Saturday. February 1, 2014

Saturday, after a light breakfast of tea and fruit, Allen, Fely, I, and one of her sister's family hopped into their small van and headed off to Vigen.

Established in the 16th century, Vigan is the best-preserved example of a planned Spanish colonial town in Asia. Its architecture reflects the coming together of cultural elements from elsewhere in the Philippines, from China and from Europe, resulting in a culture and townscape that have no parallel anywhere in East and South-East Asia.

from Wikipedia: The City of Vigan  is a fourth class city in the province of Ilocos Sur, Philippines. It is the capital of the Province of Ilocos Sur. The city is located on the western coast of the large island of Luzon, facing the South China Sea. According to the 2010 Philippines census, it has a population of 49,747 people.

It is a World Heritage Site in that it is one of the few Hispanic towns left in the Philippines where its structures remained intact, and is well known for its cobblestone streets, and a unique architecture that fuses Philippine and Oriental building designs and construction, with colonial European architecture.
Former Philippine president Elpidio Quirino, the sixth president of the Philippines, was born in Vigan, at the current location of the Provincial Jail (his father was a warden); and resided in the Syquia Mansion


    The area of Vigan was originally a settlement of traders coming from the Fujian Province, China. At the time of Spanish colonisation, the Chinese settlers, whose language was Southern Fujianese (Min Nan, often referred to as "Hokkien" by most Filipinos), referred to the area as "Bee Gan", which means "Beautiful Shore." Since the Castillian and Basque Spanish conquistadors interchanged V and the B to refer to the B sound, they spelled the Hokkien Chinese name "Bee Gan" as "Vigan", which is the name used to this day.

 Due to silting of the Mestizo River, Vigan City is no longer an island and no longer separated from the mainland. The city is unique in the Philippines because it is one of many extensive surviving Philippine historic cities, dating back to the 16th century.  The central park is the Plaza Salcedo. Next to it are the administrative buildings—the Casa Real or provincial administrative office, and the municipio (municipal hall). A stone's throw away are the religious buildings—the seminary of the archdiocese, the Arzobispado (Archbishop's Palace), and the St. Paul's Cathedral. Beside these religious structures is the church-run school, the Saint Paul College, known in its early days as the Colegio de Niñas.     

I believe the central park is where we ended up in Vigan.   Allen engaged in a long conversation with the owner of a large (in comparison to all the others) horse.   The horse drawn carts (calesa) are a nice attraction.

Our first stop in Vigan was for lunch and then Allen and Fely needed to make a stop at the 'home and building' store.  On a warm day, the rest of us waited in the parked van for over an hour!    I did wonder at how there seemed to be adequate/ample building supplies here--why weren't they available in Bogo City??

                                                                        

Some musings on sights going and coming:   I saw corn, rice, tobacco,

grapes,  and vegetable fields; and a few white brahman cattle.        The roads were concrete and paved--not real wide.    The scenery was beautiful and elevation seemed to vary from sea level up to I'm guessing 3200 feet.    I believe Bangued also had that variation.       Neither city seemed as large as the population census says, but I liked the 'small town feel'--much like it was in Bogo City.  I did note a predominance of individual concrete block homes and larger than the very small, simple plywood and sometimes partial concrete block structures our team saw (and helped build 2)                 in Bogo area.


We also stopped at a small zoo

and then at a Hidden Garden.

 It was a delightful day of exploring and being with family.