ONCE HERE, our visitors need not anymore visit the usual places a tourist is wont to do while in this island paradise.

There are new scintillating places to see –what with the “one town: one tourist site” of “one culinary delight” being propagated hereabouts. One can perhaps see an aging former teacher who is now quietly spending the rest of her life in a remote village. It is searching and finding that someone we may have hurt or offended in the past and mend fences and create fresh, good memories.

It can mean visiting the old parish church where you often met your “puppy love” and rekindle warm thoughts along memory lane.  It can mean giving aid to a priest who once said your masses in your youth and is now in a wheelchair.

It’s going out of our way to find long-lost relatives who all these years may have been intimidated by the status you have achieved and are too shy to approach you first.  It is finding that watery creek of long ago where you used to gather stones with neighbors to make your small stone house.

It is going to the upscaled beach fronts in Maribojoc, Cortes and Loon, the massive fault along Antequera and its new second lake, the sink holes and the collapsed mountain tops due to the earthquake.  It is visiting the graves of your former classmates who have gone before you and who you will all join in the years to come– heaven, hell or purgatory.

Of course, it could also be a time to savor the full blooming of Panglao and its many new resorts as a prelude to December 2017 when the first jetliner from Korea touches down at the new international airport. And confirm the promise of an Anda whose resplendent white stretch of beach rivals that of Boracay.

It too is a time to visit the old campuses where you once held hands with your lover and the stage where the plays and contests were once held. It is a time to watch the old streets you used to play “bato-lata” now saddled by illegally parked cars on both sides of the street- indicating both the fruits and the curse of progress.

It is knelling to the same God in the chapel–He, Who you once thanked for in allowing you to graduate from school, despite your many absences and misdemeanors. Indeed the list of “what to do” when here in July is as long as one’s passion and yearning for “home”.

Come home, fellow Boholanos, and reconnect with your roots.

For comments: email to dejarescobingo@yahoo.com or bohol-rd@mozcom.com