DAY #6 - The City Tour!
- Puspita Bella
- Oct 13, 2018
- 5 min read
Today is Monday, August 20, which we acknowledged as our city tour day! Mam Mabaquiao said that we will having a tour around the city of Iloilo. But before we went out, we were attending the ceremony of ISAT first at 7:15 AM.
In ISAT University, the flag ceremony always held every Monday. And what’s unique is they always play energetic pop songs before the ceremony begins. After the ceremony, Mam Mabaquiao invite us, SEA-TVET and SEA-TEACHER students to going up to the stage, facing all ISAT students to introduce ourselves. It made me so nervous at the first time but fortunately I can handle it.
After the introduction and after the ceremony ended, we were going inside a big bus and headed out at 8:00 AM for our City Tour.
When we got inside the bus, we got to know a friendly woman named Mam (siapa) who was being our guide for today. She told us history of Philippines’ colonialism by the Spanish which makes Philippines rich in cultures and languages. Similar like Indonesia which colonialized by the Dutch, the colonialism affected Philippines at least 40% that until now, there are some heritages like old Spain buildings and churches.
Iloilo divided into districts like Arevalo, Cabatuan, Barotac and Dumangas. And today, we went to Jaro district. In our way going there, we passed many mansions and one of the mansion is Da Lopez Mansion. Da Lopez Mansion is sooo big, it looks like castle. When we asked to Mam (siapa) why there are so many mansions in Iloilo, she said that in 90s, there were a lot of rich people—to be exact; rich family—who owned sugarcane lands built in the same time. Sugarcase was so important commodity for Filipino, it was like in the same stage as rice and Iloilo had a big role in exporting sugar than Manila. So back then, family who owns sugarcane land was known as rich family that they can built big mansions from the income of sugarcane.
Mam (siapa) told us about the other facts of Philippines. From her, we knew that the capital city in Manila is Luzon and in Manila, 45000 people live every kilometers. Iloilo doesn’t have even half of it. The citizen in Iloilo is just 5000/km2. And she told us that the majority of religion in Philippines is Catholic, with 90% and the other 10% people are muslims.
She said that, “If Philippines wasn't colonialized by the Spanish, it could be a moslem country like Indonesia. You can see, we have a lot of muslims in Mindanao and even one of our former hero was a muslim.”
We arrived at the first destination in just around 10-15 minutes ride. Our first destination was Mariquit House. It’s really old and fragile. It is considered as the oldest heritage house in Iloilo. Mam (siapa) continued the story again. She told us that there was a famous and richest person in Iloilo whose name was Julio. He was famous because of his sugarcane land.. and Mariquit is his daughter’s name. Marikit was married with Da Lopez so the two rich family were united to one.
We finished visiting Mariquit at 9 AM. After that, we were going to visit the Original Deocampo Barquillos house. It is a shop of home-made barquillos.
Before I entered, I wondered how barquillos looks like and after I entered the shop, I surprised that apparently, we have the same food in Indonesia. This is what barquillos looks like:
In Indonesia, we called it ‘semprong’. The look and the flavor are exactly the same as barquillos. I think the differences is just in the size. Semprong is just like 5 cm long while barquillos is really long that I felt so full after just eating two of it haha. We ate barquillos with ice cream there, enjoying the view in Barquillos house.
After the sweets, we went out again, headed to somewhere in Jaro, Jaro Cathedral. It’s a big old church with a big statue in front of it. We took so many picture there because the building is so beautiful and vintage.
We rooming around the church for about 15 minutes and go back to the bus again, going to Etnos Gallery. Etnos Gallery located in the entrance of a big mansion. The entrance itself is still original and today, there is a school there inside the mansion. Our guide said that in the mansion’s basement, there is a prison and torture chamber.
The next destination is Mandurriao. The traffic was little bit crowd and slow when we went there. But yeah, it was all worth it because we can see a big horse statue in front of Casa De Emperador building. It’s beautiful and located in the center of city but sadly, we just got like 10 minutes to walked around there and the weather was soooo hot. We went to Iloilo Business Park after that. It’s still in a construction proccess, so we can’t really see the big business buildings.
We had our lunch in a Vietnam Restaurant, still in the Business Park area. The foods there are so delicious and spicy, ahaha we really miss spices. We ate until 12:50.
We went to Iloilo City Hall after lunch. There, we met the Mayor and City Counselor of Iloilo. We feel so grateful. It was a pleasure for all of us, SEA-TVET and SEA-Teacher students that we could get this opportunity. The city conselour is so friendly. He is the one who issued the no-smoking-and-vaping-in-street rule. He said, it was difficult at the first time because Iloilo people tend to break and not obey the rule. But with his way to approaches people, finally the rule now is well-obeyed. Until today, I never see someone smoking in public.
The conselour suggested us to going up to the City Hall’s rooftop after visiting his room. He said we should do it so we can see the beautifulness of Iloilo from up above. And yes, we can see the places in Iloilo that we have visited today combined with clear blue sky and white clouds above us. It is really really beautiful and breathtaking. We took so many pictures there.
Going out from the City Hall, we went to Molo Mansion. It was afternoon already, around 3 PM.
We walked around and bought blue flower ice cream. The ice cream is so tasty and really made from flower! They called it Ternate flower, that made us surprised again. Ternate is name of a city in Indonesia. It’s just unique for us.
We prayed Ashar, our 3 PM prayer there inside the mansion. Fortunately the guard allowed us to pray there, and it was comfortable and clean. I’m amazed, every mansions in Iloilo are well-maintained. After praying and finished our ice cream, we went to Iloilo River to take photo for just like 10 minutes.
My watch’s needle pointed to 4 PM. We went to our last stop, SM City Mall Iloilo. We ate our dinner there, had talks about our activities today and so on. We ate together with the University President, VPEA Officers, and our buddies.
Today was really great that I can’t resist to tell all the stories. We had fun and enjoyed every places we visited.
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