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Vigan

Written by kevin

Manila is interesting, but not a place I’d like to spend very long. As I had a few spare days before heading down to visit Marebec I decided to go north and visit Vigan, a fairly well-preserved colonial city.

It’s a nice place, much quieter than Manila, and on one street in the old town they’ve even banned motorised transport. Instead horse-drawn ‘calesas’ take tourists around. Not all of the old buildings are in very good condition, ‘beware of falling debris’ signs abound. Some of the old houses are open as museums, so you can see how the wealthy lived during the Spanish colonial era.
White-painted two-storey houses line both sides of a quiet, cobbled street. Three storey houses with bits dropping off them and a sign warning about falling debris. A living room with old wooden furniture and religious knick-knacks.

The unfortunate thing for me was that prices had shot up since the guidebook had been written. Many of the hotels seemed to have been renovated and the places with dormitories only wanted to hire out the whole thing, not just one bed. I ended up paying P700 a night for an en-suite room with no air-conditioning at the Gordion Inn, well over my accommodation budget.

I’d arrived in time for the last few nights of a local festival (programme), so there were lots of stall in the main square selling street food. This included a local speciality, empanadas. These were a bit different from the Chilean ones, fried and with pork and cabbage filling, but very tasty and cheap.

Bizarrely the cable TV in the hotel included some African DSTV channels, I was a bit worried that the channel would suddenly be changed (in the middle of a film) to Africa Magic!

Here are some pictures showing transport in Vigan (the motorbikes with sidecars are common in most Filipino cities) and the ‘Earthquake Baroque‘ cathedral.
A street scene with horse-drawn carriages and motorbike-sidecar taxis. A wide, low church in white plaster, with a bell tower standing off to one side.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 11:01 and is filed under philippines, rtw, travel.

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