Filipino Feasting

The Ananyana on Bohol island lived up to expectations on the accommodation front, but the food far surpassed what we anticipated would be on offer at a small resort.

Taking one meal at a time,

• The breakfast was fabulous - selections included parma ham layered on buttery granary bread, chunky mango yoghurt, an array of Filipino sausages - all lip-smackingly good.
• Lunch carried on the good work started in the morning. I had a fabulous popiah-like creation, with an all-egg crepe encasing a sweet+savoury prawn and veg filling.
• Dinner was when we felt truly in the Philippines. We eschewed the regular selection and went off-menu to order Sinigang and Adobo 3 nights in a row. The chef executed these Filipino classics with aplomb. The 2Bears slurped up the tamarind Sinigang soup and tucked heartily into tender chunks of meat in a soy-suace, black pepper, star anise, vinegar and bay leaf Adobo sauce.

All was cooked in an open kitchen (see the hive of activity in the picture), in front of which we had our nightly Tanduay rum and cokes.

We left satiated on food and sleep. As Bohol was a sleepy isle nonpareil, we had ample opportunity to be horizontal in a variety of places - in bed, in basket hammocks, and on deckchairs, eating juicy mangos like the decadent bears we like to be.

The staff led by manager Joy were attentive to the limited guests (there are fewer than than 12 suites on offer). The guests were a 4-child Filipino family and a mixed bag of Europeans - Russians, a gay pair, a French-Singapore couple based in Holland, and assorted other Western Europeans.

As the 2Bears want to impart wisdom whenever they can, these are 10 Things We Learnt On This Trip (David Letterman-style drumroll please):

(1) It's OK to eat Adobo and Sinigang 3 days in a row.

(2) Boracay still has the best beaches in the Philippines (Bohol's beaches are nice but not topnotch).

(3) Disregard CNN's weather forecast on Bohol (Tagbilaran) which is a complete fabrication.

(4) Go business class on the Oceanjet ferry between Cebu and Tagbilaran - you get to sit on slightly battered but real airplane business class seats, and get served a pork chop with rice while watching a Hollywood movie.

(5) Cebu is the furniture capital of the Philippines but you can hardly buy anything as an individual tourist (masquerade as a furniture distributor if you want to get anywhere close to http://www.kennethcobonpue.com without making a prior business appointment).

(6) Silkair does not serve dessert. It would have made up for the dogfood-like inflight meals we had.

(7) The accounting at small Filipino resorts is lousy - but since it worked in our favour I won't complain.

(8) Ayala Centre in Cebu has pretty good shopping (Mr Bear's favourite Girbaud jeans, a decent Rustan's department store and Starbucks even).

(9) The Filipinos are experts in corned beef confections. Check out the Corned Beef Pandesal. Definition: An oval shaped soft bread roll dredged in bread crumbs and filled with sauteed corned beef, which is then baked to a light golden brown color.

(10) It's OK not to have a TV in one's hotel room. This guarantees that you will sleep 9 hours straight.