VIGAN TRAVEL GUIDE | Itinerary + Budget + Map [UPDATED 2022]
[TRAVELGUIDE] Wednesday, April 06, 2022
Vigan is a city located on the northwestern coast of Luzon in the Philippines. It is the capital of the Ilocos Sur province and the only UNESCO World Heritage City in the country. Recently, it won as one of the New Seven Wonders Cities of the World.
The main draw of Vigan City are its well-preserved Bahay na Bato structures located at the Meztizo District, its historical core. Currently, there are 187 listed ancestral houses in town. Besides this, it also boasts of beautiful colonial churches, a plaza that comes alive with a fountain show at night, a free-roaming zoo and numerous historical museums.
The city’s cuisine is also quite interesting and numerous restaurants around the area makes it readily accessible to visitors.
There is no denying the popularity of Vigan City for the typical tourist and even veteran travelers. And for those planning to visit it anytime soon, here’s an intensive travel guide, complete with a 2-day and 3-day sample itinerary for a DIY tour of the Vigan City.
Strolling down Vigan’s Calle Crisologo one overcast afternoon, my ears glued to Eraserheads’ Wala, a horse-drawn carriage suddenly swept past me. The horse’s hooves click-clacked as it sped by. And for a moment, I felt it displace space—warping it like Doc’s shiny DeLorean. Shifting from the present to the past, from the past to the future. For an instant, I felt somewhat dislocated. Did time just stood still? Am I still at present or am I at some point in the past?
Beh. Enough of that time travel nonsense. Calle Crisologo in Vigan City can stand on its own merit without the need to parallel it with time travel and such baloney.
The reason for my first trip to Vigan City some years back was because of work suspension—too much time on flickr, my boss told me. I have a bit of cash, I was itching to road test a new camera lens, and I haven’t been to Ilocos Sur. So I said to myself, why not Vigan?
And why not, indeed?
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Barefoot, a cup of coffee on hand, I glided past a midsized replica of Juan Luna’s Spoliarium to have my caffeine fix at a veranda somewhere in Vigan City. Earlier, I passed by masterpieces from BenCab and Amorsolo; not replicas, but originals. And yeah, it also took me a while to get my eyes off a supposed Juan Luna original painting.
Welcome to Hotel Luna.
The original plan was to get back home after touring the only hotel slash museum of its kind outside Metro Manila. We’ve been passing by Hotel Luna every single day we were in Vigan City on our way to Calle Crisologo, but for one reason or another, we always fail to visit its halls.
On our supposed last day in the city, we made it a point to finally enter its door. And our jaws dropped to the floor.
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ILOCOS SUR | Santa Maria Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
[ARCHITECTURE] Thursday, September 25, 2014
What does UNESCO mean anyway? J asked as we were rumbling through the scenic roadways towards the town of Santa Maria—our goal, to visit the UNESCO-stamped Santa Maria Church. Surprisingly, none of us knew the answer. We knew that it is one of the governing bodies throughout the world that says which site is of world heritage quality, sort of like the Oscars of the tourism world, but we have no idea what the acronym stands for.
I’ve always wanted to visit the Santa Maria Church in Ilocos Sur, but I remember reading that it’s a bit out of the way from the usual Ilocos tourist places. Without a car to get around, visiting it usually took a backseat towards the more popular spots in the region, like say, Calle Crisologo.
But this time, with the help of Hotel Felicidad Vigan, we were provided with a van and was given free reign on where to go. Santa Maria Church was the first thing that popped in my head. At long last!
En route to the northern provinces of the Philippines, I almost always wake up just before the bus I’m riding crosses the Abra River. From the newer Banaoang Bridge, I look out the window and gaze at the skeletal structure of the defunct Quirino Bridge parallel to it. And almost always, the bus would zoom off the bridge without me being able to take even a single shot or let alone take my camera out from my bag.
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| ABRA RIVER UP CLOSE |
The chance finally came for me to photograph the twin bridge that connects the town of Santa and Bantay in Ilocos Sur as I revisited Vigan City a month ago. Aboard a van full of media peeps, we traversed the rain-slicked roads to Barangay Banaoang and alighted just before the twin bridges.
But we were there, not really to take photos of the massive structures, but to cross it using a zip line.
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ILOCOS SUR | Bantay Church, its Bell Tower, and FPJ's Ang Panday
[ARCHITECTURE] Tuesday, September 23, 2014
It’s all still a bit hazy to me, but I somehow recall how a fireball blazed into the sky and fell at the hill where an old tower stood. The meteor was taken by a stooped old man and was eventually forged into a sword, the balaraw. That sword was said to grow long by thrusting into the ground.
Ang Panday, a movie from my childhood, was more than a movie for me back then. And now, decades later, I am still unable to believe that I’m standing on the ground where that ball of fire struck.
But erase all that. After doing a bit of research, I stumbled upon a full movie of Ang Panday on YouTube. I started to watch it, waiting for the scene with the bell tower. Soon, I found that my memory served me wrong. The meteor didn’t land at the tower. Rather, a book was found there by Tata Temyong, buried under a tree, after an earthquake shook the ground.
The hunt for Tuguegarao’s iconic pancit batil patong continues even as we travel. This time, while in Vigan City, we quickly googled through the interweb, looking for traces of this noodle dish near the the area. Since we were in the northern territories of the Philippines, we thought that the chances of a panciteria selling our favorite pancit would be quite high. Right?
Our web search turned up zero results.
It wasn’t until our second to the last day of exploring Vigan when we chanced upon a security guy from Hotel Luna, Sir Medrano we called him. After accidentally finding out that he hails from Cagayan Valley, we immediately asked if he knows a panciteria selling pancit batil patong in Vigan City.
Well, not exactly in Vigan, he says, but I know one near Bantay Church, which in all practicality is almost part of the city.
That same afternoon, on foot, we traversed the Meztizo River and went out of Vigan City. We desperately wanted a plate of pancit batil patong.
A bamboo pole, about two meters long, was served on our table. Our waiter opened the lid and revealed what’s inside. Pinakbet. My least favorite food of all time.
Oh man. Dining at a place called Pinakbet Farm, I should’ve expected this. Tsk.
Coming from the abel loom weaving in Caoayan, a town which used to be part of Vigan City, we dropped by Pinakbet Farm—a small restaurant overlooking one of the tributaries of Meztizo River. Tables and benches are neatly arranged on a pavilion-type open-aired setting. Wood dominates the theme of the restaurant—and with the breeze wafting in, it makes for a very rustic and provincial ambience.
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Off the southern part of Vigan City lies the town of Caoayan. Here, we witnessed how locals turn colorful strands of cloth into something beautiful. Painstakingly, they weave these by hand, turning simple yarns into something intricately beautiful—an abel, Ilocos province’s traditional woven product.
Every Ilocano worth his salt has an abel somewhere in his house; the fabric being an intrinsic part of their lives. From birth, they are wrapped in abel blanket. During their weddings, they wear dresses made from abel. Even in death, they are again wrapped in a blanket made of the same material.
While I would like to start this piece by saying that the old Plaza Salcedo in Vigan City is one of my favorite evening places to hang out and practice the art of doing nothing, I cannot really say so. I still prefer the cobbled street of Calle Crisologo. The old plaza for me seemed a bit too dull compared to the famous calle.
But that all changed during this last visit to Vigan. Still stuffing my mouth full with home-made empanadas from Casa Caridad, we were excitedly ushered out of the house and into the plaza. We’re gonna watch a dancing fountain show, they said.
A dancing what? I never knew of a fountain show in Vigan from my previous visits.
ILOCOS SUR | Simbaan a Bassit, That Other Church in Vigan City
[ARCHITECTURE] Wednesday, September 17, 2014
When one mentions Vigan Church, people immediately associate the term with the squat St. Paul or Vigan Cathedral sitting near the town plaza. But the city has another beautiful church on its ground, albeit a smaller one. Located at the edge of an old cemetery, Vigan’s Simbaan a Bassit sits proudly with its beautiful façade amidst the chaos of electric wires and silent tombstones.
It’s name, Simbaan a Bassit, is an Ilocano term which literally translates to Small Church. And the church is indeed petite. It can maybe seat only a hundred—it is more of a capilla or a chapel, really.
I have witnessed it being used for burial rites before, but I’ve also seen it used for regular Sunday masses.
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Every single time someone in the group asks where we would go next, J would go, To Vigan’s Hidden Garden! I don’t know what’s with him and gardens, but on our last day in the city, we finally relented and went to the place. Honestly, I’m really not that keen on revisiting it since I really didn’t find it that interesting the first two times I went. But okay, since we have nowhere else to go, to the Hidden Garden it is.
Vigan’s so called Hidden Garden is not really hidden at all. Well, it is way out from the city center, and one needs to either ride a tricycle or hire a calesa to access it, so I guess it is partly hidden in a way.
The sprawling garden started out as a personal venture for retired engineer, Francis Flores. It started to really blossom and guests started to pour in. Eventually, he opened the place to the public in 1991 and it became one of the usual stops with the calesa tours in Vigan.
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On our next stop, you get to dress as a colonial-era Bigueño. Our guide from Hotel Felicidad Vigan told us as our van sped through the rain-slicked streets of Vigan City. You want to be a smashing doña? A well-respected ilustrado perhaps? A fat prayle? A simple indio? Vigan’s Arce Mansion has every costume to fit the bill.
This was the first time I heard of Arce Mansion and its gimmick of letting visitors play-act as Noli Me Tangere-esque characters. It’s like cosplay, only there are no Naruto characters to pick from. This is probably the best place to take a selfie when in Vigan City.
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Getting down and dirty is part of visiting Vigan City. But get your minds off the gutter, I’m talking about getting literally dirty, like molding a clay, spinning it and creating something beautiful. Well, maybe not that last part, it takes a very skilled hand to achieve that.
We were at Vigan’s Pagburnayan, the iconic pottery place in the city. Besides Calle Crisologo, this place probably clocks in as the most photographed Instagrammed spot in the city.
Its name, Pagburnayan, comes from the root word burnay. It refers to the hand-crafted earthenware pots made from Vigan. Bantog clays, these are called. They’re dug from the western barangays of the city.
I once asked a cuchero who was touring me around where they would get more of these, if supplies ran out. Impossible, he says, they’ve been sourcing their materials from that area since Chinese immigrants came to Vigan City and established the craft.
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What’s Zarzuela? Someone asked from our table. We were at Casa Caridad, having our usual breakfast fare of Vigan longganisa with some really good corned beef. Everyone was gushing over Tres Patrimonio, the play we saw the night before at the Vigan Culture and Trade Center.
To be honest, I was a little apprehensive in entering the theater to watch the zarzuela, unsure if I would really enjoy it. I took a last look outside and gazed at the sky, it was throwing off hints of a really beautiful sunset and my mind was playing with the idea of splitting and shooting Calle Crisologo or even Mindoro Beach instead.
But alas, I really didn’t have a choice. To the theater it was then.
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I remember exactly what I ate during my third visit to Vigan City. With a few exceptions of having some bagnet and empanada, the thing that’s usually on my plate is a bunch of Vigan longganisa. Breakfast, lunch, dinner; I don’t really care for Vigan’s other culinary delights, I wanted my garlic longganisa with my fried rice.
This last visit to Vigan City, not only did I have my fill of their local sausage but I was also given an insider’s glimpse as to how Vigan longganisas are made. While I’m not really keen on seeing the gutty truth on how my favorite longganisa is manufactured, I went ahead with the group knowing we’d have a free taste later. Lol.
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For a nineties kid, the Crisologo family name still rings a bell to me. The thing that actually pops into my mind is not related to Vigan City at all, but of actor Rudy Fernandez playing Bingbong Crisologo, a former Ilocano congressman turned charismatic preacher, who’s father, Floro was gunned down inside a church.
It was only a decade later that I realized that the said church is actually the Vigan Cathedral and the museum I’m stepping into now, his actual home.
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Welcome to the Crisologo Museum, an ancestral house owned by the clan which Vigan’s famous Calle Crisologo is named after. Err, actually, there was no guide to welcome our group. That might be easily explained though, since there was no entrance fee to be paid when we arrived.
After being greeted at the door, we were left to our own devices inside the cavernous ground floor of the ancestral house where Bingbong probably once played as a kid.
Jackstones! I yelled as we started walking along the edge of Playa de Oro Resort, the only one of its kind that caters to Vigan’s Mindoro Beach. I was referring to the massive concrete wave stoppers that are scattered near the beach. I knew immediately that this was where I would plant my tripod once the sun lowers down to the horizon.
The second thing I noticed as we went past the jackstones and walked further north was the sand. It was black. Not black because it’s dirty, nor brownish black like the sands are on some parts of the Philippines.
It was simply black.
Jet black.
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And one thing more, do you know what the sculptures of the mansion are for? So went Rusty, our very strict but very informative tour guide at one of Vigan City’s numerous museums.
Our group woke to a very wet day, the previous day’s rain hasn’t abated and it was still drizzling as we went out of Casa Caridad after a hearty breakfast. Our first stop of the day, Elpidio Quirino’s home, the Syquia Mansion.
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The mansion is typical of the many ancestral Bahay na Bato in Vigan City; thick stone walls on the ground level, painted wood on the second. It is however, quite noticeably, larger than your average ancestral house, spanning almost a whole city block.
