Philippine North Trail - Vigan City Ilocos Sur Revisited

Mabuhay!

April 18, 2019

This is a photo and video journal of our travel to the historic city of Ilocos Sur featuring our visit to Vigan City, our second visit with our children this time.

Philippine North Trail - Sta Maria Church

April 18, 2019

Mabuhay!

This is a photo and video journal of our travel to the historic city of Ilocos Sur featuring our visit to Sta. Maria Church with the official name of The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption officially listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site on December 11, 1993.

Philippine North Trail - Sta Catalina Beach

April 18-21, 2019 

Mabuhay! 

This is a photo and video journal of our travel to the historic town of Ilocos Sur featuring our summer getaway swimming in Santa Catalina Beach to cool off the summer heat.

SCHOOL REHABILITATION PROJECT: NARVACAN, ILOCOS SUR

September 2010
MABUHAY!

After our ocular inspection in La Union, our team of builders headed up further north of the Philippines to Narvacan, Ilocos Sur to visit an old school building which is also a beneficiary of GMA Kapuso foundation's school rehabilitation project. This school building, part of Narvacan Elementary School is 90 years old at the time of our visit in 2010. A once solid and sturdy structure, it now needs immediate repair specially some parts of its structural members due to its gradual decomposition as time passes by.

WELCOME ARCHWAYS

What I really love to see during a road trip in northern part of the Philippines are the welcome archways in every town and small villages, an epitome of warm hospitality of the Filipinos. But I'm not quite sure if the sequence of these archways going to our destination in Ilocos Sur are chronologically in order.

A ONCE STRONG AND STURDY STRUCTURE

THE YEAR MARKER

 A photo souvenir with other builders on the year stamped at the concrete wall of the building probably signifying the year the building was completed.

OCULAR INSPECTION

The long wide corridor with Tongue and groove timber ceiling

An interior stage with real bamboo poles backdrop 

The long and wide jalousie windows with capiz shell transom giving ample natural lighting ventilation.

A large meeting hall with lumber flooring still in good condition.

An existing wood panel door still in good condition.

Detailed carving design

Some deteriorated lumber flooring

The concrete stilt now deteriorated

The wooden floor joist are still in good condition

Concrete stilts now deteriorated exposing steel reinforcing bars

Twisted reinforcing steel bars- evidence that this building is constructed during the early 1900's during the American Period in the Philippines. I've seen this kind of steel bars in some of the old buildings in Manila.  

HEADING TOWARDS VIGAN, ILOCOS SUR

INSIDE SAINT PAUL CATHEDRAL, VIGAN, ILOCOS SUR

This photo is taken at GMA KAPUSO Foundation's website showing Narvacan Elementary School during and after rehabilitation.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE HISTORIC CITY OF VIGAN - ARCHITECTURE AND TRAVEL

October 31, 2000
MABUHAY!

Traveling to Vigan City gives you the flavor of the old Spanish era in the Philippines. Old stone houses, cobblestone streets with old model lamp posts, horse-drawn carriages locally known as "Calesa," and other ancestral stuff give you the feeling you are frozen back in time. The historic city of Vigan is the best-preserved example of a planned Spanish colonial town in Asia and is included in the UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE COLLECTION

THE VIGAN CATHEDRAL
Vigan Cathedral, known in modern times as the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, was originally built in 1574. The Cathedral is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site. 

The front facade of the Majestic Vigan Cathedral