Vigan, December 2003

Next day (29th) we decided to go instead to Vigan, about 2 hours further north. We left late morning and were having trouble getting a bus. So we decided to get a Jeepney to a place just 5 or 10 miles in the right direction - San Juan . Here we had lunch at a resort and spent some time on the beach. Then Sheryl joined us for a bit as she was working nearby that day taste testing some Pepsi in shops because someone had made a complaint and so they had to check random samples from that batch. After the sun set me and Donna got a bus and went to Vigan. We arrived about 9:30pm but the place was dad by then and we weren't sure that the area was safe, so we stayed in and went to bed. We had reserved a hotel earlier. The hotel was a nice place in a an old traditional Spanish building. You would get the wrong idea about it if I said that we saw a big rat run down the hallway when we were on the way to our room.

Having gone to bed fairly early we started earlyish the next morning looking round the old town before breakfast. It is a nice place. For some reason Vigan escaped the worst ravages of WWII. Consequently a portion of it boasts elegant Spanish style architecture. That area has almost no traffic and calesas (horse-drawn carriages) ply the cobbled streets. Most of the windows are not transparent as they are made from translucent shells that allow in the light but not the prying eye.

We also had a look around the cathedral (or was it a big church). Still the nice cafes and restaurants were closed so we had lunch in Jollibee (the Philippines own version of MacDonald’s). MacDonald’s was next door. We walked later through more of the town. The newer bits are not as nice as the Spanish part but if you take away the pollution and noise from all the mopeds it isn't a bad place.

We went to a museum of memorabilia of a family that used to have a lot of influence in the area. It was their house that housed the museum. There were lots of pictures with famous people and news articles etc and stuff about the humanitarian efforts they made for Vietnamese villages during the Vietnam War. Then there was there furniture and toiletries etc and various things they had collected. Even the car where there was an attempted assassination of the woman showing the bullet holes.

Next we went to a place that makes clay pots and other clay stuff. There we could see the whole process from buffalo that mix the clay by walking on it, men making the pots on a big potters wheel powered by pushing with feet (directly, not a pedal) - he would make one every couple of minutes - and the place where they dry them and the furnace.

Next stop was a weaving place. We saw where they weave the things and bought some things there.

Next we went to a nearby fishing village and looked around there and on the beach. We intended to eat at a resort there but the restaurant was booked for a wedding. To make it worse they charged us 50 pesos (about 50p each) each for walking through their grounds.

Back to Vigan we had some food and then got the bus home after buying some local sausages and a cake type thing that are good in that area. Also some hardwood bowls that are very cheap compared to what you would spend in Europe or even other parts of the Philippines .

The journey back was a bit eventful.

We left a bit early, maybe 4pm , so that we had daylight to see the view for half of the journey or more. On the way there it had been dark. The bus we got back was also a better one with nice comfortable seats and AC. The one before was a simple one with less space but still as good as the best I have ridden in Bangladesh.

So we started the journey and watched the scenery as we traveled with the sea to our right and mountains to our left. We watched the sun set into the sea again and then darkness came and the stars came out in the clear sky. All was going well until we stopped behind a bus at the beginning of a long narrow bridge. We had crossed this bridge on the way and saw that it was just wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass carefully but may be a problem if there were two very wide vehicles. We waited for a while not knowing why and eventually found out that a lorry carrying cement had broken down half way across the bridge. It must have happened only a few minutes before we arrived.

The bridge got a bit blocked now because vehicles from both sides were trying to get past and only one at a time could get through. No police came and after a long time people managed to get everyone reversed off the bridge and organize some kind of system where vehicles could go from one direction at a time past the lorry. The problem was that our bus was too wide to get past at all and so we had to wait until the lorry was moved.

After about an hour some police arrived. Some directed the traffic and others stood guard with guns by the lorry. I went out to find out what the situation was and whether we had any hope of getting through. I measured our bus and the gap at the side of the lorry and found there was no way we could get past smaller buses could make it. There were a line of lorries trapped behind the one that had broken down and people were working on it to try to get it started. However, they didn't look like skilled and equipped mechanics and they didn't even have a light to work by. I asked the policeman guarding it whether there was any tow truck coming and he said they were still waiting for the decision of the driver whether he could start it or not. My decision was that it would not be started soon and a long time before it was towed away.

By now we had been waiting for more than 1.5 hours. I went back to the bus and told Donna we should get off it and try to get a lift in a smaller vehicle. We flagged down a car and asked for a lift to the next town where we would get another bus. With some reluctance he took us. After he had realized we weren't going to kill him or anything he said he was passing San Fernando anyway (actually he was a teacher at Donna's old school) and took us all the way there.

By then we were late and went directly to Donna's friend’s house for dinner. We should have been there an hour or so before.