From a barbed compound surrounded by sawali walls, we literally entered one of the dark chapters in Philippine history. A couple of cells located inside this nondescript bungalow once held two of the country’s brightest mind in total solitary confinement; their windows shut to sunlight, their rooms bare. For thirty days, Senators Ninoy Aquino and Jose W. Diokno were imprisoned here on charges of subversion—Diokno, however, wasn’t charged with anything—by the late president Ferdinand Marcos.

FORT MAGSAYSAY’S MAN-MADE LAKE, APTLY DUBBED AS PAHINGAHAN

I used to frequent Nueva Ecija when I was still a kid as my mom hails from Cabanatuan City—which we fondly call ‘Tuan. During summer breaks, we’d visit our grandparents and spend two months doing nothing but eat mangos.

But besides the farm fields and the brook at the back of our grandpa’s house, we hardly ever ventured out. It was only decades later, after Microtel Cabanatuan invited me on a tour that I got to see that there’s quite a lot of history behind our dear province.

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