Two Saturdays ago, to cap off my mother and my brother’s birthdays (which both fall within the same week), we went to Hacienda Escudero (formerly Villa Escudero) for a short day trip.

It was my first time at the estate-turned-tourist destination. It took us a almost four hours to drive down to San Pablo, Laguna / Tiaong, Quezon from Manila. We passed by the route crossing Batangas.

When we arrived at the place, we were toured briefly at the church-turned-museum. It looked familiar for me. No, not because I’ve seen it in the many postcards that it may have appeared in. It was after a few minutes when I realized this was where Wong Kar Wai shot parts of his film Days of Being Wild. Anyway the museum was basically a hogwash of various antiques and Escudero memorabilia, which I found quite interesting.

After the museum tour, we rode these carabao trolleys to the resort’s main recreation area, where we had lunch at the foot of a man-made dam with fresh water falling off the dam’s slope and streaming through our feet. If not for the heat of the midday sun, it would have been a very relaxing and refreshing lunch.

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Tags: Batangas, estates, family, farmers, Laguna, land reform, Quezon, resorts

March 21-22, 2008. The family spent two days in Batangas for the Good Friday and Black Saturday holidays. We dropped by Matabungkay Beach in Lian in the morning of Friday before proceeding to Golden Sunset Resort in Calatagan, where we spent the rest of the short getaway.

We left Quezon City at around four in the morning and arrived in Tagaytay just before six. We had fastfood breakfast in Tagaytay before proceeding to Batangas. Since I barely had any sleep because I spent the entire night till early morning editing my thesis short film, I slept the entire time. We eventually arrived in Matabungkay in Lian, Batangas a little past eight in the morning.

Even if my parents prodded me to take a dip in the salty water to, apparently, help heal my fungal infections, I refused. There was also quite a crowd on the beach and in the waters. Too many rafts, too. Didn’t want to swim at all. I contented myself with taking stolen photographs of Tisay and other people.

Because it was getting pretty boring, we decided to proceed to Golden Sunset Village Resort & Spa in Calatagan where we had a reservation. Didn’t have much fun since I wasn’t really in the vacation-mood at all because of thesis-worries and other such leftover academic concerns. Plus I didn’t feel comfortable swimming with the dark fungal infections I had in some parts of my body. I again just contented myself taking photographs of Tisay, my nieces, and other things around the resort, including the golden sunset from where the place borrows its name.

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Tags: Batangas, beach, Calatagan, family, Lian, resort, Tisay, vacation