A touring weekend in Bacolod City

For tonight's special presentation on our talkshow, Straight from the Sky we discuss the outlook of tourism in the Philippines for the Year 2014. With us tonight is Mr. Tourism himself, Mr. Robert "Bobby" Joseph who heads the Tourism Educations And Movers (TEAM) Philippines whose aim is to improve our students and prepare them for jobs in the Tourism sector.

Bobby Joseph was one of the first people in the Tourism Industry to openly complain why the Department of Transportation & Communications came up with a P17.5 billion figure for the new Mactan International Airport Terminal, which didn't include a second runway. Now that the DOTC has announced the winning bid for MCIA, it was won by the GMR Group an Indian company that only recently came up with their perspective of what we can expect the new terminal to look. Yes, people whom I have talked to say that it doesn't look good as compared to the second placer Changi Airport that came up with a great-looking airport.

Bobby Joseph also tasked the Bureau of Immigration & Deportation to find out why under the Aquino Administration it is now more difficult to secure our passports. I wrote a few columns chastising the Immigration Bureau for fixing something that did not need fixing. Today, getting a passport has become a hassle just because those stupid bureaucrats in Manila changed their system and made it worse. You can see this interview with Bobby Joseph on SkyCable's channel 61 at 8 p.m. with replays in MyTV channel 30 at 9 p.m.

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Last Sunday, I accompanied my wife, Jessica, and her cousin, Mrs. Inda Manuel Gage from Stamford, Connecticut, to Bacolod City for a reunion with her classmates from St. Scholastica College. It was one of those very rare times for me to fly to Bacolod because whenever I travel to Bacolod, we always ride our motorcycles, riding from Cebu City to Toledo City and crossing the Tañon Strait to San Carlos City then across the mountains to Sal-vador Benedicto City and straight to Bacolod City. It was time to tour Bacolod.

Since the weather had improved from that last two weeks, the 20-minute Cebu Pacific flight to Bacolod City was a very pleasant one, more so that the pilot flew so very close to the summit or crater of Mt. Kanlaon volcano. It was the first time I landed in the new Bacolod Airport. From the looks of it, this was one airport that the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines did right. It had runway lights, navigation aids and the terminal was perfectly sized for Bacolod's economic growth and since it is linear in design like what we have in MCIA, it can easily be expanded.

Call it timely that when we arrived last Saturday, Cebu Pacific was inaugurating its Bacolod to Davao flights. This is a great boost to both cities because now they can fly direct to their airports without passing through MCIA anymore. From the air, I also noticed that Bacolod now has a parallel or bypass road to the national road, which leads directly to the airport. This is a great boost to their traffic problem within the city.

On hand to meet us was Manang Inda's classmate, Mrs. Paching Fuentebella, wife of Bacolod City Mayor Monico Fuentebella whom I had personally known for a long time now. Over lunch in Chicken Bacolod, Mayor Fuentebella joined us and he was alone wearing a T-shirt and didn't even have a bevy of bodyguards surrounding him like most mayors do.

We discussed so many issues including traffic. I also learned that he ran as an independent and I was glad that he didn't belong to the Liberal Party. In an era of PCOS machines where the Automated Election System uncovered the infamous "60-30-19" or 60 percent for the Liberal Party, 30 percent for UNA and 10 percent for those who also ran. If at all, Mayor Monico Fuentebella only got 10 percent from the PCOS machines. That he still won as Mayor of Bacolod City is proof of his overwhelming popularity.

At around 5:30 p.m. we dropped by the now famous Bacolod City tourism destination called "The Ruins" in Talisay City. It was a mansion of a sugar baron that was built in 1911 by Mariano Lacson but was purposely burned as the Japanese were coming to Bacolod so that they couldn't use the house for their headquarters. This was opened to the public in 2008 by Mr. Raymond Javellana, whom we met inside. What struck me was that, despite being the First Lady of Bacolod City, Mrs. Fuentebella paid for all of us at the entrance of this tourism site.

During dinner in Ahboy's I met the Sports Car Club from Cebu, led by Jay Aldeguer, Mike Jo and Red Durano and their members having dinner there. Yes I have no doubt Bacolod City has become a perfect place for a short vacation. As Mike Jo noticed, their streets are very clean and it is very true. It is very convenient to fly to Bacolod City or take a Ceres Bus or your car and cross to Negros from Cebu and enjoy the drive via the mountains in Salvador Benedicto, which is akin to our Transcentral Highway.

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