My uncle’s sisters, Tita Bebing and Nenet, came to Bacolod for a week-long vacation and reunion with their brothers.

We left Bacolod early on Tuesday for our trip to Dumaguete. We travelled through Don Salvador Benedicto again and stopped at Kilometer 43, placed our cars into neutral and turned off our engines. What do you know? Our cars kept moving up-hill. No joke! We think it’s because of the iron deposits around the mountains that’s been polarized.

We also did frequent stops over the course of 2 hours which included The Look-out Point, The Suarez Garden and other places to take in the view and stretch our legs for a bit. By the time we got to San Carlos it was past 11am. We had more native food for lunch and started out for our 3-hour trip to Dumaguete City.

It rained both lightly and heavily on the trip to Dumaguete so I couldn’t take pictures of the scenery except through the windshield. And since my rechargable AA batteries suck, I ran out of batteries (all 3-pairs!) before we even got to our destination. Despite that, I enjoyed the drive tremendously, what with Fr. Lito waving at strangers, enjoying the scenery and the breeze through open windows.

As previously discussed, we took another stop at Tanjay to buy some bud-bud (sticky-rice cakes wrapped in , similar to ibus). People from neighboring cities and towns travelled in packs to Tanjay for the city’s Patron Saint’s feast that day and the traffic was hard to navigate through with its narrow streets.

After Tanjay, we rolled through Bais, Amlan and finally got to Dumaguete at around 5pm. We settled into our cottages at the South Seas Hotel. The place was relaxing and had a spectacular view of the sea. We took a short trip downtown to see Dumaguete’s Boulevard and downtown area but came back before it really got dark and the streets unrecognizable with it. We were invited for dinner which again consisted of native food and another whole lechon. I noticed that the lechon tasted different from what we were used to here in Occidental Negros. While we cook our lechon with tanglad, it seems like people from Orriental Negros cook theirs with banana leaves, thus creating a whole different taste (one I didn’t like much actually). So after dinner, my uncles and aunts settled outside the cabins and started talking while enjoying wine while I did a quick phone call to Vix to check up on things at the office and to discuss what went on with Monday’s edition of TheMovieBlog Audio edition.

Since I was tired and the conversations going on wasn’t really on my age level, I decided to take my shower and head to bed early.

Woken up early (read 6:30) and told that we were the only ones still sleeping, my aunt and I took our turns at the shower and started packing up our stuff. We were told that we were going to have breakfast at Malatapay some short driving distance outside of Dumaguete City. It was a 15-30 minute drive from the hotel we were staying in but the street leading directly to where we were to eat breakfast was bursting with people and goods they were selling. It was market day (I’m not sure though if that was an every day occurence) and the street was packed with people buying and selling stuff, motorcycles going in and out of the place carrying two people and a goat or a chicken or whatever animal they bought that day. I’ve seen this kind of market before, but never like that crowded. Cows or pigs caged in tricycles (motorcycles with cabs attached to them) were being driven through the already very narrow street.

At the end of that narrow street was a place you could sit down and order some native food to eat. Our team leader (my uncle’s relative) ordered some food to be cooked immediately for breakfast. We had time to burn and check out market day while our breakfast was being cooked. Fruits, knives, ropes, animals, native bags and things … the goods were all very varied. At one side you can also see lechon in-the-making.

We sat down for breakfast at around 9:00 and enjoyed kinilaw, crabs and sinigang isda with our puso (hanging rice). We probably spent an hour and a half enjoying our breakfast afterwhich we drove back and stopped by Bacong to check out this factory which made wonderful pieces of items like jewelry boxes, portraits and other native products made of either coral or indegenous materials. Back in Dumaguete, we bid farewell to the others and continued driving back to Bacolod.

We took the Mabinay route this time which would save us 2 hours of travel but the sights weren’t as nice as the ones from Don Salvador Benedicto. We took a much needed break when we reached Kabankalan and then continued non-stop to Bacolod. Arriving at 4:30-ish, we were all tired-happy.