Deliciously Me

I believe the dark clouds followed us to Laoag. Or maybe it was there all the time. LOL. I know it rained at certain part of the road, but can’t remember where. But it began to drizzle when we were in town.

Jenseon Button wasn’t sure on the location of Balay da Blas, a pension house where we’ll be spending the night in Laoag. Sat whipped out his iPhone and tracked the place but apparently Jenseon Button couldn’t decipher as apparently the map showed blue screen with white lines only.

He stopped at the petrol station where he got down to around the locals on the location. Sat then researched the house and finally managed to locate it. When Jenseon Button came back, he was still clueless and Sat then told him that he has found the place. So Sat directed him until we reached the location. The other car followed closely behind.

I knew where was the place as I’ve searched, located and even dropped point on the place before in Googlemap, but how la to tell them when I sat super far behind? LOL! Moreover, I think it’s best to let the man do the directing job.

Jenseon Button drove directly onto the porch of Balay da Blas. Few pension house workers quickly came out to help with the bags. We then expressed thanks and bid Jenseon Button and Buddha goodbye. Like usual, Sat went in to settle the registration and check-in procedure while the rest of us took pictures of place.

There’s a hint of romanticism in place. Plants like morning glory and purplish pink bougainvilleas can be seen all over the wall fences around the porch. A high arch with two roman pillars indicates the entrance to the 4 storey high building. A zinc roof gazebo which serves as a cafeteria is erected on the left side of the entrance, which a smaller wooden shed on the right side is where the kitchen is.

Sat finished checking in and came out for us. He told us that the girls will be occupying the two rooms behind him and the guys will all be sleeping on the first floor. Then he passed us the keys to our rooms. Hannah, Jess and I went to the room on the left while Emily, Ailing and May went to the one on the right. The rest went up with Sat.

One thing I noticed when I entered the room is the floor tiles. The floor is of red tiles – which adds additional colour to your feet. The colouring on your feet will automatically be transferred to the slippers especially if your slippers are white. T_T

The room is biggg! It’s not the usual hotel room that we’re getting. In fact, we’ve gotten ourselves Junior Suite. Hehe! So our suite has a living room, pantry/kitchen area, bathroom, a bedroom and a small garden behind! Niceee!

There’s a small TV at the corner of the living room. A writing desk with a chair is placed beside the TV. Two sofas with a coffee table in the middle. Colourful pillows adorning the sofas. Lovely paintings hung on the wall, antiques decorating certain part of the room. These are all attentively chosen by the hotel owner to give a sense of homey feeling to the travelers like us.

Charming indeed! <3

And we have our own kitchen too! Too bad we’re not cooking there or else we could fully utilize this space. So, we used it to charge our batteries – both handphone and camera batteries. Haha.

Our bathroom! Totally felt like at home.

Next, move to the bedroom. The queen size bed is all white which brings out the rich dark brown colour of the furniture in the room. Classy! Wide glass sliding doors connects the room to the patio behind. Ahh, little sanctuary at the end of the room.

One thing I dislike about the room is the mirror of the dressing room that faces the bed! Super pantang loh!

We thought of hiring few trikes to get to the sand dune which is a popular place to visit in Laoag. But as we refreshed ourselves, the sky decided to rain… heavily. Few minutes later, Sat came in knocking, and informing us on pushing the plan to the next day. We acknowledged that and we spent our time watching TV and online in the room.

Yes, the entire building has WIFI!

Happily I checked my Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare through my iTouch. However, Facebook disallowed me from updating my status, which I don’t understand why.

Then I used Hannah’s netbook to log in. Upon checking in, I realised that Facebook blocked me out for checking in from Philippines. I don’t know how it works, but I guess it started blocked me from updating the moment I used Sat’s iPhone to sign in when we were travelling in the bus from Manila to Vigan on the first night.

After going through the security questions, I finally managed to update my status. Whee!

Hannah was the only one taking shower. Both Jess and I decided to do so after dinner. When Sat came to knock on our door again, we quickly took our stuff and went out of the room. Outside it was still drizzling, so we went in to take umbrellas. Hannah has told us to bring that before coming to Philippines, and umbrella did prove itself to be very handy at all times! Haha!

The hotel staff has already called few trikes for us. When they came, we just went in. Hannah, Jess and I were into the first trike we saw.

It was a scary ride. It was a bumpy, wet and purplish blue as the purplish blue neon light in the trike is our only source of light! We bumped our butt against the seat for a good old 15 minutes before reaching our destination.

I think the time took was shorter, but it felt THAT LONG! @_@

Finally we reached. Boy was I glad to get out of that trike. Paid 8 pesos (RM0.58) to the driver. Haha! The restaurant staff came out with umbrella to assist us, but seeing us armed with our own umbrellas, they opened the door and greeted us in.

Then they led us to the table of 8 but when Hannah told them that we have 11 pax altogether, the staff quickly added in few more tables and chairs.

Emily, Ailing and May reached not long after that, followed by Aaron, Steven and Daniel. Sat and David were the last to arrive. They have to wait for one of our trikes as there weren’t much trike operating at that hour.

You see, people in Laoag are very healthy. They wake up early, eat early and sleep early too. Hannah told us that they eat at 6 and sleep at 8. You can imagine all the ahhhs and huhs we gave Hannah when she told us that. By the time we reached the restaurant, it was already 7. So, trikes in the town at that hour are scarce.

We wanted to taste Illocano food but unsure on what to order after looking at the menu.

SO, we pushed the decision to Hannah. Haha. She recommended and described to us few dishes which made us go Yes, Yes – please order that!

The best dish of all is the POQUE-POQUE. Oh my! The name – it sounds so misleading.

Hannah explained that it’s actually eggplants cooked with something that I don’t remember now. Haha! To be frank, we weren’t interested in the ingredients – we were only interested in the name itself and curious on how it’ll look like. Moreover Hannah said the word in a way that’s very cute and innocent which made us all laughed so hard! I bet the restaurant staffs and the other diners must be wondering why we made so much noise. Lol!

Earlier in the day I asked Hannah for empanada, a Spanish and Portuguese stuffed bread or pastry but apparently I asked at the wrong time and couldn’t find one. So when Hannah saw that in the menu, she ordered that for us to try.

That piece of empanada is as long as a fork. Luckily Hannah ordered only 5 pieces for us to share as we want to save some space for other dishes.

The empanada tastes something like karipap, just that the skin is much softer. The stuffing is generously a lot; tasted sweet instead of spicy and gosh… I’m craving for one now. T_T

Then the one by one the food came. We quickly digged in as we were starvinggg! And the poque-poque is delicious! Good recommendation from Hannah! Slurps!

If you’re wondering which dish above is called poque-poque, it’s the one on the top right. Don’t look down upon this down, the taste is so exquisite that you’ll end up scooping more and more onto your plate. Haha!

We even had dessert. Can’t recall the name of the dessert though, but it is rich in flavour apart from greeny look.

You have to squeeze in lime juice to enhance the taste. We tried both with and without the lime; and the one with lime really made our eyes smile with happiness! <3

We have a wonderful time in the restaurant. Ohya, I forgot to introduce the restaurant we went to. Balay da Blas has a small restaurant situated on Rizal Street. The restaurant, Saramsam offers Ilocano food as well as western food. They even fuse both elements together, making them Saramsam’s signature dishes.

What really caught my eyes is the effort of making the entire restaurant looks inviting, cosy and romantic. The moment I entered the restaurant, immediately I felt taken like the place. The dim light, the bird cage chandelier, the cute little plants near the windows, the weird yet unique decos on the wall shelves – all these add charisma and characters to the restaurant.

With good companions, good laughs and good food, we couldn’t be happier. We settled the bill and left the restaurant with jolly mood and happy stomach. Even the trike back home didn’t deter us from smiling. The atmosphere we felt that time was totally magical – did really feel like in Dinnyland! Haha!

The moment we reached the hotel, all of us went to May, Emily and Ailing’s room to settle our messy bills (the trike home was 10 pesos (RM0.73); 535 pesos (RM39) for my share of the room in Balay da Blas and 180 pesos (RM13.15) for my meal at Saramsam), preordered tomorrow’s breakfast and talked on tomorrow’s activities. Once done, we went back to our room to rest.

But Hannah, Jess and I ended up watching MAMMA MIA which was playing on the HBO that night. We sang songs and FB at the same time! Lol. In between, I charged my batteries and went to bath. Then I changed to my pyjamas and went to bed. Jess has earlier declared that she’s going to sleep on the sofabed, so Hannah and I shared the queen size bed. Sleep next to a hottie, nice! XD

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