May 2,

We, neither one slept well, for whatever reason. I did not get out of bed until 0700 and then laid back down until after eight. I finally feel like my cold is gone except a lingering cough, which is improving. Anyway, we got around and had our Javas and breakfast. I had my last piece of pizza from last night, a yogurt, and an apple. Jeff had Muesli, a yogurt, and an apple. The apples were from the USA! Crazy, but true story!! When we finished we went to the mall across the street to get steps in. The weather says might rain, might not – and the sky seems to verify this maybe/maybe not vibe.

The mall is a four story jobber, and we enter at the grocery store. We both noticed at the same time there were not long lines checking out. This is unusual! Check out lanes seem to always be at least 6-7 waiting all the time. Which reminds me one time we were waiting behind someone whose bill was 66,000 PHP (about $1,200)! But she was paying in cash with the largest denomination 1,000 and 500 Pesos that is available in Philippine currency. It took forever to count and recount all those bills!!… Anyway, we just walked through the four stories and once we’d done a circuit, we left and went back to our place. We noticed the sky seemed better so we changed into long sleeves & pants. We jumped onto our scooter and hit the road.

We tootled about, setting out of town. We were closer to the Sugar Cane fields and could smell the grass in the air. The cane grows on both sides of the road here and seems to stretch clear to the horizon of mountains on one side, and the ocean on the other side. The cane again is in various heights of maturity, and we saw some being harvested, Our first destination is The Ruins. Upon arriving, it is very distinctive. We paid the entry fee of 300 PHP ($5.35) for us both and entered the open structure. We caught a video presentation that told the story of the place. The Ruins is the “skeletal frame” remains of a two story mansion plantation. Wow! It is impressive. There was also a placard of newspaper article from 2008, describing the place as…

“…Italianate architecture…resembling the facade of the Carnegie Hall in NY. Neo-Romanesque columns supporting round arches and balustrades go around the lower and upper floors, giving the house a grandiosity unparalleled during its time.”

The story goes…

“The mansion was built in the early 1900’s by the sugar baron Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson for his wife Maria Braga, a Portuguese from Macau, he met on one of his vacations in Hong Kong.”

Anyway, They married and had ten children. Maria was said to have died while carrying their eleventh child. Don was devastated and set about building this house dedicating it to Maria. His Father-in-Law, Maria’s dad helped him. Then Don and the ten children lived here, until 1942. the place was torched to keep it from Japanese Imperial Forces occupation. The family moved to another place. Don never returned, dying in 1948. There was a lot of other info- the tiles on the ground floor are original; and the upper level wood flooring was two inch thick, one meter wide, and ran a whole length of the house around 20.5 meters long… without joints! The family has kept the ruined mansion, but never restored it. It was passed down through the family by lottery, until a great grandson became owner and has turned it into – The Ruins… a tourist attraction, a cafe, and a venue. We also walked the yard of the mansion- you saw the outdoor area where they could set up a wedding. They had a locomotive engine from the olden days to haul sugar cane out of the fields. I could go on, but suffice it to say we were impressed and enjoyed the place.

We left here and went into the town of Silay. We went to San Diego de Alcala, a pro cathedral, which means it is a Catholic parish church acting as a cathedral.(? I don’t know enough to go into this more.)  It was built in 1925 and has a rare dome over the transcript area of the church. It gave a very different – airy – feel inside of the church. The church had some nice stained glass. We loaded onto Lauren the scooter, and found some of the town mansions on a street. We just glanced at them, all in various states of repair. We did not go into one, as we think we had toured a very nice one in Cebu.

Now we went to Balaring for lunch. It was on the coast, looking perhaps to Iloilo- Panay Island, or Guimaras Island. The restaurant, Melkens Seafood Restaurant was Google recommended. We had Grilled Blue Marlin, Grilled Tangigue, X2 Garlic Rice, a Buko shake, a Calamansi juice and a bottled water. The food was excellent sitting overlooking the water to that horizon of mountains on a distant island. We finished and paid the 1,120 PHP bill ($20.18) and left happy.

The clouds were building up so we decided to just go back to Bacolod. When we arrived we went to buy a replacement piece for my CPAP that we had spied out and Jeff had researched. It would fit, but when we went to pay it was six times more than the price we had heard before!!! Needless to say, we did not buy it. I will wait until Chiang Mai where we can do a Lazada delivery for the first quoted price! Then we went to the Baywalk area and paid 50 PHP entry, but it did not pan out to much, and was disappointing.

We went back to our place and relaxed/cooled down. It rained quite a bit in the late afternoon. We did have a cloud shrouded sunset. We had Pesto bread topped with Pesto cream cheese or Garlic butter. It was all we needed. We watched a movie and that wrapped up our day.