To Bataan with love, part 2: Reaching D’Samat

There was even a certain glowing transcendence that I couldn’t help but feel whenever I looked at things as mundane as gas stations and rice paddies and humble but persistent hawkers of delicacies and bon-bons who’d step into and out of the bus at designated stops along the way.

I mentioned in my previous column that it would take 9-12 hours to get to Bataan from Metro Manila. The day I left for Bataan, I was lucky; the sun still wasn’t up when the bus I took rolled out of the EDSA-Taft station and I arrived in Balanga City around noontime. I wasn’t hungry at all, thanks to the big bag of Calbee I took along for the ride.

If you’re taking a trip to Bataan and you’ve just arrived, one of the first things you’ll notice is that taxis are nowhere to be found. Not at the bus station, not at the cathedral or the town plaza, not downtown at the hotels and the little Robinsons Mall, not anywhere. Instead, you’ll see lots of tricycles. But not too many so as to clog up the small roads; just enough so that people who need to get a ride someplace far away do get a ride. I got my stuff out of the bus’s trunk and walked to the queue of tricycles just outside the station.

“Where to, boss?” the tricycle driver asked as he helped me load my stuff into his sidecar. “D’Samat Hotel,” I told him. “Okay,” the driver said, with a very obvious grin. Back then, I didn’t think much of that ear-to-ear smile, I just assumed he was being hospitable to a newcomer like me.

I had learned about D’Samat Hotel by doing Google searches for cheap Balanga hotels just the night before. It took me two hours to go through and think about my choices while taking into account the cash I had at hand. With D’Samat, I could get a cheap but decent room. It’d have only the bare basics: a bed, a stand fan, and a bathroom (no shower though, just a faucet, a pail, and a dipper). I didn’t mind at all that there’d be no air conditioning, no television, and no WiFi. Anyway, it was a quick ride from the station, as D’Samat turned out to be much closer to the bus station than I’d anticipated.

The people who run the hotel were all wearing house clothes. I paid for one night’s stay at the front desk, got a key attached to a flat and chunky wooden fob with my room’s number painted on it, and accompanied the attendant carrying my bags to my room. My room didn’t come with a window and even if it did it wouldn’t have a stunningly picturesque view, but it was comfortable and secure. That was all that mattered.

As I closed the door behind me, I noticed a round, hollow iron pole leaning against the wall. I picked it up, felt it to be solid enough, and swung it around a few times. “Maybe to fend off intruders,” I said to myself. Minutes later, I figured out it was a drying pole for wet clothes.

A few days would pass before before I’d be told jeeringly that D’Samat had a reputation for being a love motel in those parts. I also found it funny myself, but not embarrassing at all. During my time there, I saw not even one affectionate couple enter or leave the place, nor was I kept awake by passionate grunts, moans, and sighs typical of such accommodations.

Come to think of it, if a backpacker from Sweden or some other country in the West were to visit Bataan, I doubt they’d stay in one of the more luxurious hotels in Balanga or one of the snazzy resorts in and around Mariveles. They’d want to experience life as it really is in Bataan – street food, mosquitoes, and all – and if it’s luxury and comfort they truly wanted they could always just stay home. That was the impression I got from blond-haired, sunburned, bandana-wearing, backpack-toting tourists I’ve encountered in Cebu, who almost always go for cheap hotels and youth hostels or even couch-surf even though they have money enough to tour the whole country maybe twice or thrice.

Long story short, I had reached D’Samat at last (I know, I know, please pardon the pun). Next time you catch me here in the pages of Sunstar, I’ll be taking you along with me on a nice afternoon Sunday stroll in Balanga’s downtown district.