Well, how about actually getting out of the hotel for a few hours? I told C, as I was sipping on my nth cup of coffee, sweltering under the intense midday heat at the balcony of E&O Hotel right at Georgetown itself. For starters, how about that cemetery right there, pointing down to a plot of land thick with trees just a few meters from our hotel.

THE OLD PROTESTANT CEMETERY AT PENANG

I really have no idea what that cemetery was about, or even if it has any historical value at all. All I know was that we’ve been cooped up for far too long in our room, too daunted by the simmering streets of Penang to explore any further than our own balcony and the indoor swimming pool.

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It was searing hot outside but we can’t just stay cooped up at our hotel. This being our second time in Melaka, we looked for other places to visit in the area other than the popular Dutch Square and Jonker Walk. Bukit Cina or China Hill perfectly fitted the bill; it was close enough to where we were staying and it sounded interesting.

THE OLDEST CHURCH IN MALAYSIA, ST. PETER’S CHURCH

From The Pines Melaka, we passed an old church right before turning the bend to the Chinatown area of the city. The Gereja St. Peter [GPS MAP: 2.202388, 102.253214], built in 1710, is said to be the oldest functioning Roman Catholic Church, not only in the city, but in all of Malaysia. Surprisingly, the structure isn’t located on the UNESCO historical core of the city.

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A large Buddha with a shockingly red bib stands guard near the entrance of the Shōgen-ji Temple in Hakone. Cherry blossoms, wet from the day’s constant rain litter the grounds like delicate pink snowflakes. I carefully wend my way through them, seemingly conscious of stepping into one and destroying something beautiful. I looked up and saw the gnarly branches of the Sakura tree framing the gray white sky. It’s still raining in Japan.

The cemetery a few hundred steps away from the place where I grew up has a secret.

We used to jump along its tombs during hot summer days when there was nothing else to do and my friends used to fly kites from the highest mausoleums on October months where the wind is at its strongest. My grandfather, who now rest inside its hallowed grounds, used to take walks here every morning where I occasionally accompany him.

It’s my first time in Mindanao and after weeks of planning the itch to shoot a sunset at Camiguin’s iconic Sunken Cemetery had became unbearable (OA! hehe). We headed to Bonbon and waited for an hour for the sun to go down. Everything looked promising; the sun was out, rocky foregrounds were in place and cloud formations were good. Thirty minutes before the magic hour, sinister-looking clouds from Mt. Hibok Hibok moved in and showered on our parade; this is totally unfair! I was forced to use a rainjacket and shoot a few frames of a premature sunset before everything got lost in the downpour.

We weaved through Manila’s sidestreets after sidestreets due to the rerouting done to compensate for the heavy pedestrian traffic along Rizal Avenue. Our jeepney was trying to get past through the annual onslaught of people during the 1st of November to the cemeteries. Some blocks away from the R.Papa LRT station, we finally boarded down and had no choice but walk all the way to the North Entrance of the Manila Chinese Cemetery.

According to Wikipedia, the Manila Chinese Cemetery is the second oldest cemetery in the region; its virtual neighbor, the La Loma Cemetery, snagging the top honors. A quick search through Google reveals its founding date at 1879, while La Loma at 1884. If my math lessons served me right, 1879 is older than 1884; hmmm there must be something I’m missing here.

The sun’s rays were slanting down the old stone gates of the ancient burial place as we boarded down from an almost hour-long jeepney ride from Liliw Church in Laguna. The renowned Underground Cemetery of Nagcarlan closes at four in the afternoon and we arrived thirty minutes after the said hour.

The gates were still open however, and we quickly marched our way inside lest we miss our chance to visit this place. Halfway through the promenade, we met the landmark’s caretaker, people from the National Historical Commission, I think. We asked if we can roam around the place a bit before they closed for the day and they unsmilingly obliged.

I personally think that the people in charge of this place could be a bit more warm and pleasant to their visitors, a little smile wouldn’t hurt.

It’s been drizzling on and off the whole day, not really the best weather for one of the major holidays in the Philippines. As the western part of the world celebrates Halloween, the Filipino people celebrate All Saints’ Day.

Wikipedia defines All Saints’ Day as the day Christians celebrate all the saints of the church, both known and unknown. The following day, November 2nd which is All Souls’ Day, commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven.

The next stop on our Corregidor Day Tour was a shrine funded by a Japanese group that is ironically dedicated to the Filipino, American and Japanese soldiers killed on the island during the Second World War. 

Similar to the Filipino Heroes Memorial, it is also located on the tailside of the island. It features various grave markers with Japanese inscriptions. But this is actually not a cemetery. No soldier, Japanese or otherwise, is really buried in its ground; it is more of a praying area for the Japanese families whose kins died during the war.

Even after my exhaustive second day, I was again up early for my third and last day at the mountain town of Sagada.

It was part of my plan to visit the cemetery I passed by on the way to the Echo Valley at dawn. I asked a guide if the area would be covered with mist in the morning, and she said, yes it would indeed be blanketed in haze just before the sun rises. So there I was, still aching from the previous day’s exploits, slowly climbing down from the hill where my inn was located, a tripod and two cameras in tow.

I let the darkness of the dawn disperse a bit before leaving St. Joseph’s Inn as per my experience the previous day of almost groping in the dark during the Sagada dawn.

The windswept crosses on the freshly mowed grasses of the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial stood proudly against the cloudless blue sky the afternoon I visited the iconic resting place of World War II Heroes in Fort Bonifacio. The place was generally empty but for a few tourists wandering around the place. 

The American Battle Monuments Commission erected the cemetery in 1960 for the American, Filipino and other Allied Nations that fought with the US Forces during the Battle of the Pacific during the early 40’s. There are a total of 17,206 marble headstones, making this the largest cemetery for the casualties of war built by the commission.