I have seen photos of the fortress-church of Cuyo in books but the first time I saw it, cara y cara, and I was struck speechless. The photos don’t give you an idea of size and immensity unless you have a reference like a person within the image to provide scale. But looking at it, wow, its surreal. This was what I have come for in this remote island and its hard to imagine that in such a place, a very solid, massive and impressive structure was built here.
Going over the list of the nominees for Blogger’s Choice at the 2008 Philippine Blog Awards, I was disheartened that there were so few travel blogs in the roster. Fortunately, Oggie’s wonderful site was included.
If not for the strange confluence of events in the middle of the 18th century, a volcanic eruption in Mindanao and a shift in the food and drink preferences in China and Britain, respectively, Sulu wouldn’t have risen into an international emporium and thus become the center of Euroasian trade. The Muslim slave raids that has engulfed the country and most of maritime Asia wouldn’t have been as wide and as devastating as before that time. It has precipitated one of the darkest history in the region and all because of the British’s insatiable need for a mildly addicting beverage, tea.
It’s time to update my travel history according to Lakbayan!
A short sojourn in Masbate while passing through Ticao on my way home to Cebu and a few days stay in Naujan, Mindoro Oriental finally made a difference in the map. From A-, I’m now an A traveler!
Culion, for a time was nicknamed, unfortunately, The Island of the Living Dead. Not that creatures of the underworld roamed the streets at night or scared its inhabitants but it was an act of government that made it compulsory for lepers in the country, from Luzon to Mindanao, to be segregated into this forlorn of places. Leprosy is an ancient scourge and before the medical breakthroughs in the later part of the 20th century, there were no known cures. Sufferers were treated like pariahs and left deformed for life.