Growth potential
The shoreline in Lingayen has receded by several meters in the past years, I was told. This has left the capital town of Pangasinan with a wider beach that’s impressively long – stretching all the way to La Union.
The gray sand is powdery, fine and soft on the feet like the white sand of Boracay. A striking feature of the stretch in Lingayen lined with solar-powered lamps is its cleanliness, especially considering that the entire area is a public beach, with huts free for anyone’s use.
In fact the entire town – and all the areas of Pangasinan that I visited, from Mangatarem in the west to the eastern towns past Dagupan City – were all clean. Even the fish market of Dagupan, where you can buy the city’s renowned milkfish or bangus and malaga, was relatively clean. This has surely contributed to the popularity of seafood grills nearby; the al fresco restaurants were full of diners even near midnight last Friday.
With its distinctive bangus (the Dagupan appellation should be registered) and malaga, the city’s market can aspire to become a smaller version of Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji market, where tuna and other seafood from all over the world (including Cagayan de Oro) are sold at a dawn auction. A single fish can fetch thousands of dollars.
Tsukiji is clean, and the smell is like fresh catch from the sea, which can be mouthwatering for sushi and sashimi lovers. Nearby are seafood restaurants. The entire complex is one of Tokyo’s top tourist destinations.
Cleanliness is one of the requirements for any place to become a popular site for visitors. In Lingayen last Friday, which I visited to receive the province’s Asna (for salt, or salt of the Earth) Award for journalism on Pangasinan’s founding anniversary, I was told that cleanliness is a priority of the provincial government.
The cleanliness of the province is striking especially because the waterways and streets of neighboring Tarlac were disappointingly dirty, considering that it’s the home province of President Aquino. The garbage floating in the river in Camiling was visible even from afar.
Pangasinan is ready for tourism. The roads are clean and smoothly paved, starting from the first town after Tarlac, my paternal grandmother’s hometown of Mangatarem, northward to Lingayen and Dagupan, and the southbound return drive through Urdaneta and Rosales before entering the TPLEX.
The province is full of centuries-old churches and houses that can rival those in Vigan. And it has distinctive local goods: luscious mangoes, puto Calasiao, Lingayen
longganiza, sold in the streets alongside the products of Northern Luzon – red shallots, the best garlic in the world, bagnet and bagoong.
Pangasinan is blessed with natural attractions. Farther northwest is Alaminos and the Hundred Islands, which, like Lingayen, is becoming a favorite playground of whale sharks.
There was no whale shark when I visited, but I hope to see one when I return soon. Any visitor will want to return to Lingayen, like Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Lingayen and Dagupan are feuding over the actual site where MacArthur actually landed on Jan. 9, 1945. About 68,000 US troops made an amphibious landing along 32 kilometers of shoreline, which must have stretched from Lingayen to Dagupan. But Lingayen has built a shrine near the spot where MacArthur is believed to have actually set foot first, just across the provincial capitol.
The renovated capitol is itself a tourist spot, along with the governor’s official residence, named after Princess Urduja. A painting of the half-naked warrior princess hangs at the entrance hall of the residence.
* * * The receding shoreline, whose cause is unknown, adds to the mystique of the gulf and its powerful undertow. Because of this strong undercurrent, swimming is prohibited in Lingayen’s beach by 5 p.m.
The seemingly endless beach reminds me of the main beach in Bali. Maybe it’s a biased opinion, but I think Lingayen Gulf’s beach is better, and it can become as world renowned as the Indonesian resort island.
Lingayen would be a wonderful spot for hosting an event during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila this November. Provincial officials themselves, however, acknowledge that they lack the tourism infrastructure for such an international gathering.
There are only three hotels in Lingayen, none of them five-star, provincial information officer Orpheus Velasco told me. The provincial government runs the best of the three, the Capitol Resort Hotel, which has suites, golf facilities and a swimming pool from where you can walk to the beach.
The drive from Manila to Lingayen takes from four to five hours in normal traffic within Metro Manila through NLEX and through the western route through Mangatarem. Going back through the longer route through Dagupan and then via TPLEX and NLEX, without traffic late at night, can take three hours at top speed. Many tourists don’t have time to spare for that kind of travel.
A high-speed train service would help tourism in the northern provinces (dream on), and the Lingayen airstrip has room for expansion into an international airport (in your dreams). The closest airport is Clark, a long drive even by TPLEX. A cruise port can be an alternative, but we can’t build one even in Manila.
Such projects will have to wait; how long will depend on the political configurations in 2016.
I met Gov. Amado Espino, now on his third and final term, and Vice Gov. Jose “Ferdinand” Calimlim for the first time only at the awards night, but I know the governor is facing controversies and is not on good terms with
daang matuwid. He left the Nacionalista Party after Mark Cojuangco announced plans to challenge the governor’s post. Espino, a former constabulary and police officer, is fielding his son. Like much of the rest of the country, families rule Pangasinan.
At the convention center near the capitol, there is a travel expo from April to May, showcasing Espino’s accomplishments as governor as well as the best tourist sites of Pangasinan. The exhibit is called the “Dawning of the Golden Era.”
Espino has official poverty figures to cite from the National Statistical Coordination Board to partly back that claim: Pangasinan’s poverty incidence of 26.5 percent in 2006 fell to 19.5 percent in 2010 and dipped further to 17 percent in 2012. It could partly account for his political staying power.
The figures could be better with infrastructure that can stimulate tourism, manufacturing and export of Pangasinan’s top products, bangus and mangoes. It’s good for the province and for the country. Let’s hope that in the next administration, such considerations won’t be held hostage to politics.