City of Friendship - Tagbilaran City, Bohol

Finally, Bohol! glad the office picked this venue for our national convention. The team is pretty organized this time, even integrated a tour of the island into our itinerary.

What I enjoyed most:

The serenity of the place, sunset at Bohol Tropics, this wooden bridge at the Tarsier viewing area, the port fronting Baclayon Church and the Tagbilaran Pier at dusk.

Bohol's finest.

Loboc Children's Choir. We were fortunate to have been serenaded by the famous Loboc Children's Choir. It was like listening to angels sing. They recently bagged awards during their stint in Spain and even the Vienna Boy's Choir gaped in awe with their performance. Cesar Montano once commissioned them to "harana" his then girlfriend Sunshine Cruz when he proposed marriage to her. I bet she got carried away with the background music, hence she said yes!

The Tarsiers! History books tell us a lot about them. I'm glad the trip set a few things straight and factual. For one, they are not monkeys and they are not the smallest of their kind. They're not endemic to Bohol alone but they are territorial and afraid of cats.

Loboc River. Until today, I've never seen a river so deep in color and so clean even with the commercial activities in the area. As in, wow! and it's really so placid! I haven't watched Panaghoy sa Suba but I bet it's immortalization is as good as the real thing!

The Chocolate Hills. Now here's another fact I learned during my trip. The soil in these hills are salty hence no trees would grow in them. The hills are at their glorious during summer months when they look like mounds of chocolate kisses. There are two viewing areas, one in Carmen, which is really accessible to tourists and the other in Sakbayan which is still about 45 mins away (please don't trust my estimate, I was asleep during the transfer, hehehehehhe).

Things I Brought Home with Me

Loads of Pasalubong. Like any other trip, I was prepared to buy stuff for the folks back home. Of course I bought some tarsier key chains, ref. magnets, Bohol shirts for the hubby, mother and the two chuwariwaps, chunkie nuts instead of the usual peanut kisses which are readily available almost everywhere . I also bought baked polvoron, some cookies, ubi polvoron and ubi jam.

The Ubi Story. We learned from our tour guide that Boholanos take the planting of ubi rather seriously with a ritual which involve women with naturally big "bumpers". The planters hire these women (preferrably married) to do the planting in July during the full moon. Bare naked, they chant "mu daku ka ing ani, mu crack ka ing ani" or something like that while planting. The guys in our bus had a few laughs about it, "wala bang demo?"

How do tarsiers mate? During the mating season, female tarsierspee on a tree branch or something to advertise that she is "searching" for a mate. The male tarsiers then search for the pee scent that they like and they leave their saliva on them. The female then surveys her pees for her perfect match and then the mating. The actual mating thing happens in just a few seconds. (Daw si Flash ba!)

Some quips from HIM:

• Never ASSUME, for it will make an ASS out of U and ME
• Murphy's Law. If something goes wrong, it will.

Mixed Feelings.
Bohol brought those who were close, closer and rifters far more apart. It brought me sad news about the hubby's friend taking his own life and my son almost sticking a pencil through the househelp's eye. It brought me feelings of frustration for the lack of affirmation from HIM about our work and the hubby not happy about my buying him the wrong sandals. The negative feelings lingered quit a while but when I look back, I can't help but laugh at all those jumpshots and hilarious photo ops we brought ourselves to do. After all the hardwork and low morale that we've put ourselves into, we deserved all the fun. Thanks to our ever humble servant-leader who never fails to look after our best interests, life is still a beautiful thing!