April 29,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE OF OUR BROTHERS IN LAW!

We were up and about; had our Javas and breakfast of last of the Silvanas with an orange; readied and packed. I had a weird, discombobulated nursing dream early this morning! Really??… It has been 5 1/3 years since I retired. The dream was weird enough that I was feeling a bit shaken and out of sorts much of the morning!😶🫥

Anyway, we were out of the place by 0840. We caught a trike to the bus terminal, and we just missed the 0900 bus… actually we had passed it in our ride to the station.😒  The next AC bus was not until 1030. There’s a non-AC one at 0930, but it’s a six hour ride… we’ll wait for the AC bus. Jeff went and got us some real food – well it was McDonald’s. Don’t judge, it was the only thing close by that Jeff could find open. We needed some protein after all the sugar earlier.

We boarded the bus around 1000, and it backed out early – at 1008! It cost 510 PHP ($9.10) each to go 217 km (135 miles), according to the punched tickets we received from the bus attendant. It still amuses me that 135 miles takes six hours. As we left Dumaguete we saw a series of signs… “DO YOU”…“KNOW THE”…“WAY TO”… “SAN JOSE”… That was so cool!! Like the old Burma Shave signs! And the next town is San Jose. I was singing that song for quite a while.

Around 1230, we had what seems to be our official stop. It was at a humble street side stop. This surprised us both. We got out, paying 5 PHP each for usage of an outhouse, essentially. At 1255, we stopped at a bus terminal in Mabinay for 20 minutes. This was the official stop, but nothing was ever said, as per the normal on these routes. You never know. Anyway, back on the road, we pass lots of sugar cane fields in various stages of growth with a few being harvested. It was fascinating to see. Some still use water buffalo to plow! And they still cut it down by hand, and load in into big semi type trucks. There were many full trucks hauling the cut cane around to be processed. Then we saw signs of the local rum, Tanduay, being 170 years old this year! Well to make the “world’s #1 rum” you need a lot of cane! Just saying. We also saw a few rice paddies. There is also lots of construction going on the road in a number of sections.

At 1410, we arrived at Kabankalan; and at 1415, we stopped at this town’s bus terminal. A number of people got off here. Ten minutes later we left, having only acquired a few replacing so many who had left. At 1444, again we pulled into another bus terminal for one minute and one pickup. This town was called Himalayan City… I loved the name. From 1455-1500, we stopped at the bus terminal in Binalbagan. Back on the road, we are pretty sure we saw the mountain volcano that just erupted.🌋  It was cloud shrouded, so I couldn’t get a picture of it. As we were leaving this town, I saw its Cock Pit Arena.🐓  We have only seen these on this island, and they seem quite popular… but not something I want to see. At Sagua Nanua, I saw an imposing Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. We stopped briefly at this bus terminal and quite a few people got on here. Finally, at 1610, we arrived at Bacolod city limits.

WELCOME TO BACOLOD!

… And it started raining. By 1635, we were at the bus terminal; and by 1645, we jumped into a Grab pickup as it started pouring rain! Then at 1702, we arrived at our place, Amaia Steps Capitol Central. Our driver dropped us off under an awning of our tower- the south one, and the security guy led us to the mailbox to get our key. We found it and went up and into our accommodation on the fifth floor. We unloaded and unpacked, was able to take in sunset from our window, and then went to find supper. We have a mall right across the street from us we went there, as it was still raining, albeit lightly. We found Tokyo Tokyo, a Japanese Restaurant, obviously. We had Chicken Oyakodon, which in Japanese is for “parent-&-child donburi”… a poetic reflection of both chicken and egg being used in the dish. It was good with big chunks of chicken and an egg based sauce over rice with scallions. We also had a Grilled Wagyu Cubes Ramen, which was a soup of Ramen noodles and tender chunks of some Wagyu beef in a broth with cabbage, HB egg, scallions, and couple pieces of seaweed. The beef was excellent with the broth being just okay. I had a red iced tea, Jeff had water. It cost us 640 PHP ($11.42), using our Maya account. This is an app that you load up with money and just scan at the cashier’s for payment.

After we finished we went to the grocery store and got supplies and breakfast stuffs. Then we went back to our place, unwound, and hit the hay, so to speak!