Life, Day by Day

Last November, 2018, I had the privilege of another heritage experience, this time at the former Army Navy Club of Manila , now known as The Rizal Park Hotel .  I spent three days of comfort, warmth and beauty in this wonderfully renovated and preserved edifice.  If you are the type who  likes  to avoid big crowds and noisy places, this is the place for you. 

I love history and learning about culture, and whenever I get the chance to travel in the country or abroad, heritage is the first thing I look for. One does not have to go far to see heritage sites, because there are plenty of these in my country, the Philippines. Just to name a few, we have in the island of Luzon, the Banawe Rice Terraces, The City of Vigan, the Municipality of Taal, Pila in Laguna and The Walled City of Intramuros; in the Visayas, we have Cebu City, the town of Carcar, Dumaguete City, Iloilo City and of course, my very own, the “Paris of Negros” Silay City where we gave blogger friends a mini heritage tour in 2012 ; and in Mindanao, there is the town of Dapitan and Zamboanga City. In fact, many of these are still on my bucket list of must see places before even embarking on another Asian trip. It ’s almost the end of the year, and it is time to plan for summer travel. There are so lots of places to go to, but  how do I decide where to go first? These are the...

The week-long seminar in Iloilo was a big fiasco...from the venue to the course to the trip home.  But first, my top reasons why I will never go back to Iloilo's premier hotel, at least until they improve their facilities and service. For Php1,800++ (seminar rate), you get these: Poor housekeeping service - dusty rugs, airconditioners delayed delivery of towels and when finally delivered...old towels (dirty white color and thin) bed linens changed every other day but flannel under the bed sheet is changed ONLY WHEN IT GETS DIRTY (whattt????) foam pillows...additional foam pillows cost Php 25, a waste of good money ceiling over the shower/bathtub area was oozing with water droplets shower curtain bottom part...yellowish with mildew   2.  No outside telephone line...you have to dial 0 and pass through the operator...even in their restaurants...AND their front desk hang up on my caller!    3.  TV remote was defective...I was too tired t...

I attended a week long seminar in Iloilo with 3 other co-workers and we were quite excited about it thinking it will be a nice break from work.  Indeed, it was a break from routine but not necessarily a good one :(  The seminar venue was Iloilo's Premier Hotel and the last time I stayed here was in the mid-90's when it was still relatively new.  So I was excited to come back to the hotel which gave me many fun memories.  To my dismay, it has become a shadow of what it was before .  The seminar hall was located on the second floor where a renovation was going on. I could not understand what management was thinking of!  The noise from the hammers, the smell from the paint was terrible. It was also quite warm because the AC's were not strong enough.  The secretariat was trying to stop the carpenters from all that hammering and they did...only to shift to painting which nauseated most of the participants.  By noon, we "asked" to transfer to another...