Land Trip to Dumaguete City!

Dumaguete City

Our group landed in Ilo-ilo at 5am (June 03), took the Ocean Jet Ferry to Bacolod and after a few hours of killing time in SM City boarded the Ceres Bus to 6-hour trip to Dumaguete City (provincial capital of Negros Oriental)!  

We reached Dumaguete at 6pm really exhausted & hungry so we just entered the first hotel we saw when we decided to come down from the bus. Good thing that the bus stopped right in front of the Bethel Guest House. 

The hotel's a gem! Aside from the fact that the hotel is clean and the staff helpful, the rates were dirt cheap. After dumping our stuff in our assigned rooms, we started hunting for a really good restaurant.  

The hotel people recommended Hayahay Treehouse Bar and Viewdeck. Its a good five-minute walk in the "The Boulevard" from the Bethel Guest House. Rizal Boulevard is a long stretch of restaurants and hotels much like Roxas Boulevard minus the fishy smell and the homeless people. 

Hayahay is a spacious al fresco dining filled with drinkers and diners wanting to sample the popular fresh seafood. We noticed that there were a big number of tourist here (actually, we noticed that there were blondes everywhere!). Good for tourism. 

The food. If Hayahay's Bangus Belly is just passable, the Bulalo was unforgettable. Malinamnam ang broth at malambot ang laman!  How about the Crab Omelette? It's a crab shell (with a little crab meat) coated with egg then fried. It looked weird and tasted weird. But since I'm forgiving when I'm out of Manila, everything's forgiven.

Bangus Belly P150
Bulalo P300
Crab Omelette P150
Bottled Water P40

I promised myself to wake up early to see the famed Rizal Boulevard in daylight with it's Multicabs (oversized tricycles) buzzing around. I was impressed by the fact that the city is immaculate (that's really surprising, coming from someone who do business in the Metro) and traffic-free. The ocean is still beautifully blue with no "flotsam and jetsam" soooo unlike Manila's counterpart. 

It was indeed a good morning taking in fresh air and watching the city come alive while sipping instant cappuccino (no real coffee around). Forgiven.