Hidden gems and guilty pleasures

MANILA, Philippines - Beyond the majestic churches, grand mansions and Dinagyang festival, there’s an aspect of Iloilo that’s rarely on visitors’ itineraries. Quaint and traditional, these places and practices reveal a hardy, sedulous side to the Ilonggo’s famously affectionate and gracious nature.

It would be unfair to call them hidden – they’ve been around for decades, even centuries – just slightly off the beaten path so that visitors tend to overlook them. But venture out and scratch below the surface, and you’ll find these gems that make Iloilo such an enriching destination.

Santa Barbara

Just five minutes’ drive from the airport, the heritage town of Santa Barbara is the ideal starting point. Approaching it, an immense Philippine flag, one of the largest in the country at 60 feet across, grabs your attention. It’s an apt leitmotif for Sta. Barbara’s outsized role in the nation’s history.

This was the bastion of revolutionary general Martin Delgado, the great Visayan military genius. In 1898, Delgado raised a rebel army and defeated the better-armed Spaniards in a brilliant campaign that relied on stealth and cunning as much as force. It culminated in the raising of the Philippine flag for the first time outside Luzon on Nov. 17, 1898 at the town plaza.

The baroque church and its adjoining convent served as Delgado’s headquarters. It was from here that he governed Iloilo as head of the junta at the turbulent juncture of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the Philippines confronted the superpowers of that era, Spain and America.

Today, the din of children’s voices from the nearby parochial school fill the air, but the ancient walls and ramparts still exude the ghosts of Sta. Barbara’s revolutionary past.

Delgado’s memorabilia, including his bed, utensils and insignias, are displayed at the well-curated museum next door that’s well worth a visit. Perhaps the most intriguing item is a piece of the hero’s backbone, once ramrod straight, encased in glass.

On the hills south of town is another of Sta. Barbara’s many firsts – the Iloilo Golf and Country Club. Built by Scottish engineers in 1907 in the style of their native glens, it’s the oldest course in Southeast Asia. Visit the club’s small museum displaying golf balls, clubs and paraphernalia from the early 1900s, for a peek into how the game was played a century ago.

Bobbin lace-making

In 1991, Sister Madeleine Dieryck, a Belgian missionary working among former women lepers at the Western Visayas Sanitarium, saw the potential for turning them into productive citizens by way of imparting her embroidery skills.

But seeing that the patients’ hand deformities prevented them from holding a needle, she used a bobbin – a wooden spindle on which the yarn is wound. Thus was born United Through Handcrafted Lace and Embroidery (WUTHLE), a non-profit that runs the only bobbin lace-making enterprise in the country.

Today, there are about 50 women engaged in the intricate craft, weaving a variety of designs and patterns on table cloth, coasters, handkerchiefs, even entire wedding ensembles.

Drop by the WUTHLE center on the outskirts of Sta. Barbara and marvel at how fine Belgian lace is produced by the weavers’ nimble hands. You’ll appreciate the value of the finished product even more when you witness the painstaking process it goes through.

Deocampo barquillos

Barquillos, the quintessential pasalubong from the Visayas, has been produced since 1898, and it originated in a nondescript kitchen in Jaro, Iloilo City. Today, the Deocampo business, managed by the founders’ great-granddaughter Rowena Tan, has evolved into chain of shops all over the city.

The main outlet is an elegant café on Sta. Isabel Street, just off Jaro’s main road, that carries a wide range of baked items, including biscocho, butterscotch and piaya.

The main attraction, however, is the live demonstration of how barquillos is made the traditional way. This involves a type of cooking iron called a baquillera which sits atop a stove. The flour-and-milk batter is poured onto the baquillera and seconds later the soft, thin wafer emerges, which is then rolled using metal rods into the familiar shape we all know.

It’s an age-old manual process that visitors can observe while they snack at the shop’s open-sided dining area – a front-row seat to a fascinating aspect of Iloilo’s culinary history.

Miag-ao’s hablon weavers

Miag-ao in southern Iloilo is famous not only for its Unesco World Heritage-listed church but also for its indigenous handloom fabric, hablon.

The colorful weave made from natural materials was so in-demand that it became a mainstay of Iloilo’s economy in the late 1800s.  Indeed, hablon was a major product of the Philippine textile industry up until the 1970s.

During that period, Miag-ao was at the center of the trade. But the arrival of cheap, machine-woven textiles in the 1980s pitched the industry into steep decline until the dwindling number of women weavers banded to form a cooperative based at Barangay Indag-an.

With ten looms, technical support from the government and loads of passion for their craft, the group has single-handedly revived the hablon tradition.

A visit to the co-op’s workshop is a must on any itinerary. The dazzling array of hand-woven hablon pieces for garments, bags and furnishings is well worth the trip to Miag-ao. The town’s celebrated fortress-church may turn out to be just a side-trip.

Top-notch eats and sleeps

The best-kept secret in Iloilo may be a hotel. People’s Hotel in downtown Iloilo City is one of those unassuming edifices on the outside but inside, it impresses.

The hotel’s main draw is its stunning presidential suites – capacious enough for royalty and very well-appointed, they are perhaps the finest rooms in the city. But you wouldn’t know that from the building’s modest façade.

True to its name, People’s Hotel does cater to ordinary folks and stays true to its Ilonggo roots. At the lobby is an outlet of Deco’s La Paz Batchoy, founded in 1938, the pioneer purveyor of Iloilo’s most beloved culinary specialty.

Finally, in the town of Pavia, a cozy restaurant on the road to the airport is attracting a cult following as the next seafood place in Iloilo (after the iconic Breakthrough in the city). In a province with some of the best seafood exponents in the country, that’s no mean feat.

Cabugao Seafood Haus established its reputation on the strength of the freshness of its catch. Proprietor Celso Canindo goes to great lengths to ensure the freshest supplies, sourcing from nearby Guimaras to as far away as Sarangani.

Combined with good, old home-style cooking, it’s no surprise Cabugao is the preferred pit stop for travelers en route to the airport – or for anyone craving fresh seafood – a fitting end to a journey of rediscovery in Iloilo.