Panglao Island Nature Resort: A room with a view

What could be a more beautiful morning than waking up to Falling In Love? I mean, the Hollywood romance-drama starring Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro meeting by chance at the subway and falling in love with each other even if they’re married to other partners, playing on HBO that bright, sunshiny Friday morning my New York-based balikbayan journalist-friend Raoul Tidalgo and I woke up from a restful, dreamless sleep at our cozy room in a thatched-roof villa at the Panglao Island Nature Resort (PINR) in Bohol, owned and managed by my friend Raymond Ong.

Going back to Panglao was a dream and a promised fulfilled. The first time Raoul (who is "part-Cebuano" and "part-Boholano") and I were at Panglao was in January last year when we attended the wedding of Toto Veloso, younger brother of New Jersey-based nurse Betty Veloso-Garcia, chairman of the Tigum Bol-anon sa Tibuok Kalibutan (TBTK) 2006 which has just concluded a two-week fiesta-like celebration highlighted by the reenactment of Sandugo, the search for Miss Bohol International and the awarding of outstanding Boholanos (one of them Cesar Montano).

Since then, PINR has been on my mind, just like an irresistible muse calling, calling, calling... reminiscent of a scene in the Hollywood movie South Pacific in which heavyweight actress Juanita Hall is shown famously singing "Bali Hai will call you..." while gazing with unmistakeable longing at the volcano yonder. When stressed-out by back-breaking deadlines and desperately in need of a good night’s sleep, I close my eyes and imagine myself basking in the laid-back ambience of Panglao.

This time around, Raoul and I were in Bohol for the TBTK 2006 event (more on this in a future issue). Raymond Ong made sure that we stay at PINR, and who were we to say no? He booked us in a room at a cottage at the end of a winding road lined with trees, brought there on a golf cart from the main lobby crawling with foreign and local guests. Otherwise, we could have leisurely walked, recharging ourselves with fresh unpolluted air along the way and visited the centuries-old natural cave and a man-made one (which are among the resort’s attractions).

It was a room with a view, overlooking a breathtaking view of the sea, furnished with a private Jacuzzi, a mini bar and refrigerator, remote-control air-conditioning, IDD/NDD telephone facilities and a cable television showing Falling In Love that leisurely Friday morning.

Raoul and I took our time having breakfast from a buffet table laden with gourmet choices, mostly native delicacies (danggit, tinapa, daing na bangus, fried rice, native chocolate, an assortment of fruits, etc.), at the terrace of the restaurant, watching tourists taking a dip at the nearby pool wide enough to accommodate maybe a hundred or simply taking their sweet time sipping tall glassfuls of juices and shakes, reclining on lounging chairs under palm trees. The clear blue sea, as blue as Blue Hawaii, glistened in the morning sun.

Since Raoul and Betty had taken me last year on a tour of Bohol’s scenic spots, from the Chocolate Hills to the centuries-old churches to the Loboc River made more famous by Cesar Montano in his movie Panaghoy sa Suba, gazing eyeball to eyeball with a tarsier with huge eyes full of sadness, I opted to spend most of my spare time in Bohol savoring the "the slice of paradise" that Panglao Island Nature Resort is touted to be, trying to finish the few remaining chapters of Dan Brown’s Deception Point when Raoul and I got tired strolling around, filling up our lungs with as much of the fresh air as we could, something you never find in polluted Metro Manila.

Then, as, to quote a line from a song, the "heavenly shades of night" started to fall, Raoul and I sat at the terrace of our own little room with a view, watching the ships sail by in the sea beautifully framed by the trees around us and the distant mountains slowly disappearing into the dusk.

Until now, I haven’t found the exact English word for panglao. Is it loneliness, aloneness, sadness, homesickness, nostalgia, longing for something you can’t quite figure out, a gnawing feeling of...emptiness? I don’t know; I’m not sure. Panglao could be all of the above, a "slice of paradise" so soothing for a weary soul I can’t quite capture in words because it is better experienced than simply described. Once you are there, you will keep going back.

I left a "slice of me" at the Panglao Island Nature and I promise to go back there soon to retrieve it.

(Note: For inquiries and reservations, call 03-84-4115878.) E-mail reactions at [email protected]