First of all, it’s only an hour’s plane ride away, and there are enough flights a day to and from Iloilo (about 20 a day) to make booking a flight, even on the spur of the moment, not that difficult. For the more adventurous you can go by all manner of water transport, from the RORO to passenger ships to "fast boats".
There are quite a few hotels in town. The Grand Dame in La Paz is a charming, cozy boutique hotel that fulfills the requirement of offering genteel hospitality and modern amenities all in one. The amiable manager is often in the lobby to welcome you (he even opens the door for you), and the television in the room even has the Crime Suspense channel! They just need to iron out the kinks in the water heater.
One of the reasons I see Iloilo as a get-away vacation is that it transports me to another world, another lifetime. Visit any of the old houses–particularly Nelly Garden if you can arrange to get in–and catch a glimpse of an era when life was elegant, when women were always coiffed and dressed and perfumed, when parties were grand and guests dined on china and glass and guests around the dinner table had decent conversations which were interrupted only by giggles and laughter rather than beeps and rings of cellphones.
I love wandering around old houses–at least as much wandering as watchful caretakers will allow–gliding over wide wooden plank floors polished to a smooth shine by years of bunot and soft slippers. Old furniture and old photographs whisper stories, and when you look out the windows onto the gardens below–big wide windows of old always looked down onto big wide gardens–you will invariably spy a kid or two running around in playful abandon, chasing yayas optional.
Iloilo’s Nelly Garden is an imposing white structure set back from what used to be–maybe still is–Jaro’s main road. The lady of the house still occupies one room upstairs, which is definitely not open to vistors. (Taking of photos is not allowed inside the house.) It is still a functioning house, meaning family members and occasional VIPs (like President Corazon Aquino) actually stay there. It is thus a living museum, and we were told the guest houses outside can be rented, as well as the grounds and part of the main house for functions.
You can spend a whole week just visiting old mansions, and you won’t even have to go out of the city. The unusual Casa Mariquit, family home of the late Mariquit Lopez, has an old, old tree in front, a formidable sentinel that I am sure knows more secrets than even the family historian.
There are scores of other houses you can visit. The Sanson-Montinola Antillan house in Jaro, the Celso Ledesma mansion in downtown Iloilo, plus the homes of the Jalandonis, Lizareses, Monti-nolas, Villanuevas, various Lopezes... The Eugenio Lopez Sr. family’s Boathouse is an architectural gem. Some of them are still homes so touring them will require permission and prior arrangements.
Beyond the houses you have to see the churches too, at least the Unesco World Heritage Church of Sto. Tomas de Villanueva in Miag-ao, one of the most photographed churches in the country (even though that statue that somebody put up in front of the church makes it difficult to take dramatic photographs of the façade). Check out as well the cathedrals of Molo and Jaro, the former with all female saints and the latter all male (or is it the other way around?). Then try and figure out too why the belfry of the Jaro church stands apart from the church.
The other thing to do is to eat your way through a visit to Iloilo, and a good place to start is la paz batchoy. I purposely wrote that in lower case to denote the generic noodle soup dish that you’ll find around every corner.
Right across from the Grand Dame Hotel is what everyone agrees is the "original" la paz batchoy place: it’s called Deco’s and it’s the quintessential hole in the wall, airconditioned now but not much else is there by way of decor or amenities. But it’s the batchoy you come here for, and it’s worth the trip. A couple doors down is Ted’s, the "old-timer" batchoy. Ted’s has a lot of branches around town, which speaks of expansion and mass production, but there are those who swear by Ted’s.
All in all we had about half a dozen variations of batchoy during our two-day trip, which speaks of our near-obsession in finding the best batchoy in town (May 24 is the annual batchoy festival, held during the fiesta of La Paz). The most important thing about batchoy is that the broth has to be piping hot; anything less than that leaves you with an unpleasant cloying taste.
There are several "signature" bakeries around Iloilo that you can visit and load up on barquillos and hojaldres and tarts and other edible pasalubong: Bicocho Haus, Panaderia de Molo (visit this one if only to see their old cabinets; the story goes that this bakery started when all the egg yolks–discarded after the whites were used to build the church of Molo–were made into biscuits), Deocampo’s barquillos.
But the one I will list as a must is Panaderia de Pa-a, for the best pan de sal del suelo in the universe. This second generation bakery makes the crusty old fashioned pan the old fashioned way at the old fashioned time of two in the afternoon. Of course everybody knows that, and only tourists who don’t know any better will go and ask to buy pan de sal in the morning. The elderly but still spry Jose Uy now runs the bakery started by his father Uy Pa-a, and laments that none of his chldren seem keen on taking over.
At the risk of incurring the ire of the local tourism authorities, I will tell you not to bother with the Iloilo Producers Association store, until such time that they get their act together and get a better range of merchandise. Head out instead to Arevalo, to that famous old house where you can buy exquisite handweaves and other textiles and clothing upstairs, then stop off at the ground floor bakery for Mama’s Kitchen’s famous crisp cookies. You won’t regret either purchase.
We never got around to "studying" pancit molo (the pancit molo festival in turn is held on July 26, fiesta of Molo) the way we did batchoy, but that is reason enough for another trip (as if we needed an excuse). The best eats in Iloilo are, of course, in the homes where the kitchen tradition is strong, and every cook worth his or her salt has trade secrets that make a dish special.
Iloilo lechon is legendary and worth every cholesterol-laden mouthful. There was a crab dish at one dinner that completely made us forget to be dainty and polite, and a catfish cooked in coconut milk and ginger that totally negated the term "enough" and had us eating long after we were stuffed to bursting. The island has a wealth of seafood–fish and shellfish simply grilled that will make a feast out of any common repast. Needless to say, eating in Iloilo is definitely a communal undertaking–delicious food spiced with equally delicious stories and conversations.
There are many reasons to visit Iloilo; tourism officials will tell you to go in January for the Dinagyang, or in February for the blessing of the candles. Actually, anytime is a good time to visit Iloilo, simply because there’s food anytime!