camiguin: dine in

one of the greatest things i look forward to when traveling is food. although, i don’t mind eating skyflakes or cream-o while on the road, settling yourself in front of a table laded with sumptuous food somehow erases the weariness that traveling does to the body. interestingly, when you get to the part of mambajao where we stayed [in yumbing], the locals will have no problem telling you that restaurants are aplenty in the area. that is, you’ll have no difficulty finding food. despite all the assurances, our experience proved otherwise. there aren’t many restaurants in the area. carenderia are not even aplenty. in the market alone, there were only two establishments selling ordinary lutong-bahay and the usual grilled food. across the market, is the “kainan sa tulay” [literally, restaurant by the bridge, also a few meters away from aying’s place]. although a bit big, this place only offers lutong-bahay food. nothing fancy, so don’t expect much. the sole restaurant we came across while there was “Luna Ristorante” – they serve brick oven-cooked pizzas – the yummiest pizza ever [promise – a lot of foreigners were even there]!!! unfortunately, we were unable to try their other food, so i can’t offer much info here.

so if there aren’t many food places in the area, where then did we feed our hungry stomachs?

one place. PARAS BEACH RESORT. as i said, the place where we stayed is just walking distance to the fancy paras beach resort. so we ended having our breakfast, snacks, and dinner there. interestingly, every time we visited the resort, we do so without having to pay anything. AS IN, no entrance fee collected and staff are very friendly even though we weren’t actually guests of the resort. we didn’t check-in or anything. haha, even if we’d want to, i think PARAS caters the high-end market. a lot of their guests were foreigners, actually. but like i said, it’s perhaps the camiguin people’s hospitality that we didn’t feel discriminated at all. what can i say, camiguin people are generally friendly and very accommodating.

anyway, before i show pictures of PARAS BEACH RESORT, let me show the breakfast fare we had at aying’s place and a few pix at LUNA RISTORANTE.

as i mentioned in my previous entry, one of the good things at aying’s place is you can actually ask her to have someone prepare food for you. they’ll charge you with the exact cost of the ingredients. would you believe that for all these food in the picture, they only charged us PhP150??? haha, as much as we’d like to offer more, we too didn’t have enough extra to be generous so we only paid PhP200.

haha, i don’t think for PhP150, you can have 4 servings of egg, corned beef and beef loaf for 4, rice, and instant coffee at any restaurants. they’re even delivered to our room at the time we specified. amazing, really. my PhP150 here in cebu will only get me a serving of coffee, rice, and corned beef over at cafe de france [ a serving of one, imagine that!!]

this is the establishment that the locals keep telling us serves a lot of food. KAINAN SA TULAY. again, nothing fancy here – so don’t expect much. the locals didn’t lie when they say that this place offers many food. yep, in the area, that is.
it’s interesting to note though that it’s also in this area that i witnessed an “only in camiguin” experience. would you believe that when we had our lunch here, manang celia [the local who became our tour guide minus the fee], brought a potful of rice? and some kilawin fish??…. as far as i know, here in cebu, you’re not allowed to bring food when you’re in a restaurant or even in a carenderia. it’s just a no-no to bring food outside. but here, not only manang celia was allowed to bring a potful of rice, they even allowed her use of their kitchen implements so she can prepare the kilawin – at NO EXTRA COST!.. so yeah, we only bought viands as we ate the rice that manang celia brought with her.

yumbing public market. this is across kainan sa tulay. the partially seen structure on the right has at least 2 carenderia [food stall is more like it].
we had our dinner here on our first night in mambajao.

not quite satisfied with the grilled food we had at the market, we prodded dennis to treat us pizza at the restaurant we passed by on our way to the market. luckily, he gave in as it was in this restaurant that i had my taste of the yummiest pizza. it being cooked in an original brick oven, the pizza had this aroma that you don’t find in pizzas served by yellow cab, shakey’s, pizza hut and other pizza houses sprouting in cebu. again, the yummiest ever..

don’t be fooled by their smiles, but they actually enjoyed their pizza and ice-cold beer

menu of the restaurant. me thinks the price is affordable given that they serve delish pizza..

jacky at luna ristorante. my cam sucks at nighttime photography, so didnt have much pictures of the place

the pizza i can’t seem to stop praising – pizza luna, if my memory serves me. or just ask the waitress for their specialty of the house

luna ristorante in broad daylight.

haha, i got so hungry very early in the morning, that i scoured the place in search of food. guess what? i ended up grabbing breakfast at paras beach resort alone. my three travelmates were still asleep as we had a late night over some bottle of rum.

snapshots of yumbing as i searched for food in broad daylight! i think i had a terrible headache then as i lost count of shots i had of rum the previous night. the street behind the sign leads to aying’s place
if you face the shed, the street on the left is the path leading to luna ristorante.

camiguin’s tricycle. i think it’s called motorela in cagayan de oro.

the side of paras beach resort

my breakfast of tapa, scrambled egg, coffee, and fresh watermelon over at PARAS beach resort.

the price of my breakfast

but with this view, can’t complain

opppsss… this post turned out lengthy. i’ll just post more pix of paras beach resort in another entry.

camiguin: sleep in

i just realized that my camiguin finally! post didn’t mention how to get to mambajao – camiguin’s capital [i think, correct me if i’m wrong]. pardon me for this omission. anyhow, as i mentioned we went cheapskate during this travel – so yeah, we didn’t avail of island tours . see, as soon as the ferry docks from balingoan to benoni, several men bearing laminated pictures of different camiguin sites will approach you. they’ll offer you tour options. one of the guys who approached us said he could take us to mambajao, help us find accommodations, and take us on a day trip for a fee of PhP1,000. since we were going cheapskate, we declined and found our own arrangements. besides, we were too hungry at past 11 AM and only had food in our minds. although not hungry enough as we still thought it wasn’t a sweet deal especially that most of the day’s gone and our day trip would only be a “half-day trip”, technically. so we walked a bit out of the wharf [less than 3 mins. walk] and hopped on a jeepney bound for mambajao. jeepney fare from benoni to mambajao was PhP23.

welcome to benoni port.

tangub city’s 09 christmas symbols festival

sometime back, i heard that there’s a certain place to be in Mindanao during christmas time. that place is Tangub City – a 3rd class city in the province of Misamis Occidental. it’s one of my yet to check places in the country as i also heard that Tangub City is known as the Christmas Capital of Mindanao. what can i say, there’s something about display of changing lights that fascinates me. and beautiful lights is exactly what the city of tangub offers to locals and tourists alike. so before the whole office went for a break, i sort of asked one of my officemates to check out tangub city for me. see, i mentioned that i wanted to check this place in mindanao, but for the love of me couldn’t remember the name of the town. luckily, armando knows about the place. he mentioned that tangub is just 30 minutes away from his hometown of ozamis. he assured me that i was definitely referring to tangub city as he’d been to the city several times especially back in the days when he was active in joining dance competitions held in tangub. after our little conversation, i immediately googled the place – and voila! TANGUB CITY it is.

bangkok in april

clai and i were on the phone last night just talking about stuff. somewhere in that long conversation, there was a mention of us traveling together out of the country someday soon. [this particular topic often comes up every time we talk and an obstacle always presents itself somewhere -usually it’s money – hehe.] last year, we were dead serious about taking ourselves to bangkok and experience the holidays there. that didn’t happen. i got stuck in mactan for five straight days during the holidays. months before that i went on a spontaneous trip to singapore while she got herself tickets for hongkong. well, we’re not rich so we really could not afford to travel outside the country with only a 3 or 4-month gap in between travels. thus, the “we’re-really-doing-bangkok-this-december-by-hook-or-by-crook” didn’t materialize and only our determination to really do it someday remained. so yeah, we discussed it again last night and the practical, budget-conscious me begged off up front that i could not travel anytime soon as money is a bit tight these days. i told her that i wouldn’t want to do a repeat of singapore where i had to ask help from my family for the travel expenses. i simply have to save for it before i’d go jump and buy the ticket. our phone talk ended with me assuring her that us traveling together would soon become real, probably not this year, but sometime. definitely sometime.

guess what happened two minutes after clai and i hang up the phone?