Oi, Hoyohoy!

The setting was only 3 hours away by land and an hour away by water but nonetheless. I realized that cheap holiday deals like this, regardless if they are within a stone’s throw away from your comfort zone, should be celebrated, treasured and valued.

Going to Bantayan Island the week before the Holy Week madness was probably the best idea we had ever came up with in the history of our travelling life! The island was quiet, everything sold was still reasonably priced and practically almost all of the places were not crowded. We have travelled from Cebu to Bantayan before but this was the first time that we didn’t bring a car. At 6am in the morning, we hopped on the first Daanbantayan bus we could find at the North Bus Terminal and arrived at the terminal after 3 hours. Bus – P125 Barge -  P150.

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Bantayan is The Best Destination for Holy Week or call me Erkin Bekbolotov

Save for the huge crowd that milled around the island and beaches during Holy Weekend this year, Bantayan Island is without a doubt a person’s best choice to be at when you want to celebrate Easter and reflect on your spiritual growth. This is said with poetic honesty, mind you. I guess this is perhaps one of the reasons why we also decided to go around the island and escape the merriment of the beach to coalesce a province that is dubbed as the Lenten Capital of the Philippines.

We missed the procession that usually takes place near the large colonial-era church of St. Peter and Paul but it is more reverent to visit this old church sans the people, the noise and the festival. There were stories of epic real live performances of the crucifixion and people actually nailing themselves until they hemorrhage but I couldn’t just bear to see that. I would like to remember the passion of Christ as a serene, peaceful and obeisant moment no matter how appalling Christ had to go through to make us remember that day year after year. Continue reading »

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Bantayan Island at Night

April 2010 – From Marvin’s place in Bantayan, we had to walk a good five minutes to get to the beach and hang out there. On Good Friday, Sugar Beach was not allowed to turn on their sound system because it was the holiest night of holy week after all. We stayed pretty much at one place that had good iPod music and was far away from Sugar Beach as possible.

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