The sunset on the boulevard is something that should not be missed when visiting Dipolog. (Photo: Kulai)

First of two parts

There’s something familiar about Dipolog, I told myself on my first day in the city. Maybe because the city  reminded me so much of Butuan, where I spent my pre-college teenage years. Or maybe because I could understand the language, having learned it when I was 11. Whatever it was, I could feel this small provincial city growing on me. Manila seemed a universe away.

And indeed it seemed to be. I had left Manila with news of a storm brewing. The dark clouds outside the plane looked threatening, and I wondered if we could make it before the storm hit. But it was all sunshine in Dipolog when I arrived that Thursday morning in May, so even if I hadn’t slept the night before, having come from work, I was feeling energetic and ready to take on Dipolog.

Dipolog was only an idea before I finally set foot on its soil. Aside from being the capital of Zamboanga del Norte, nothing much is known or has been written about it, except that it is “somewhere in Zamboanga,” and friends were worried about my safety. I discovered that other than having that misfortune—if you could even call it that— of being in Zamboanga, Dipolog has this rustic manner about it that I realized that all this worry about security was for naught.

If there was something that was becoming a worry, it was the fact that I was starting to like the city.

Laid back, but within reach
Traffic? Ah, fairly nonexistent, except when motorists are rushing to drop off or pick up kids from school. None of the harried “need to make it home before the evening news” manner that you see on the MRT. Wherever you need to be in Dipolog, you will be in 10 minutes.

Worried about being out of touch? Whatever your telecoms provider of choice is, you will always be within reach in Dipolog. If you’re a Web worker like me, the Internet service is very reliable; there should be no worries about delivering when you should.

Wanting to go local as much as I could, I stopped by to check the supermarket and was impressed with the stocks. I could live here, I realized, as I spotted some of my favorite brands on the shelves. Surely, Dipolog has changed so much, agrees a local boy RV, who tells me that many years back, the only time his family had Purefoods Tender Juicy hotdogs for dinner was when his Cebu-based brother would come home to visit.

So near yet so far
A Starbucks suki will surely miss her overpriced gourmet coffee, but during my weeks in Dipolog, I became privy to a local secret—Café Ysabelle—where coffee was excellent, ambiance was great, the dessert was cheap, and crowds were nonexistent. A great place to bring a date, RV and I discovered, in a small city where everyone knew everybody else, and word of people dating, kissing, philandering, or doing other unmentionables easily goes around, and fast.

Which is why, I brought it up with RV, that if anyone wanted to do some hanky-panky, better to bring it somewhere else, like Dumaguete, which is just a few hours’ ride away by boat, or Cebu, where direct flights ply at least twice a week.

It’s also the reason many Dipolognon parents send their kids to university in Dumaguete or Cebu— far enough to give one a semblance of independence, but near enough to be wary that one’s parents can just easily drop by and check any time they wish to.

Those who stay to live with parents find a different way to experience freedom—on a motorcycle.  Seeing Dipolog on a bike was fun, as RV and I weaved through Dipolog’s oldest streets, passed by the boulevard to catch a glimpse of the sunset, and spotted some good places to eat, even as we raced against a thousand other motorcycle drivers. Like in many provincial cities in the Philippines, the motorcycle is a popular form of transportation in Dipolog, that one could easily say that every household probably has one motorcycle. So numerous are they and their three-wheeler counterparts (tricycles) that the local transportation office has even assigned a “day off” to every tricycle, to ensure that they don’t clog the city streets.

And we came upon an epiphany: All one needs to enjoy life in Dipolog is a motorcycle.

Read part II.