Why do I love Baguio?

MANILA, Philippines - I love Baguio because of memories. My cousin Em, best friend Rye and I have always called it our favorite city in the world. In the first place, it’s where I first sniffed the air of my existence. Thus, I can say that I’m a Baguio boy by heart and by birth. It’s the city my heart longs for no matter how many hardships and heartaches I have gone through in its cold, chilly confines.

I love Baguio. I love Session Road on desolate, early mornings. I love its outskirts when fog engulfs the house-infested hills, or its coffeeshops teeming with life like ant colonies before a looming thunderstorm. I love the John Hay of my childhood and its eco-trail of romantic memories.

It’s beauty, in a 360-degree panorama. It’s my mini Rome and a paradox of worldliness and coziness. And its people: the most beautiful in the world — what with all those wind-bitten rosy cheeks and gorgeous mixes of mestizo and tribal ancestry. This city, I believe, will always be home to people of natural beauty, of soft skin and handsome smiles (unlike chlorine-drenched and cosmetically altered Metro Manila).

It’s drama unfolding every day. It’s diversity in motion. It’s technology and ethnicity. And it all winds down to Panagbenga. It’s when heaven comes down to blur the social divide. It’s when bahags and iPods collide in one melancholic music. It’s one moment in which the jologs and big-haired socialites, lowlanders and Igorots sweat it out without any hint of awkwardness or hesitation.

In fact, I’ve never been to any place where there is such a lack of boundaries. Here, there’s never a haughty place or a lowly hangout. It’s where rich kids drink gin in cheap bars and where students in flip-flops can sip cocktails.

And Nevada Square — I can’t even begin to comprehend. It’s Baguio’s Oscar event on Saturday nights. It’s a carnival of sorts where everybody goes for any reason thinkable. It’s where gay life thrives and the beautiful people meet. It’s a microcosm in itself — a fairytale kingdom ruled by the beautiful and the people I like to call “entertainment” because of all those costumes.

Baguio is my life. I may not have lived here for long but it’s where the biggest part of my life unfolded. It’s where I studied and met friends (and enemies). It’s where I got hurt and it’s where I learned to look at life like a sunset from its many “view decks.”

Yes, unknown to many, Baguio offers just as many disarming sunsets as you’d find on white-sand beaches. Add the abstract haze of the fog over that panorama and you’ve got yourself a masterpiece of nature: not man-made, not contrived, just a perfect chemistry of elements, enough to draw oneself to his innermost thoughts. And such a visual miracle is something I’ve always witnessed atop one of SM’s view decks.

SM makes me proud in ways that have always gone beyond commercial. Like all new structures, it has generated controversies concerning sustainable development and the environment, issues eventually outweighed by its unique, ship-like architecture designed to tap sunlight and maximize the pine-laced air through its al fresco restaurants and breezy decks. Standing on top of Luneta Hill, it has become the highest structure in Baguio providing the most liberating view of a city like no other. It’s a monument of steel columns intertwined with age-old pine trees unlike other good malls with artificial landscapes and truck-hauled palm trees. SM is Baguio under one roof: convenience and preservation in absolute harmony. Thus it’s safe to say that, like a true Baguio boy, SM didn’t force its way on the community. It has become an offshoot of the community’s character — and my character as well. It’s where I found belongingness over bottles of beer with friends. It’s where I had dates. It’s where I had countless break-up fights and it’s where I knelt in front of the person I loved.

And so be it SM, the Porta Vaga rooftop, Mines View or just my friend’s boarding house balcony along Naguilian Road, this city has always shown me that things, though never permanent, can always look good. It’s always been just a matter of where you’re looking from, just like enjoying Baguio’s sunset from the balcony of SM.