First week in Bohol
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Takaw at Sursur!22 August 2008
Thursday, exactly a week of stay now in Bohol, and we’ve just been to the barangay San Roque fiesta, visits to Tagbilaran, and afternoon to evening strolls along the Baclayon baluarte.
The opening dance number at the San Roque Fiesta celebration and coronation of the “King and Queen of Olympics 2008.”
Trevor has just contemplated the horrors of going back home. I didn’t want to think about it, better to just wonder why today the sea looks remarkably different again - so ash gray, pastel blue, almost misty.
I also found some sisi (salted shelled miniature oysters) today at BQ in Tagbilaran - hopefully, this time, I can bring some home as pasalubong! Trevor also finally got to hear the tuko, which I kept telling him about, but failed to encounter during our stay six months ago in Tagbilaran.
“I have never seen these animals, but I have often heard them in Manila. They ordinarily live in houses. One first hears them utter two or three cries in a trembling voice — something like the cry of an owl, but stronger and quite loud enough to make their presence known throughout the whole house, however big it might be. Then it says quite distinctly, ‘Toco, toco,’ and repeats this sound ordinarily seven times in succession, but sometimes as often as 11, allowing the tones of the voice to drop toward the end of each sound; so that the last cry the creature gives is not so loud as the first, and in a much lower key.
“I have not seen this animal, as I have said, although I have frequently heard it; and I have been given a picture of the creature that looks like the picture of a lizard. Notwithstanding this, however, I have always found it difficult to believe that the creature I heard was a lizard, for I could not believe that there are any lizards that could sing.”
- from 18th century “A Voyage to the Indian Seas” by Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galasiere, quoted at Lizards that Sing?
Of course, these days, one doesn’t hear them in Manila but only in the countryside. The tuko sounds here are also higher pitched than I first heard them at the church convento ten years ago.The cricket songs are also much more varied here than in Manila, though just as astonishingly loud, and almost like an electronic mechanical sound.
After the fiesta, nights are quiet again, with occasional karaoke bursts in the early evening - no more the loud dance music at the new basketball court in front of the kapilya nor the crying of pigs being slaughtered. We also miss the huge black pig in our neighbor’s yard.
Our friend’s family had a pig too, especially for the fiesta, which we visited at 4AM for the butcher. It took a long time shaving the huge animal, barely four months old. Then they chop it up, remove the internal organs and wash the entrails in the sea. They don’t eat the liver raw here like they do in Batangas, nor do they chop the head off and brush it’s blood all over the animal’s body. So the pigs here look considerably paler.
After all the pork, I am learning to cook more fish here - more fish and more vegetables. The food here tastes much better - fish, meat, vegetables have their own distinct taste, not needing much or any form of “enhancing” whatsoever. The galunggong (mackarel scad), for example, tastes fantastic fried. Our friend also taught us how to cook it in the local tuba (coconut sap vinegar), toyo (soy sauce) and garlic, then adding oil when the sauces evaporate. Hmmm… 
We have a dinner date this Sunday with my old friends at the church - this will be the first time I’ll get to see their three children.
