Illuminative Ilocos Day 3: Sinking Bell Tower, St. William’s Cathedral, Aurora Park, Malacañan

If there’s one thing that grinds my gears about traveling, it’s packing – especially multiple packing, which was exactly what we did on Day 3 when we moved out of Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, and traveled south to Vigan City, Ilocos Sur.

By 8.00 a.m., we loaded our bags (this time containing two days’ worth of dirty, semi-dry laundry) into our van and were off to our last few Ilocos Norte stops: Laoag City’s Sinking Bell Tower, St. William’s Cathedral, and Aurora Park and Paoay’s Malacañang of the North.

The Sinking Bell Tower was right smack in the middle of a busy town scene. I pictured it as one surrounded by the sea, but no. It’s supposed to be sinking a few centimeters each year, hence the cool name.

What wasn’t cool, though, was having a birthday tarpaulin for the mayor plastered over the most visible face of the tower.

And if you look to your right, you can see the lamest political photobomb ever.

St. William’s Cathedral was a site to see with wide open Colonial-style windows, chandeliers, and double arches for the altar.

Hallelujah.

A stone’s thrown away from the tower and the cathedral was Aurora Park, fronting the Laoag City Hall. By the time we got there, the sun was way above our heads. It’s only in sunny Philippines when “a walk in the park” is not a harmless expression but a Westernized cliché.

More like “burning in the furnace.”

I think that it was only fitting to start and end our Ilocos Norte trip with “Apo” (Grand Old Man) Marcos. We kicked it off in the Marcos Museum and ended it in his sprawling rest house aptly called Malacañang of the North.

Hey MTV. Welcome to my crib.

Say what you want about the Marcoses, but they knew how to live in style. Other people had regular backyards with fish ponds and Lourdes grottos; the Marcoses had Paoay Lake.

No shi – Please ignore the lovers out back.

I’d have to say that my favorite room in the house was the library, not for the love of books, but for the very telling – tyrannical – portraits on the shelves.

Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan – Can you be any more obvious than that?

But first, lemme take a SHELFie.

I left the house with a surge of newfound respect for Imelda Marcos. Political leanings aside, I couldn’t help but admire the woman who was supposedly behind the ultimate corruption of a president-turned-dictator. Even a man as great as Ferdinand Marcos was overshadowed by his wife, what with her butterfly sleeves and zero-gravity coiffure. Once again, I say all this in the absence of political interest: Imelda was pretty rad.

“And I’m going to turn out just like her!” said no one, ever.

One modest lunch across Paoay Church, two karaoke songs, and a couple of hours later, we reached the last town, Bantay, before entering Vigan City proper. The Bantay Bell Tower was a few steps away from Our Lady of Charity Church.

A few narrow steps up and you’ll find a viewing deck surrounded by giant bells that were once used to warn townsfolk of incoming danger.

The Apo Caridad (the church’s local name) is actually made of the same red-stone material as its neighboring bell tower, but it’s façade had been renovated to give it a more contemporary look.

Apo Caridad’s left wing exterior.

Apo Caridad’s new red-brick façade.

And finally, Vigan City!

I’ve always had the enduring fantasy of time traveling, and for some reason, the fantasy was always to travel to the past and never the future. Well, Vigan was the closest thing to time traveling, and I wasn’t disappointed.

We stopped by a pottery museum.

While not exactly 80’s Patrick Swayze material, this guy was legit.

And Crisologo Museum, which kind of sucked, because the lady by the foyer was less of a curator and more of an extortionist. I am NOT kidding. She literally barred us from entering the museum until we raised at least PHP 50.00 in cash “donation.” Such a scam considering the “museum” was more of a house full of dusty junk.

They look like enlarged post cards my elementary Social Studies teacher used to show me in class!

But it did have an in-house law office, and between that and my law school dropout self…

We made ironic magic together.

Here’s another one with Miss Ayco and Miss Maturan to complete the Frustrated Lawyer Crew. Squad goal achieved.

To the Baluarte we went for the animal show at 4 o’clock that afternoon. Baluarte, I was later told, was Spanish for “personal territory.” It housed some of Chavit Singson’s collection of exotic animals.

The dinosaurs were fake though. Otherwise, it would have been renamed to Jurassic Park.

We were at least half an hour early for the show, so we got pretty good seats in the house.

Which meant that it only took me 3 attempts to volunteer up front to carry a mystery animal. The first attempt I lost to Miss Briones who was given a cutie-patootie Australian squirrel. The crowd went wild over that one, and the second call for a volunteer was met with enthusiastic right hands raised – except that the next mystery animal was a tarantula. After that, no one really wanted to volunteer anymore, so I sort of just closed my eyes and raised my hand.

Once called, I was made to introduce myself to the audience and raise both hands.

You can tell what’s coming was bad, because I had to raise one higher than the other.

BAM! Iguana!

You know, I wish I hadn’t introduced myself with my real name or told them my hometown. I could have taken off without hurting my pride and street cred, but alas, there were children in the audience. Children who looked way braver than I was and would have gladly switched places with me and, well, I was having none of that! I wasn’t about to be beaten by children! So I stood still and listened to the animal keeper explain how cool iguanas were. For the record, my teeth chattered long after the show. Damn this YOLO business.

It took a very pun-ny souvenir shop to distract me from my reptilian reverie.

We were to spend one night in Villa Angela. Heritage house. Hotel.

And haunted. Don’t forget haunted.

We had a lot of jokes about it before we got there, but we just sort of collectively forgot about them once we arrived. It was creepy, to say the least. I didn’t even have the ladyballs to take photos of it when we got there at dusk. All the photos (including the one I posted above) were taken the morning after.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to spend the whole night there just yet. Kuya Joseph picked us up after dinner and basi (a local sugarcane wine) to watch the dancing fountains fronting the Vigan City Hall.

I wish Mr. Chavit Singson had better taste in music. He got it right with Katy Perry’s “Firework” but lost it with Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and Willie Revillame’s “Giling-giling.” Double damn.

After the 30-minute show, our big-group took a night stroll down to timeless Calle Crisologo. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

Or maybe I just had a little too much basi.

Calle Crisologo is neatly lined with souvenir shops to fill your heart’s content.

Or your stomach’s. Irene’s Empanada should seriously consider opening 24 hours.

Oh look, an old-timey-wimey bar. How cool is dat?

I could finally do the sitting-on-the-road pose, because the worst thing that could happen to me was to be run over by a calesa.

That would have been a vintage way to go.

I survived a hit and run and decided to take my chances one more time, this time dragging down two other people with me.

I just love playing third wheel to besties Miss Portarcs and Miss Balbuena. I’m not sure if the feeling’s mutual though. Ha-ha-ha.

Shortly after that photo was taken, I realized that my coin purse disappeared from my pocket. Embarrassingly, the contents amounted to no more than fifty pesos, but still! I got that purse from one of my seventh grade history students as a farewell present. I was upset enough to duck in the nearest souvenir shop (Collado), dump the contents of my bag, and complain loudly in Cebuano.

And then the strangest thing happened. One of the salesladies responded to me in Bisaya. She asked me if I lost a black wallet. I said yes. She asked the other saleslady behind the counter, and she, too, responded in Bisaya and drew out my wallet. She said I must have dropped it on my way out (I had been in and out of their shop multiple times that night “canvassing” for the cheapest food pasalubong for my brother). After a short Bisdak conversation, I bought a bag of pastillas (at the rather pricey price of PHP 60.00) as a sign of our Cebuana camaraderie.

Remember the name: Collado. Best souvenir shop in all of Calle Crisologo. Their pastillas was really good, too!

After a night of souvenir shopping, it was time to go back to the hotel. You should probably stop reading now if you’re easily freaked out.

No?

Well, suit yourself.

As I was saying, Villa Angela was rumored to be haunted. Miss Portarcs researched it online beforehand. We only wanted to know if they provided towels. Instead, we came across vague ghost stories.

Our room was a dormitory type located on the right side of the basement of the house. Once you entered it, you were met with a large antique wardrobe with mirrors on its face. The dormitory had six double-deck beds, a television suspended above an old wooden vanity table, an outdated air conditioner, a communal bathroom with two showers and two toilets, and no windows.

I chose the bed nearest to the door. Pros: In case of ghostly emergencies, I’d be the first one out. Cons: I was right next to the creepy antique wardrobe. But you can’t have it all, so I stayed put.

There was yet another very unique feature to the room: a thick round column obscuring my view of the TV and blocking what little coolness the air condition could provide for the L-shaped dormitory. The reason why I mentioned this is because that column’s presence defied several logical reasons why I suddenly felt a coolness sweeping over my face, even when the back of my head was pointing towards the closed wooden door. It got very chilly all of a sudden, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Truth be told, the room was stuffy from the start, so I welcomed the cold air and drifted to a deep sleep.

I hadn’t the faintest idea what came next until the rest of the gang told me the next morning.

We agreed that night to put out all the lights except for the ones in the bathroom. We kept those on, in case somebody needed to take an emergency trip. But those were put off a little past midnight. Nobody knew why. They just went out on their own, and the room was plunged into pitch darkness. There were at least four people who were awake at that time, and one of them tried to pass the whole thing off as power outage – except that the air condition and electric fan were on.

Some time around two, at least two people were still fully awake. One of the two heard three knocks, and not the consecutive type either, but a knock-pause-knock-pause-knock type. After that, either he fell asleep or fainted, never knowing what happened next. We would not have known either if it were only him awake, but another one was, too, and she said that she distinctly heard the door (or the wardrobe – yikes!) creak open, and a very cool sensation tickling her face and ears.

I woke up at 5:00 a.m. on Halloween morning with almost everyone up relating their paranormal experiences the night before. I would have rolled back into bed if I didn’t hear the last part about the cold tickling. That’s when I told them my bit of the group ghost story, and by 7:30 a.m., we were outta there.