La Union Heritage Watch

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Photo from: Arly Buendia

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Bangar Abel

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs252.snc1




"Pagpapanday" (i don't know how to transform the word "Smith" into a process) was a dying industry in Bangar, but today, the demand for swords, knives, other cutting tools became high and this industry is in a boom again. These metal works are again gaining popularity in the Province as well as in the whole Region

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Learn Pottery Making in Taboc, San Juan. Watch the age-old art of blanket weaving in Bangar. Have a taste of Basi, the Ilocano native wine in Lioac, Naguilian. You can learn much about a place’s culture by observing and understanding these industries

from: from: http://enjoythunderbirdresorts.blogs...-la-union.html

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Museo de La Union, which is in the Provincial Capitol in San Fernando, houses archaeological finds in La Union during the pre-Spanish period. On the other hand, Museo de Iloko is the old “presidencia” of Agoo houses artifacts and other pieces of cultural importance to the Ilocanos. Both museums are open to the public from Monday to Friday, from 8AM-5PM

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Pindangan was the original name of San Fernando and in the Ilocano dialect, literally means a place where meat is sun dried with salt for preservation. This was the place where the Spanish built the original church to start the evangelization of the locals. They transferred the church because of constant pirate raids and looting. Today, the ruins’ buttresses and walls are still standing. An old well which supplied the area with cool water through the centuries, can still be found at the side of the church. Made of corals and bricks, the enchanting well is still in good condition.

from: http://enjoythunderbirdresorts.blogs...-la-union.html

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By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:05:00 01/09/2011

Filed Under: Tourism, Philippines - Metro, Waterway & Maritime Transport, history, Culture (general), Government Aid

MANILA, Philippines—The future of the “lonely sentinels of the sea”—as architectural historian Manuel Maximo Noche Lopez del Castillo calls the network of 19th-century lighthouses in the Philippines—is looking brighter with the much-improved finances of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG).

With an increased budget this year, the PCG said it can now intensify its lighthouse repair program and thereby promote the safe navigation of ships and fishing boats in the country’s numerous waterways.

This year, the agency will be upgrading the country’s 513 operating lighthouses and reviving about 43 others that are not operational, said Adm. Wilfredo Tamayo, the PCG commandant.

For years, because of the Coast Guard’s perennial lack of funds and personnel, the lighthouses have rapidly deteriorated.

In a report, Tamayo said that with the repairs and upgrades last year, the overall operational efficiency of lighthouses improved—from 85 percent during the first half of the year to 92 percent in the second semester.

This year, he said the Coast Guard aims to improve the overall lighthouse operational efficiency to at least 95 percent and with the agency’s increased 2011 budget, it has every chance of achieving this.

The Coast Guard’s budget was increased from P2 billion in 2010 to P3 billion this year. The agency, however, has many other priorities such as the acquisition of new vessels and aircraft for patrol and rescue missions and the recruitment of 1,000 new personnel in the next two years.

Most of the lighthouses, usually charged by solar power, are not manned 24/7. While many have timers and automatically turn on at night or when the skies turn dark, others have to be manually turned on by a PCG civilian employee.

Tourism potential

These days, the Coast Guard has hit upon another way to keep the lighthouses burning brightly for years to come.

With the increasing recognition of heritage as a solid basis for a tourism industry, a network of restored and preserved historic lighthouses would be sure to bring in the tourists, the PCG argues.

“Several of our lighthouses are centuries-old, dating from the Spanish and American times, and they continue to attract local and foreign tourists. They are considered a national treasure and part of our heritage,” said Lt. Cmdr. Armand Balilo, the PCG spokesperson and deputy chief of staff for community relations.

“Many lighthouses are located in scenic spots. Most are on top of hills and along beaches. They give beautiful views,” Balilo said.

The major ones

One of Balilo’s favorite lighthouses is the Capones Island Lighthouse on Capones Grande Island off the coast of San Antonio, Zambales. The lighthouse, which serves as a beacon to ships entering Subic Bay, was first lit in 1890. The tower has been renovated through the years but the keeper’s house and other buildings in the station have severely deteriorated.

Among the most beautiful lighthouses in northern Luzon are the ones at Cape Bojeador in Burgos, Ilocos Norte and Cape Engaño in Sta. Ana, Cagayan.

The lighthouse on Batanes’ Sabtang Island is a popular tourist attraction in a province that has become the latest must-see destination.

The Coast Guard proposes to turn over the administration of lighthouses to local government units and public and private partners, hoping to generate income from tours, film shoots or advertisements featuring the most picturesque of the country’s lighthouses.

“We will still be in charge of the operation of the lighthouse. But we can have an agreement whereby the LGUs and public or private partners may collect fees, part of which will be used in the maintenance and preservation of the lighthouse or even the hiring of a civilian employee to look after it,” Balilo said in an interview.

Stone and brick structures

A typical lighthouse, or light station, in the Philippines is composed of an elevated cylindrical structure, usually made of metal, with a bright lamp on top with mirrors and lenses to magnify illumination.

The older lighthouses are constructed of stone or brick. They usually retain the Spanish word for lighthouse (faro) in their names. An example of this is the Faro de Punta Malabrigo in Lobo, Batangas.

The Malabrigo lighthouse, constructed during the late 1890s in the twilight of the Spanish colonial regime, was used as the locale for an indie film in 2007. Unfortunately, the film crew, who were largely unsupervised, caused some structural damage to the place. The PCG has now cordoned off the lighthouse and visitors are not allowed to see it unless they have prior permits.

Balilo said the location of the lighthouses inadvertently contributes to the destruction, deliberate or otherwise, of the structures.

“Most lighthouses are located along distant shores, on points and capes, and at harbor entrances, far away from communities. They are subject to wear and tear from the elements such as the wind, salt spray and erosion. Their isolated location also makes them vulnerable to vandalism,” he said.

Many of the 43 nonoperational lighthouses have had their equipment stolen, while some have been damaged by natural disasters, according to Balilo.

Inspection teams

The PCG’s Maritime Safety Services Command (MSSC) periodically deploys field maintenance and inspection teams around the country to undertake repairs to the system of lighthouses.

The MSSC itself is a busy Coast Guard division involved in maritime safety and environment regulation enforcement, interisland communications as well as salvage operations, management of buoys, and antioil spill operations.

According to PCG statistics, Central and Eastern Visayas have the most number of lighthouses, with 127, followed by Southern Tagalog, 101; and Northern Mindanao, 56. Western Visayas has the most number of nonoperating lighthouses, with nine, followed by northern Luzon and Palawan, with eight and seven, respectively.

Victorian design

Apart from serving as signal stations and beacons for oceangoing ships through the centuries, a few lighthouses of the Spanish period, particularly those in the Visayas and Mindanao, served as watchtowers against pirates and slave traders.

The Paris-based International Council on Monument and Sites (Icomos) recognizes the heritage value of the Philippines’ Spanish-era lighthouses, which are mainly of Victorian design.

Constructed by Spain’s renowned Inteligencia del Cuerpo de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (or the Corps of Engineers for Roads, Canals and Ports), the lighthouses were built to protect burgeoning maritime trade in late 19th-century Philippines.

“These structures located in the most beautiful and spectacular sites, lonely isolated islets, cliffs, barren rock outcrops, bluffs, capes and points, are testament to the commitment the Spanish colonial government had in the Philippines to modernize it and make it competitive at the dawn of the 20th century,” Noche wrote in an article in the Icomos website.

First lighthouse

According to Noche, the first lighthouse in the country was erected on the mouth of the Pasig River to protect the Mexico-bound galleons.

The Spaniards also made lighthouses of fabricated metal. Called “tourelles,” they were manufactured in France and assembled on site. A few tourelles still stand on the coasts of or isles off Iloilo, Cebu, Sorsogon and La Union.

Major lighthouses have pavilions and verandahs made of wood and metal where lighthouse personnel and visitors can view the surroundings.

It was during the American colonial and Commonwealth periods that permanent quarters for lighthouse personnel were built.

“The Spanish colonial lighthouses built over 100 years ago still serve their master well. Guiding ships to their ports of call, these structures, stripped of their dignity, still stand proud in their lonely windswept locations. Yet even with time and the elements acting against them, the beauty that the Spanish engineers erected on our soil cannot be erased.

Inheritors of patrimony

“It is time that we, the inheritors of this patrimony do what we can to ensure its survival for the next 100 years. For these lights not only lit the souls and imaginations of those who chanced upon them they also guided a nation to progress,” wrote Noche.

Balilo agrees, saying that while the PCG does not have enough funds to convert the country’s lighthouses into sophisticated ones, the lanterns and the towers are still important guideposts for travelers in an archipelago like the Philippines.

In other countries, some lighthouses are virtual robots and have GPS (global positioning satellite), cameras and radio receivers, he noted.

“The lighthouses still serve our local fishermen and boat travelers who do not venture far from the shore. When GPS and radios fail and visibility is poor during storms and rough seas, it is always a comfort to get a view of light coming from a lighthouse, knowing that land and safety are near,” Balilo said.

source link: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquire...light-its-soul


Poro Point Lighthouse

Photo from: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...DJzjVvG_CBr8tw

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image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


Built in May 6, 1786, the Pindangan church symbolizes the unity between two villages – the coastal village of San Vicente de Balanac and the foothill village of Guillermo de Dalagdang. Both villages benefitted from the protection of the church under Fr Jose Tores in 1759 from assailants, pirates and headhunters. The churches name came from the Ilocano word “Pindang” which is the local’s method of drying fish.

Photos by: Ferdz Decena
link: http://www.ironwulf.net/2010/10/21/l...anical-garden/

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Article by www.GOLFnTours.com

How President Marcos, Christina Kim, Lee Kuan Yew, Dr. Christian Bernard and a resident golf pro with a colourful past got together. Poro Point June 2007: You may be an avid golfer who has travelled around in Southeast Asia and played in most of the known courses on the golf map. However, the chances are you would not have discovered this little course nestled on the coast facing the Luzon Sea, just about an hour or so drive west of Baguio City. To call it a non-descript would unfairly douse the enthusiasm of the many mostly local golfers who gather every late afternoon for the game; nonetheless it could have been passed off as just one of the many courses in the Philippines, built during the time of the American administration and now awaiting either an upgrade, if fortune has it, or a slow death from neglect and then become completely overwhelmed when a new and modern course gets built in the vicinity, except that Wallace Golf Club, the only club in the city of San Fernando, Province of La Union, is unique!

Built in 1975 primarily for the US Airborne Division stationed here, it is the only course with sand-green in the entire Philippines! Not to raise undue expectations, the Wallace course is actually a simple Par 36 2,600-yard course with Hole#1 starting from the thatched-roof club house some 300 yards away from the sea and curving along the coast before turning at the lighthouse back towards the club house. The Signature Hole – one takes the liberty to call it that – is Hole#4 Par 4 307-yard dog-leg right with a 265-yard straight hair-clipped by tall trees at the turn before the straight again to landing. Not exactly a piece of genius in the course design but even if you have the driving prowess you might still be well tested to make the green in two. Period.

Sipping cool lemon tea on a lazy sunny afternoon and looking over the driving range and the tee-off for Hole#1, it is hard to imagine anyone who could be excited over these course technicalities. You either play here or you don’t. There are no other courses in the vicinity. But not so for Sixto Domenden, the 65 year-old grandpa resident pro, one of the two main architects involved in the building of Wallace. The other architect was his American Air Force colonel for whom, he recalled fondly, he often covered during the latter’s secret rendezvous with his girl-friend.

Way back in Baguio City Sixto began his career in the golf course as a caddy. But he was no ordinary one unless you consider caddying for the infamously great President Marcos as an ordinary job on the course. When they first met, Marcos was only a Congressman. By the time he became President of the Philippines, Sixto was already firmly his personal caddy. As he noted, Marcos did not change a bit after becoming the President and that impressed him a lot. It was the great President who made sure that his golden words of ‘always look back to where you came from before embarking further in your life’ were firmly imprinted in the mind of the then young Sixto. For that Sixto remained grateful. Perhaps the saga of the Marcos’ legacy could have become a little clearer and more easily resolved if everyone trusted the integrity of the great President as much as Sixto did: Marcos was a regular mean handicap 8, but his good card scores were never taken seriously by the media.

When the golden moment for the personal caddy to the President finally arrived, perhaps as a sign of him taking the President’s words of wisdom in earnest, he chose to remain in golf instead of accepting a possibly more lucrative job of position or working abroad. Thus he became the Assistant Director of the Wallace Golf Club project with his American colonel as the chief.

Apart from the President, he also caddied for dignitaries. Among them was Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew who, as he vividly recalled, would always characteristically look up at the sun, open-mouthed, as if to draw inspiration from it before proceeding to set-up for the shot. When asked for the reason, the Prime Minister apparently told him that he drew energy from the act. One day according to Sixto, President Marcos confided to him that the Prime Minister was his mentor. However it wasn’t exactly clear that whether such a ritual of Mr. Lee had in any way decidedly influenced the President to regard the latter his mentor, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Lee is now, perhaps coincidentally or as the result of a strange sequence of events or for the diplomatic golfer in the Prime Minister or the other way round, a Minister Mentor in the cabinet of the Singapore Government!

Sixto also caddied for the late Dr. Christian Bernard, the renowned surgeon who performed the first heart implant operation in 1967. He remembered Dr. Bernard as, understandably, being more concerned with his delicate fingers for surgery than for a more robust grip of fellow countryman Ernie Els’. But, if there’s a feather in the cap that old Sixto would gladly anecdote, it would be that he clinic-coached Christina Kim for two months at the Mimosa Club in Clark Field. Then, young Kim was preparing to qualify for the LPGA card. Before going back to South Korea to do her regional qualifying, she gave Sixto his first ever cell phone for them to stay in touch. As it turned out according to Sixto, on at least two occasions, young Kim called him during play to ask for advice. The rest, as they say, is history. Ms Christina Kim duly qualified and is now a big name in LPGA. For Sixto, the same cell phone remains in his possession despite failing batteries and a long expired shelf-life of the phone itself. For him, it just might ring again and when it does, it can only be for the big time!

Meanwhile, the Junior Golfers’ Programme started by Sixto to produce new young talents continues in this most unassuming course of Wallace Golf Club, although as he has often wondered, for how much longer? In retro, it is not as if he hasn’t done enough for golf in the Philippines by first becoming a caddy, then winning the National Caddies’ Tournament of the Philippines and then representing the nation in the Putra Cup (a regional Southeast Asia Inter-national Team Tournament) which his team won with no small contribution of his top 10 finish in the individuals. The pinnacle of his career was being the personal caddy to the great President following which was his illustrious involvement in the building of Wallace. Sixto has in fact come full circle and should be able now to look back with pride and satisfaction at Wallace today.

But, nearby, where the Casino is, the landscape has lately been irreversibly unearthed. In about six months’ time, a modern 18-hole course will be ready to complement the Casino with mod-cons that Wallace can only dream of. What of Wallace after that? The committee has, albeit reluctantly, decided that progress shall be the way to go and the sand-green shall be turfed, just like everywhere else! Deep down, in the fading light of the evening sun there’s sadness evident through the smudged metal-rimmed glasses on the well-weathered face of the creator of the Wallace Golf Club. Looking over the sand-green of the last hole in the direction of the lighthouse, there is no doubt in his mind, when the virgin turf finally surfaces in six months’ time, a piece of the colourful history of golf in the Philippines will not only be silently but surely concealed and lost forever! Will Sixto remain? Why not, even if it is only for the reason that putting will now become less strenuous! There’s so much that he can now look back on and be proud of, and not least to pass on the story of the origin of golf in San Fernando lest it be so easily forgotten beneath the skin-deep turf of the new green. Yes, I shall remain, just like Christina Kim, watch your telly, never fails to aim her put a little beyond the hole, he assured me!

From: http://yesuccess.com/?p=956

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La Union entrepreneur makes handicrafts from twigs and leaves of native trees

Posted at 7:16 pm June 09, 2011

Tags: Cottage Industries, Entrepreneurship, Handicrafts

By: KC Santos



BAUANG, LA UNION – Eden Villa is using her knowledge as a Biology graduate to create unique handicrafts using twigs and leaves of local trees.

Eden, who owns David’s Well Crafts, is a self-taught handicrafts maker. She often uses books her husband gave her to create her unique items.

She started by gathering leaves, twigs, tree barks, and plant fibers to start her initial collection of handicrafts.

“Even back when I still in college, I have always toyed with the idea of making do with what I have in my surroundings. I never imagined that gift would be the key to the prosperity my family is enjoying now,” Eden says.

She says in their farm, there are mulberries and silkworms. Instead of disposing emptied silkworm cocoons, Eden processes these waste products to form native flowers and accent pieces to her wooden items.

Aside from the farm, Eden says she sources other materials, such as pine cones, from Baguio and Ilocos.

Her handicrafts products range include wall clocks, home decors, Christmas decors, refrigerator magnets, and smaller items like pens. Prices are cheap from P25 to P1,000 considering the labor that goes into processing the items.

With a little research, Eden says she found out that the products she creates are staple items in homes from the countryside of the US.

David’s Well Crafts is now a major supplier handicrafts to one of the major malls based in Manila. If not for manpower shortage, Eden says they would’ve committed to even more local business entities.

The former domestic helper says she didn’t succeed overnight. She adds that if there was one thing she learned while she was in a foreign land, it was that Filipinos are not lazy.

“Filipinos are hardworking. What most of us lack is the initiative,” she says. Eden also believes that Filipinos do not need to leave the country to have better lives.

“There is hope in our country. We just have to be really driven and industrious. Dollars don’t amount to the fulfillment we all can achieve if we stick to our guns,” Eden says.

http://loqal.ph/business-and-finance...-native-trees/



La Union people are creative!

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By Yolanda Sotelo
Inquirer Northern Luzon


HANDLOOMING survives in Bangar, La Union, courtesy of village women who inherited the craft from their elders. PHOTOS BY YOLANDA SOTELO


SEVERAL years ago, a group of Japanese businessmen arrived in the agricultural town of Bangar in La Union and offered to help mass- produce inabel, the handwoven fabric that the town has been creating for centuries.

There was also a group of foreign businessmen who wanted to computerize the handlooming process and make the fabrication of blankets, bath towels, pillow cases and fabrics for dresses and gowns faster.

The businessmen asked Wildreda Rivera, 59, a known weaver and trainer, to demonstrate the handlooming procedures, then tried to engage her services in computerizing the process.

Both instances showed that modernization is tugging at the seam of the age-old inabel weaving industry of Bangar. Local officials and residents, however, continue to resist these advances.

Far from earning more money, the residents would rather preserve the industry’s cultural practices and the unique appeal of their handwoven textiles, Councilor Irene Valencia-Taguiam says.

“Handlooming is our heritage. We want to preserve the uniqueness of our products which will lose their appeal if [these are] mass produced [and created by] machines. Besides, our townsfolk can produce beautiful designs even if they do not have formal schooling. It is an innate talent. We do not want to lose that identity to machines,” says Taguiam, also the town’s tourism officer.

“Besides, with the use the machines, Bangar residents will lose their chance to earn even if they stay at home, and after harvesting their palay,” she adds.

The town has always been synonymous with inabel. During the Spanish era, residents produced the textile starting from planting cotton, spinning the cotton into thread, dyeing and handweaving them into different materials.

Old women in Barangay Consuegra have only faint memories of the boom in the town’s inabel industry. They say the industry started to wane in the late 1960s.

Consuelo Noto Tan, 77, says her late mother left a spool of thread that was dyed at the village’s timbugan, the brick structure where cotton threads were dyed. But save for a braided strand, she had used all as wick for her oil lamp.

“I did not know they were important, or I would have saved them,” Tan says.

source link: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/16925/n...nabel%E2%80%99

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Backbreaking


“INABEL” fabric produced through traditional handlooming is turned into hand towels, bedsheets and material for gowns and dresses. PHOTOS BY YOLANDA SOTELO

Producing the fabric was a backbreaking activity in the olden days, Taguiam says.

Residents harvested cotton, which they themselves planted, after harvesting rice. They removed cotton seeds through an improvised equipment called ladditan.

After this process, the fiber would be spread on a bed of bagasse (sugarcane fibers) and the cotton compacted by beating them with sticks. The compacted fiber is rolled in bamboo sticks and spun through a process called panagtibbi. To strengthen the thread, residents would apply cooked starch on these.

The threads, now rolled in balls, were dyed at the timbugan, then handloomed into inabel.

These days, farmers in the town no longer plant cotton, and the industry is down to handweaving with threads, mostly imported, bought in large quantities from Metro Manila suppliers.

Taguiam says the inabel industry gave Bangar something to be proud of and helped its residents earn a living.

“The town was very fortunate to have an inabel industry. No one was idle and even children earned by engaging in the different phases of the industry that became a show window of values like industry, patience, and craftsmanship,” she says.

Sunset

But she admits the industry is nearing its sunset, with only a few families now engaged in handlooming.

One is retired school teacher Benita Castro, 84, who continues to operate a small shop to give livelihood to her village mates and help preserve the inabel industry.

Castro maintains 20 workers, including Rhodora Rivera and her daughter Roxanne. Roxanne, a Grade 4 pupil, can make at least 10 hand towels a day, earning her P40. Rhodora earns bigger by weaving bedsheets and towels.

Taguiam says many Bangar residents earn through subcontracting, with shops providing them with thread that they handloom at home during their free time.

Others can earn by making plecos, a tassel-like design sewed to a bedsheet’s edges. Sewing the plecos to the edges is another job for some women.

Taguiam laments the waning of the industry. “Sometimes, I blame those residents who told their sons and daughters to study hard to enable them to leave and get away from the inabel weaving industry, which they considered to be a very difficult work. What they did not realize was, because of inabel, they were able to produce professionals,” she says.

source link: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/16925/n...nabel%E2%80%99

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St. William the Hermit Cathedral

Originally a Chapel made of stone and thatch was erected in 1764 by Fr. Francisco Romero and Santiago Olarte atbarrio San Vicente formerly known as “Pindangan” after which San Fernando was named. It was then moved to barrio Tanqui, then to Cabaroan and afterwards to its present site where it was built of stones and bricks by Fr. Juan Sorolla, Simon Guillermo and Pedro Fernando in 1773-1786. It was destroyed by earthquake in 1892 and occupied by the revolutionists under Col. Blas Villamor in 1898 when they overwhelmed the Spanish forces that sought shelter therein. It was destroyed during the liberation (from the Japanese) on February 26, 1945 and was reconstructed by the residents, thru the effort of Bishop Santiago C. Sancho (1947-1949). It was dedicated on February 10, 1949, and upon the canonical erection of the Diocese of San Fernando of La Union and the solemn installation of the first Bishop Most Rev. Victorino C. Ligot, DD, on April 11, 1970, the St. William Parish Church became the St. William Cathedral.

From: Tourism Office of San Fernando City La Union's Photos via Facebook

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Pindangan Ruins

During the Spanish times, a settlement was a place where there were about 200 families. Around this area, there were two settlements, San Vicente de Balanac and San Guillermo de Dalangdang. San Vicente de Balanac was along the coast and during summer, when the sea was calm and perfect for sailing, pirates would come and plunder settlement, taking along with them the women and children leaving behind them a trail of blood. San Guillermo de Dalangdang, however was at the foot of the Cordillera mountains, and during summer, when the fire trees were in bloom, the populace was attacked by headhunters who saw in the red flowers the fire trees as a sign of the gods asking for human offering.

From: Tourism Office of San Fernando City La Union's Photos via Facebook

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Bacsil Ridge Monument

From: Tourism Office of San Fernando City La Union's Photos via Facebook

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photo source

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Do you know that there is a Centennial Tunnel in La Union? It is situated in Poblacion, Aringay, La Union, this 500 meter tunnel was made in 1913 during the American regime. Intended for the trains of the Philippine National Railways (PNR) bound for Baguio City, it was later abandoned by the Commonwealth Government because of the then impending Second World War. According to locals, the tunnel already exists during the Spanish era, it was only in the American occupation that it was developed and fortified, thus making it officially more than a century year old.

From: I Love La Union Facebook

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Pindangan Ruins is located at Brgy. San Vicente, San Fernando City, La Union, about 500 meters from the national highway, near Camp Oscar Florendo, the Regional Headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP). The original name of San Fernando, Pindangan in the Ilocano dialect means a place where meat is sun dried with salt for preservation. Because of the place’s abundant dried meat, the place was called Pindangan.

From: I Love La Union Facebook

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from blog by: Oooneh at http://ooohneh.blogspot.com/2011/06/pindangan.html


Another place to have a look at when in San Fernando City, La Union is the Pindangan Ruins. It is located in Brgy. San Vicente, San Fernando City, La Union, about 500 meters from the national highway.

We had a hard time looking for the road, because even the locals are not quite familiar with the area. With us was a colleague from our regional office, a resident of La Union, and unaware of the existence of my sought-after ruins. We entered a small road at a signage of the Regional Headquarters of the Philippine National Police, got off track a little, backtracked, and it appeared by the left side of the road. If not for the rusty signage, we would not have seen it right away.



The Pindangan Church was built in 1764. The proximity of the church to the seacoast made it vulnerable to pirate attacks, such that the town's church was transferred to several different location and finally to its present site at the town proper as St. William Cathedral. The old church deteriorated through time to the present Pindangan ruins which composed of solid stone walls and buttresses. Lush vegetation in the area gave the ruins' bulk masonry a calm contrast.



A monastery run by the Carmelite Sisters at the forefront of the ruins stands as the guardian to the heritage of the Pindangan Church.



Though the church may be in ruins, an altar of the Mother Mary carrying the child Jesus exists to inspire silent prayers.



Not much to see here, and visit can take as little as ten minutes. Looking for the road took longer time. But if you have a knack for churches as do I, (though I am not religious) it is worth a visit.

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You may be an avid golfer who has travelled around in Southeast Asia and played in most of the known courses on the golf map. However, the chances are you would not have discovered this little course nestled on the coast facing the Luzon Sea, just about an hour or so drive west of Baguio City. To call it a non-descript would unfairly douse the enthusiasm of the many mostly local golfers who gather every late afternoon for the game; nonetheless it could have been passed off as just one of the many courses in the Philippines, built during the time of the American administration and now awaiting either an upgrade, if fortune has it, or a slow death from neglect and then become completely overwhelmed when a new and modern course gets built in the vicinity, except that Wallace Golf Club, the only club in the city of San Fernando, Province of La Union, is unique!
Built in 1975 primarily for the US Airborne Division stationed here, it is the only course with sand-green in the entire Philippines! Not to raise undue expectations, the Wallace course is actually a simple Par 36 2,600-yard course with Hole#1 starting from the thatched-roof club house some 300 yards away from the sea and curving along the coast before turning at the lighthouse back towards the club house. Ping K15 Fairway Wood The Signature Hole – one takes the liberty to call it that – is Hole#4 Par 4 307-yard dog-leg right with a 265-yard straight hair-clipped by tall trees at the turn before the straight again to landing. Not exactly a piece of genius in the course design but even if you have the driving prowess you might still be well tested to make the green in two. Period.
Way back in Baguio City Sixto began his career in the golf course as a caddy. But he was no ordinary one unless you consider caddying for the infamously great President Marcos as an ordinary job on the course. When they first met, Marcos was only a Congressman. By the time he became President of the Philippines, Sixto was already firmly his personal caddy. As he noted, Marcos did not change a bit after becoming the President and that impressed him a lot. It was the great President who made sure that his golden words of ‘always look back to where you came from before embarking further in your life’ were firmly imprinted in the mind of the then young Sixto. For that Sixto remained grateful. Perhaps the saga of the Marcos’ legacy could have become a little clearer and more easily resolved if everyone trusted the integrity of the great President as much as Sixto did: Marcos was a regular mean handicap 8, but his good card scores were never taken seriously by the media.

source