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AAORMOC IN THE BLUE HOUR
What do I love about Ormoc?
First off—the dry adobo with sisi (rock oysters), washed with vinegar and soaked in calamansi at Big Roy’s, where the humba is also to die for, and the sopa de frijoles con huevos del granjero is pure comfort.
For any of these dishes or the sisi alone, I’d come back.
But there’s more. The lapu-lapu tinola at Marta’s on Ormoc Bay, the salpicao, the lechon kawali, also the pancakes any time of the day...
I have yet to taste Ormoc’s famed lechon, a delicacy so celebrated it has a festival, the Lechon Kumbira, exploring its infinite possibilities alongside the region’s other agro-industrial treasures.
I haven’t yet tried the Ormoc pineapple either. The Queen Pineapple, they say, is the sweetest in the world, honored with its own festival.
I’ve only been to Ormoc twice, and on both visits I’d find myself spending the whole day at the Ormoc City Museum to conduct writing workshops, slipping out only for lunch, then stepping back into that quiet space until the blue hour, that fleeting time around sunset when the sky, with the sun in repose, hanging low on the horizon, glows with a shade of blue you see only in dreams, or in impressionist paintings.
But what do I really love about Ormoc?
Its people speak in metaphors. Theirs is the language of feelings. Lyrical is their tongue, often screaming in rhymes or whispering eloquence. I love @lucytgomez and @richardgomezph. I love @telingstar, also her family, whom I have just met. I love @nelson_alindogan and @sergiecat_dolls, who have made a home of it over nearly a decade. I love Manong Guard at my hotel Carlosta, who described Ormoc before Richard and Lucy as, "isang hardin na napabayaan," a garden long neglected, which ignited visions of Mrs. Havisham in my head.
Ormoc is the city of feelings.
#ormoc
#cityoffeelings
#travel
#writeherewritenow
@aapatawaran
