Separate Islands. One Link

Traveling to Mindoro, Romblon, Masbate, Marinduque, Palawan via Roro, 2Go, Fastcat, Oceanjet, Montenegro, Cebu Pacific, Philippine Airlines, Jam, 5 Star reminded me of the Ivatan story.

Islands maybe separated but are linked.

The accessibility from the landlocked mainland though has not greatly altered the resident's unique culture. Theirs are still well preserved.

When visitors from Luzon step foot in Mi(ndoro), Ma(rinduque), Ro(mblon), Pa(lawan), they are warmly welcomed making the guests feel so at home.

When asked if they have prospects of going to the city, they said they would rather live a simpler life. If ever they go, they'd be raring to return back to their island soonest.

Masbate City, the capital of the province of Masbate is a 4^th class component city.  Odiongan is a first-class, partially urban municipality in the province of Romblon, Philippines. It is a major port, commercial center and the largest municipality of Romblon in terms of population and income. Calapan is the capital of the province of Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. It is the gateway to the Oriental Mindoro province and the center of commerce, industry, transport, communication, religious activities and education in the entire province of Oriental Mindoro. Boac is the capital of Marinduque. Marinduque is an island province in the Philippines located in Southwestern Tagalog Region. Palawan is the largest province in the country. It capital Puerto Princesa City is the city is the second largest geographically city in the Philippines.

Romblon, birthplace to writers Jose Dalisay and NVM

On board Cebu Pacific to Masbate City, I read in Smile, Cebu Pac’s in flight magazine June 2017 edition an article of Jose Dalisay, a prolific literary author and a columnist at Philippine Star. In his article “Some enchanted island” he wrote about his shared birth province with fellow writer NVM, a Filipino novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet and a Philippine National Artist for Literature. I quote how the island’s fertile ground seeded their literary imagination. 

“NVM and I were separated by almost 40 years and by the Tablas Strait – he was born in the capital town, and I in Alcantara, on the bigger island of Tablas. (Romblon’s three main islands are Romblon, Tablas and Sibuyan.) He moved with his family to Mindoro as a boy, and I moved with mine to Manila, but we both shared a sense of Romblon as the home of our enchantment, of our literary imagination. Indeed Romblon is that kind of island in the mind and spirit that we all wish could return to, and the accident of my birth there, once seen as an oddity or an impairment to one’ social mobility, is now something I cherish as a privilege, as NVM did and build a life’s literary labors on.”


The article encouraged me to write a short travelogue on the islands I visited posted in this blog.