean and stress-free streets. There aren't jeepneys nor taxis I saw and their common mode of transportation is tricycle. Tricycle fare is only P9 pesos minimum.

First we visited Dumaguete Cathedral. We hesitantly rode a tricycle fearing we might end up with a scammer just like we experienced earlier. Glad this time, the driver was honest.

this is how this church was situated back in the days.. 

and this is how the church 's facade looks like today

inside, its history is still obvious. 

an afternoon mass at the foot of the Bell Fry

Photo credit to amazo

photo credit to amazo

the busy street (photo from amazo)

That afternoon, we went to Rizal Avenue where we found the Baywalk. We also found the famous I ♥ Dumaguete sign! Very near this famous spot are chairs and tables that lined up beside the street. Balot and Tempura vendors were busy calling customers to try them out. Of course, we anxiously sat down and ordered a few. While waiting for our order, a guitarist played us a song. There are few singers in sight playing guitars, harmonica and this one kid who also sang us in acapella.

photo credit from amazo.

For dinner, we decided to go to Lab-as. Sad to say, we didn't have a good experience in this resto. We went inside the restaurant standing, waiting for someone to accommodate us but there were two waitresses ignoring us and when we asked one of them where we could sit, she just said we could sit everywhere. So we left and decided to try Hayahay. Hayahay is an open bar resto beside Lab-as. Later we found out that Lab-as was fully reserved. whatever!!! We enjoyed our food in Hayahay and the waiter was friendly.

Along Rizal avenue are bistros and bars for those who love night life. For us, we went straight to our hotel after our dinner sa sobrang pagod. Imagine I was 24 hours awake!

Our 2nd day was spent in Siquior and the only time we saw Dumaguete again was when we returned back to catch our flight back to Manila. We dropped by Sans Rival for pasalubongs. I know there's still much to see in Dumaguete and a day is not enough to fully appreciate the place. Will I go back? just like the name of the bar we saw along rizal avenue.. WHY NOT?!!

Next is my Siquijor Trip.....