Kara's into architecture / interior design and so - like any encouraging dad - we try to do things and visit places that support that. Found out online about the town of Taal and how they've a number of preserved heritage homes and B&B's open to visit.
Took the two hour trip down south expecting a quaint little town and was surprised by the number of tourist buses and yuppies with cameras and iPads exploring the town. Well, there went our quiet sojourn. We'd been brought back to those 80's movies - stereotyping Japanese tourists with their Nikons.
We'd been guided by a reverser architect (20 years abroad), Robert Arambulo, who'd fallen in love with the town and bought a dilapidated bahay na bato and turned it into an inn. I'd been reminded of that Margaret Mead quote about how it's actually small groups of people who make the changes in the world when he'd recounted how it was a circle of them who banded together - with negligible local government support - to come up with a tourism thrust.
Today, it's a collection of about a couple noteworthy restaurants, seven guest homes and the newly opened treasure, Paradores de Taal ("A Place in Time").
The visitors to the town were still no match, of course, to the horde that invaded Baguio during our January visit.
In both cases, conversations with locals and others brought out these conclusions:
- Taal and Baguio became closer because of STAR Tollway and the extension of SCTEX, respectively.
- The booming economy is humming along for certain sectors of society.
- Because of the BPO industry, millennials are now traveling. Evidence, perhaps, of that demographic sweet spot they talk about ("....the country was in what some economists call a demographic sweet spot, in which millions of young people will be entering the work force." - NYTimes - Aug. 3, 2014) .
- It's their generation and we're just getting out of the way of their selfie sticks. It had been a topic of conversation with my colleagues and something I'm quizzing others about is the fact that social media is driving Filipinos to travel - a mixture of wanting to show off, being envious and that fear of being left behind.
Unless anybody out there has a better term, we're calling that Facetripping.
Taking out my crystal ball (no, it's not an app) and I see this traveling trend growing and to locations that are experiential in nature and are, of course, selfie-friendly.
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