Gastronomical Delights in Baguio, City of Pines

Baguio remains a favorite getaway retreat for residents of the northern part of the Philippines. High up in the Cordillera mountains, the city built around a former US military camp delights her visitors because of her cool weather, her youthful population, and her combination of urban excitement and provincial beauty.

This particular trip turned out to be a gastronomical delight for my friends and me as we ate our way around the city.

Quick Tips:

The weather in Baguio usually hovers around 15-degrees Celsius to 25-degrees Celsius. Pack for slightly colder nights during the coldest months, December to February. Pack an umbrella or raincoat during northern Philippines' rainiest months, June to November.

Baguio is accustomed to accommodating tourists. Almost everyone here can understand English.

Baguio is also a university town, with students from all over the Philippines studying in its many universities including the University of the Philippines-Baguio and St. Louis University. Baguio is also home to one of the first and best international schools in the country, Brent School Baguio, which used to cater to students of American military men and now caters to expat families and Korean immigrants. The youth of its population brings down the prices of this city even further, and the budget-conscious traveler will find many restaurants and guesthouses that fit right within their budget.

Best Way To Get Around:

Most visitors will be traveling to Baguio from Manila, the capital of the Philippines. There are three convenient ways to get to Baguio. The first, and the most expensive, is by plane. Asian Spirit flies from Manila to Baguio everyday. The flight is around P2000 one-way, and takes less than an hour.

The second way to get to Baguio is by car. The picturesque trip is usually 4 to 5 hours, although during long-weekend holidays expect the trip to take an additional two hours or so, because of the number of people visiting Baguio.

The third most convenient way to get to Baguio is by bus. Several bus companies with terminals along EDSA, Cubao ply the Manila-Baguio route; Victory Liner is one of the most popular. The trip can take around five to six hours by bus, inclusive of a bathroom break midway into the trip. The one-way fare is less than P500 (US).

When in Baguio, the easiest way to get around Baguio is by car. If you don't have that luxury, then the taxi cab is the next best option (P30 flagdown, P2.50 per kilometer).

For the past few years, whenever my friends and I go up to Baguio, I've stayed in the same place, Misty Mountain Inn.

Just a disclaimer: Misty Mountain Inn is actually the ground floor of my uncle's house up in Baguio. That having been said, I'll be as honest as I can in my description of the place.

The house is a sturdy, concrete and hardwood structure along Marcos Highway. The ground floor, which used to be a garage, was converted into three apartments some decades ago, and they welcome holiday makers and long-term transients.

There are three apartments available, all of them quite spacious. In fact, when we came up here with my friends for this food-trip experience, they were pleasantly surprised at the size of the apartments and commented that it would have been great if they had known about this place when they were in college (and were wont to travel in a whim in giant groups of 10 or more up to Baguio).

The two 2-bedroom apartments have double beds in each room, with an additional pull-out double trundle bed under each bed. Each of the two 2-bedroom apartments can comfortably sleep eight The studio apartment has a double bed and a pull-out bed, and can comfortably sleep four.

Each of the apartments has a kitchenette with basic cooking implements, a gas stove, and a refrigerator. The two bigger apartments have a dining table each, and the studio apartment has a kitchen counter wide enough for people to eat at. Having our own kitchenette was a delight: other than the convenience of being able to cook our own breakfast every morning, there was another moment when we were so grateful that we had a kitchenette to use. This was after buying strawberries at the strawberry fields: we bought a bar of chocolate at the nearby convenience store, melted it on the stove, and pigged out on strawberries dipped in chocolate.

Electric fans and air-conditioning are both unnecessary in Baguio (the average temperature is 15 to 25 degrees Celsius, and in certain times of the year, it can plummet to single-digit numbers at night). Hot water, however, is essential, and all the apartments have running piping hot water, the kind which makes you want to stay under the shower for half an hour on cold days.

The inn is along Marcos Highway. The compound on which the house is on is huge, with a lot of ample parking space for your vehicles, and a pretty view of the mountains. If you don't have your own car, you'll have to cross the street to wait for a taxi or jeepney to get into town. However, if you do have your own vehicle, or if you're traveling in groups with a convoy of two or more cars, it's perfect.

The furniture is basic, and the linens, while fresh and clean, are not new, but Misty Mountain Inn has been able to keep its prices low through the years. Each 2-bedroom apartment is P2500 per night, and the studio is P1500 per night.

This inn is perfect for big groups or families, looking for an affordable place to stay, especially those who want to save a little money by doing their own cooking while they're in Baguio.

My husband and I arrived in Baguio City at around 5pm. After settling in, we picked up our friends who were strolling around Burnham Park and headed to Oh Mai Khan, a Mongolian barbecue restaurant along Otek Road (round the corner from Cafe By The Ruins).

Benguet being one of the main sources of vegetables for the whole of Luzon, any cuisine with vegetables is better in Baguio than in most other places, and Mongolian food is no exception. My husband feasted on a scrumptious bowl of Mongolian barbecue; I had a delicious shrimp dish; my friend had a yummy chicken teriyaki salad.

I've been to Oh Mai Khan a number of times, and everything I've tried on the menu is yummy. The dessert cakes in the display refrigerator looked good, too, although my friends and I had already decided to go to Camp John Hay, so we will have to try Oh Mai Khan's desserts another time.

My friends and I originally had planned to go to Camp John Hay for its famous baterol chocolate, but the baterol chocolate place was closed for the evening. We went to Mile High, a row of shops and eateries in the camp, but nothing there really appealed to us, so finally we decided to try our luck at the Manor, the hotel inside Camp John Hay.

And boy, what a find!

The pastry and cake shop at the Manor had some of the yummiest looking desserts we had seen for that price range (around P100 per slice). Sinfully delicious-looking chocolate cakes, cheesecakes, and cream pies were on display, and an intriguing looking strawberry-topped pastry that could be bought by the inch. We placed our cake and coffee orders and sat down by the fireplace in the beautiful lounge while we waited for our food.

The coffee was disappointing: my husband's whiskey-coffee concoction had too much whiskey while my friend's iced coffee mocha tasted too watery. The cakes, however, were simply scrumptious! We ended up putting all our orders in the middle and sampling one another's cake orders, and the entire dessert experience was simply a delight!

On Day 2 of our Baguio trip, after a simple homemade breakfast, we headed out to Tam-awan Village. We drove to Quezon Hill then asked around for directions to Tam-awan Village until we finally found it.

It's hard to explain what Tam-awan Village is. When you enter the sloping property (like most properties in Baguio, this one is built on the slope of the mountain), you find a little path that snakes through the grass up to the rest of the property. A giant installation sculpture of a man on a carabao greets you. Up some steps, and you pay an entrance fee (P20, if I recall correctly) and then up the path some more until you see a cluster of indigenous huts. Each of these huts is an authentic house that once belonged to indigenous people who live in these Cordillera mountains; the huts were transported here by truck. Guests can actually rent these huts as accommodation; each hut has been modernized somewhat with an electric lightbulb in each hut and a bathroom either under or behind it. On the door of each hut is a brief explanation either of the function of the hut itself or of the tribe whose architecture is showcased in each hut.

I'd stayed in an indigenous hut in the mountains before during an immersion in college, so indigenous huts weren't entirely new to me, although I was amazed at how small these particular huts were, and I was reminded how little people really need to survive and how much excess and waste our urbanized lifestyles produce.

Throughout the property installation art pieces greet the visitor as well. This entire property is a hang-out of Baguio-based artists (Baguio has a thriving arts community), and the idea behind the construction of Tam-awan Village was Ben Cabrera's, one of the country's most famous artists.

At the end of the winding path is a little restaurant/souvenir shop, another hut which has been converted into an artist's gallery, a concrete structure which houses another gallery, and a hut where visitors can sit and be sketched by Tam-awan's resident artists for a voluntary donation.

To get to Tam-awan Village, look at the location map here: www.tamawanvillage.com.

After our Tam-awan Village visit, we crossed the street to Arko ni Apo, home, gallery, and coffee shop of sculptor Ben-Hur Villanueva and his family. Ben-Hur used to teach art at the grade school at which my husband and a friend who was with us studied. We walked into Arko ni Apo and admired the various sculptures on display. In a back area, the Villanueva family was having lunch and we waved to them and looked around some more.

Through a glass door, we could see Ben-Hur himself and a young man working on some metal sculptures in a back part of the property. We decided to go up and introduce ourselves; my husband and my friend explained to Ben-Hur that they had both been his students twenty years ago. Ben-Hur was delighted at this revelation and a lively conversation ensued, and within the hour we met two of his sons, his wife, his daughter-in-law, and two of his grandchildren.

Ben-Hur's family is a family of artists. His late brother, two of his sons, and his four-year-old granddaughter are all artists as well.

Ben-Hur showed us his coffee shop called "Cafe Diperensiya," called such because most of the art pieces in the coffee shop were broken ("diperensiya") in some way. He treated us to some interesting soy coffee, and we ended up buying some sunflower honey which was on sale at the coffee shop as well.

To get to Arko ni Apo, follow this map to Tam-awan Village. Arko ni Apo is across the street.

After our artistic stop, we drove down the road to La Trinidad, the town beside Baguio where one of the major vegetable trading posts is. I wanted to go to the trading post to buy vegetables; nowhere else in the Philippines can you buy vegetables as cheap as in La Trinidad. We weren't able to find the trading post; instead, to our delight, we saw a large sign pointing to the Strawberry Farms.

The Strawberry Farms is exactly that, a strawberry plantation along the side of the road in La Trinidad. Visitors are allowed to walk in the fields in which not only strawberry but various vegetables and flowers are also grown. Tourists may pick strawberries for a fee (double whatever the going rate for strawberries is at the time; when we went, strawberries were P70 per kilo [they were in season], so the picking rate was P140 inclusive of the price of the strawberries) and if you want to walk in the individual strawberry patches to take photographs, you have to pay P10. It's free, however, to simply walk in between strawberry patches.

On the side of the road, a row of vendors peddles various strawberry products: fresh strawberries by the kilo, strawberry jam, strawberry ice cream, strawberry wine, strawberry taho (taho is a Philippine delicacy made of beancurd and syrup), and various other delicacies. We sampled a bit of everything before leaving.

Later on, we brought out a kilo of the strawberries we bought and ate them every way we knew how: with cream, with condensed milk, with melted chocolate, with pepper (someone told me about this and it's pretty good!).

To get to the strawberry farms from La Trinidad's main road, make a left in front of the last gate of BSU where a large sign points toward the strawberry farm.