Traveling in Baguio City, Benguet Province
It was my first trip to Baguio City, the center of the province of Benguet, after spending years drooling over postcards and travel posters. I was with my two bestfriends, Richel and Renzy, who were equally as excited as I was on our first trip together. For people like us who never travelled 50kms away from Manila, this can be considered quite a rare phenomenon. A milestone for that matter.
Arrangements for a 3-day room accommodation had been booked weeks before we set out to explore the highlands. A Baguio-based friend whom we never met except in chatrooms volunteered to help us arrange everything – from sleeping quarters to destinations to visit. He was already waiting for us by the time we reached the bus terminal just before midnight. As expected, he was not a Brad Pitt look-a-like my friends and I had to kill each other for. Just a big-bellied kid who just got out of school with neutral looks.
Our young guide, who looked older than us by 10 years, took us to our lodging place inside a subdivision called Happy Homes. It was a 2-storey apartment with empty living room, dark empty kitchen and three empty rooms upstairs. The only decent room had a light bulb, a floor mattress, a red blanket good for one, PC sitting on floor and an empty cabinet. It was a complete opposite of what we were told. We were expecting a room good for three complete with bed, blanket and pillows, a nice bathroom and kitchen. But this one turned out to be an ideal lodging place for murderers and fugitives. A blackhole stuck in Happy Homes.
Apparently left without much choice in the middle of the night with all transient inns booked for the Holy Week, my friends and I decided to stay, rest and plan our day trip. Our seemingly nice host kept appearing at the door to check if everything was okay. He even stayed for an hour more talking to us about the trip, where to go, what to buy and volunteered himself to be the trip’s guide. None of us wanted him but our instincts were united that night in treating him nice rather than let our sarcasm risk the possibility of turning him into a murderous chainsaw psycho. And to make matters worst, he took inside his mattress and joined us in a slumber party.
I barely had any sleep at all because I worried too much about this dense 250-kilogram intruder who was a foot away from me and snored louder than any commercial jet planes combined. I sat down and watched him sleep like a tired old worn-out truck. If he were just any decent looking guy of reasonable weight, I would not really mind sleeping 12-inches away from him and share him with my friends. He wasn’t even a close friend but a mere acquaintance who was oblivious of the meaning of “privacy”. A pig.
Our first morning in Baguio was marked with utter dismay. My friends and I had to boil water with a heating rod, took bath in turns, dressed up somewhere in the house fearing our unwanted roommate could be feigning sleep (or insanity) and use his third eye to watch us go starkers. We left the bloody apartment long before consciousness returned to him.
The next day was the same as the first one. Instead of enjoying our three-day getaway, we worried about the fat mammal waiting for us in Happy Homes. We stayed longer outside that village, docked in several places to kill time, subsisted in fast food and went home midnight. And as expected, he would open the door for us, lead us upstairs, ask questions, pull his mattress and sleep beside us.
My friends and I decided to cut the trip short and packed up in the early morning of Good Friday. Never mind if that would mean sleeping at the bus terminal. Our dense host looked particularly sad at the breaking of the news that ended our slumber party. We decided to pay him only half of the agreed rental fee, explained to him in plain words that we were simply disappointed. Later on, when we were already on board the bus bound to Manila, we texted him all the gore details that pissed us off. We hoped it all went right through his thick skin.
And if by some chance he shows up in Manila, I’ll make sure he lands on a stick.
