I’m tracing my travel history from 1974 up to the present. This post is 3rd of 5 in the series.
After graduating in college, I went back to Cebu and found work in a telecoms company. The beauty of it? It again afforded me to travel to places that I haven’t gone to or even imagined of going to!
As I was a field engineer, my area was Central and Eastern Visayas but was later on expanded to cover the whole of Visayas and Mindanao:
- I have often been to Bohol and the Camotes Islands
- I was frequenting Ormoc and Tacloban and a brief visit to the south in Leyte
- Southern Negros was another place that I was visiting time and again
When my area was expanded to include Mindanao:
- I was able to visit Zamboanga City for the first time on my way to Tawitawi by boat which made a stopover in Jolo
- made visits in Zamboanga del Norte, Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental and Occidental
- motored from Davao to North Cotabato, Cotabato City/Maguindanao and passed by Sultan Kudarat on the way to Gensan and back to Davao.
My work also brought me to trainings in Bangkok three times of which, I made stops in Malaysia and Singapore. Always an adventurous person and in pursuit of butterflies for my collection:
- visited Marinduque for the first time where I was interrogated by the military in Mt. Malindig where I stayed for two days asking me for my “supposed” mission. They thought that I was a spy of the NPA, a local rebel group
- the ruggedness of the Cordillera mountains was just captivating and Sagada beckoned me. This was also the first time I set foot in Baguio but only in transit
- strangely, I got fascinated with Homonhon Is. off the coast of Guiuan in Samar that one summer, I planned and went there via Balangiga. After a few days, went back to Guiuan, slept for the night at Borongan then hopped on a bus all the way to Allen to catch a ferry to Sorsogon for an overnight visit in Legazpi just to marvel for the second time Mt. Mayon.
- from Legazpi, I went back to central Samar to collect insects in Hinabangan, at the former mining area
- I’ve also set foot for the first time in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato and I vividly remembered it since it was in time for my birthday, a time that I have to travel somewhere remote and haven’t yet visited
In 2000, I volunteered to be transferred to Davao.
Check a summary of my travel history.
Map by Eugene Villar’s Lakbayan
Hi, Estan. I have the same experience before being interrogated by military and/or police authorities. the last incident I can remember is in Masbate, Masbate and in Antique (I forgot the town’s name)…
wow, ako isa lang 🙂
really, the experience is, at first, creepy, pero as the questions become repetitive, it becomes quite exasperating.
I remember na, it was in Patnongon, Antique. My reaction then was passive lang ako. Then, they let me sleep in their detachment. I befriended them in the morning.
Sa Masbate, I befriended their CO because of a common base – we both own a Nokia 7110 (then still a hit at that time)…