During our recent vacation this June 2010,
landing in Tacloban Airport gave a temporary halt to all our excitement and momentarily replaced our smiles with frowns and even with short arguments. From the airport we squeezed ourselves in a jeepney ride going to the terminal. There are probably other options like taxis or tricycles, but based on not very nice experiences with these guys about a decade ago, I still prefer taking the chicken-packed jeepneys. I feel safer in those jeepneys with co-passengers from the same plane. With just one direct ride from Airport to Bus Terminal, I guess the P50 per person fare is fair enough.
The bus ride from Tacloban started with few uncomfortable encounters with personalities at the terminal who took advantage of our unfamiliarity with the place. One person disguised providing assistance but later brute sells us into buying his local food products that we really did not want to buy. Few other terminal guys sales-talked us that the best way to Anahawan was to take the vans. Poor banana! The passenger van they offered was not even fit for humans! I was wondering how much that van would cost if they would just sell it on a per kilo basis at the junk shop. Not wanting to risk tetanus infection, I left the oven, I mean the van that they pre-heated under the sun to around twice my body temperature (goodness!!! what were they thinking?!!!), if there were still available bus trips nearby.
It's a good thing the latest bus trip for that day was not yet full. It's not the best bus we can find, but at least I am pretty sure that it passes human standards. The bus crew were very much nicer too! Seeing that we were traveling with a small child, they asked other passengers to give way and politely loaded our baggage on to the bus.
Compared to 10 years ago, my experience with Tacloban hospitality has already reached a significant improvement, but clearly, the city could still make use of the remaining rooms for improvement specially when it comes to traveler assistance, being a major gateway to many points in the Leyte and Samar Islands.
Experiencing again the Abuyog-Silago highway slowly brings my blood pressure back to normal level and regained the excitement back when I got a text message from my brother that they were already in Anahawan waiting for us. The Abuyog-Silago road did not cut our trip down to 2 hours as I previously wrote in my blog post The Road to Anahawan. Instead, I estimated our travel to have taken around 3 to 4 hrs. With all roads now concrete, it still is a great improvement compared to the previous road system that would take as much as 6 hours and tons of dust resting on your hair. Our bus went through Silago and Hinunangan Town Propers so I suspect it could have affected our travel time.
Anyway, all the travel challenges completely vanished when we started seeing a really old friend whom I call "sea", familiar places, faces, trees, houses, and even road signs. I could not remember what every road sign says. All I can remember is that name contained in each of those road signs. He must be someone who is very much concerned about the welfare of Southern Leyteño motorists :). Well, the people on the bus are now speaking my Bisaja language this time and so I am already home even if we are still a couple of towns away from my beloved Anahawan.
Of course, there is no other fruit of all those long-hour travels that is more rewarding than seeing my town mates, neighbors, cousins, friends, and most of all my ever dearest mama and papa together with my brother and sisters, with their families too. Sinugbang semi-native chickens from my papa's farmville and ginamos completes the gathering. I'm not sure if I'm imagining things but of as of this writing, which is already more than a month after, I could still smell the ginamos squeezed with calamansi in it. :)
