"Being curious is sometimes very rewarding. No wonder scientists become instant celebrities when they discover something out of their curious brains."
There are actually a lot of ancestral and old houses in almost every town in the Philippines but we fail to appreciate them. We are so much preoccupied with seeing the famous destinations within that place leaving the simple things ignored and left unseen.
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| An ancestral house in Batac City preserved within the bustles of the city |
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| Maps by Wikipedia |
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| Location Highlighted in Red |
As usual, after seeing the must-see tourist spots in Batac City, it is my mission again to highlight the less appreciated things and ignored places in Batac City and these include some ancestral houses.
There are no plenty of ancestral houses in Batac so don't expect to go in this city looking after them. There are only a few old houses located within the city and the fact that they are not all evident, they are left ignored and both tourists and travelers fail to appreciate them.
For a regular tourist with the only goal of getting a delight from touring the attractive spots of a place, I believe they won't care about appreciating the old or ancestral houses they see on the road.
Some might say, "So what about that house? It is just an old house."
I will totally agree if an ordinary tourist will say that "I won't spend my money just seeing those houses." because they can be right. Seeing just only a few old house isn't a delightful activity.
But for advanced travelers and explorers, I believe that traveling is not all about fun. Traveling is a form of learning, discovering and appreciating even the simplest thing we see along the road.
Personally, if I travel, I am not focused on the famous destinations, although I have also an itch to see them. But after seeing the must-see places, I really find time to explore more about the place and learn a new lesson in this new classroom.
Traveling for me is a continuous learning and the places where we go is our classroom. So when I had the chance to be in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, some old houses caught my attention and they looked very charming before my appreciative eyes.
Well, in Batac City, the most famous ancestral house to see is probably the Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center.
Ferdinand Marcos is probably the most dynamic president in the Philippines which has done many projects in the country and governed the Philippines for more than 2 (two) decades.
If you want to see the remains of Ferdinand Marcos, the late president of the Philippines, you can see it within this old house for an entrance fee of 50 pesos.
I was able to explore what are the things to see in this old house and it will be featured in a separate post because of my bad habit of overdoing a single post with a lot of photos.
For now, I am sharing one photo taken inside the ancestral house overlooking another old house nearby from the capiz windows.
Another old-looking house I have seen is the General Ricarte National Shrine.
This shrine was built in Batac City in honor of the latter who is a native of this town. He has been known for being a revolutionary hero and a valuable personality in World War II with great importance.
The shrine is composed of a memorial park with a statue and two field guns.
Within this old structure is a library and museum which showcases the life of Gen. Ricarte via a number of photographs and relics, and a collection of American and Japanese guns in WWII.
Speaking of photograph, I also discovered the World Peace Center, a structure that houses a photo gallery of the former Philippine president Marcos.
It was closed when I got here so I wasn't able to see what's inside this structure (as of this writing).
It is noteworthy that for the old houses that we usually ignore and don't care to see at all are in fact full of stories and history.
If I did not personally intend to visit old houses and ancestral houses in Batac City, I won't discover the things I am sharing to you right now.
If I have ignored them, I might not learn new interesting facts and lessons. Truly, traveling is also learning. And yes, it wasn't fun walking the city with aching feet and hungry tummy for the sake of looking for this old-looking houses and structures but as I have said, traveling is not purely for fun, it is also a learning process.
I did not expect that visiting these houses into a closer scale, my efforts are having a value. Being ignored and left unseen, that would be a traveler's lost for they did not make the most of their time discovering the place.
Ok what else? As I am doing a walking tour in the city, I read something, "Batac: Home of Great Leaders." To tell you the truth, I really didn't expect to know that the old houses I was looking after were the houses attached to the lives of our great leaders in the country.
What I just wanted is to appreciate these old houses and as I promised to myself, to just blog about the ignored things in a place but for this goal, it was more than rewarding to really learn the importance of the houses I have visited.
Being curious is sometimes very rewarding. No wonder scientists become instant celebrities when they discover something out of their curious brains.
Without exploring the old houses, I may have not understood why the caption tells that Batac is the Home of Great Leaders.
I have learned that we should not underestimate any place we see, any person we meet, any single simple house we encounter and who might know, the answer to your questions is actually there.
Discovering more about Batac, this building is probably the most iconic structure there because its design is more like to be a building in a European Medieval city. Well, it is how I looked at it.
Another 112 on 2012 exploration and I am loving this craft. I realized I am such a stupid traveler that I really have to learn new lessons. Well, life is an unending school.The best lesson I learned in this trip is "Never underestimate even the ugliest scene you see in a place until you know the real value of it."
Batac #TownExploration Series
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Tags: Batac, Ilocos Norte | Ancestral Houses in Batac | ancestral houses in ilocos norte | ancestral houses in batac, ilocos norte | batac, ilocos norte heritage | old houses in batac, ilocos norte | what to see in batac, ilocos norte | tourist spots in batac, ilocos norte
