The Philippines on two wheels - part six

The nearest place of consequence is Dumaguete, small capital of Negros Oriental. When the Americans wrested the Philippines from Spain in 1898, Dumaguete was a colonial backwater.

Accounts suggest it was more appealing before once common tartanillas, horse-drawn carriages, were replaced by a marauding army of fume-spewing, pedestrian intimidating, traffic-rules-ignoring vehicles. Presuming there are traffic rules. 

Dumaguete still has occasional charms. The 1916 waterfront promenade, built during U.S. rule, is especially popular in the relative cool of early morning and evening. There then occurs a Twenty-first Century version of the paseo, but one that can involve physical jerks and dog-walking.

From the promenade, one can survey Dumaguete's port, comings and goings of inter-island shipping.

José Rizal, Philippines national hero who met a sticky end at the hands of the Spanish, is said to have spent time on Dumaguete's beach.

Paralleling the promenade, the boulevard was lined by the houses of wealthy hacienderos, the old Spanish-speaking elite. Unfortunately, most of what must have been charming homes have vanished, leaving a few, shabby, even derelict, reminders of another time. 

Look carefully around Dumaguete and, behind 2013's advertising clutter, you can find once delightful buildings.

In this case, a local version of art deco imported, so to speak, from the States.

Here's a cheerful home near the port.

A nearby building is shaped like a ship.

The Philippines - as you may know from my freighter voyage postings - supplies many of the world's seafarers. This means maritime colleges - some of dubious quality - are as numerous as steel shipping containers with Chinese products for Wal-Mart. I have no idea about the academic standards of this one, but enjoy its nautical flavour. 

Beyond the greenery, this college with 'radar mast' and 'funnel' is closed, apparently because of poor standards.

Not far from Dumaguete in Bais, is a hotel built by the Americans in 1910. The dining room, with antique sideboards, floral arrangements and faded photos from a more elegant age, is a rare - for this part of the world - time capsule. 

Say what you will about the colonial powers, but those bearing Kipling's imperial burden knew how to build for climate. How much better than today's concrete walls and corrugated roofs, which often require expensive air conditioning - for Westerners, if not locals.

Dumaguete has a university founded by American Presbyterians and claimed as one of the Philippines' better provincial institutions. This 1909 building includes bits and pieces from a demolished New York theatre.

The chapel evokes - as doubtless intended - New England and Protestant simplicity, rectitude and virtue, where, only a few years before, Spanish friars had ruled vast estates, often with 'wives' and children on the side.

The campus features the requisite statute of the first president.

Every university needs 'halls' (they sound suitably academic) ...

... there's even a building that could - from its name - be in an English village ...

... and what I assume is intended to be edifying art.

Across a broad lawn walk, run, flirt, slouch the future.

On a sweaty, sugar cane island the other side of the world, I'm reminded of my own university, idyllically and temperately set in a little New Brunswick town (well, winters could be a bit rough). Silliman boasts hundreds of shady acacia trees for reading, academic debate and snoozing. Mine has a lily pond with swans beside which we would recline pre and post-snow and affect to be intellectuals. 

Universities with well-used buildings creaking from history and learning, filled with unlined faces, bring out the worst kind of longing. Never did I expect it on this jungly, volcanic stretch of unstable rock.