MHYCKE GALLEGO
I used to spend my youth enjoying summertime in our hometown in Bolinao, Pangasinan. These include helping out in the family sari-sari store while honing my Ilocano with the locals, harvesting chicken and quail eggs in the hatchery, and watching my veterinarian uncles help sows give birth. While Mamang prepared binunggey (sticky rice cooked in wood-fired bamboo) and ripe mangoes for merienda, I visited the woods with Papang to look for bamboo fit for a sumpak (improvised blowgun) or cadang-cadang (stilt). Our much-awaited moment was when we traveled along the then dusty and unpaved roads to the undiscovered beaches of Patar. A month’s worth of immersion was not enough to discover what Bolinao really had to offer.