BACOLOD: WHERE SUGAR FORTUNES SHAPED LIFESTYLES

The last time I was in Bacolod, I was in grade school. It was my first airplane ride, with my dad, and I remember being so thrilled with the in-flight meal. In hindsight, it was a pretty naïve impression. Bacolod itself, in my memory, felt provincial, quiet in a pleasant, not eerie way, the sort of place that may be described as “laidback.”

- RICARDO T. PAMINTUAN

On exhibit at the Negros Museum: Charlie Co’s paintings and sculptures with some relics (like this sugar cane extractor used with a carabao).

Returning as an adult, I still found the local beat much slower than Imperial Manila, but many things had definitely changed. Bacolod today hums with activity, complete with familiar traffic jams and unruly drivers, except that certain business establishments close shop early. Even the cansi house refused customers by 7 p.m., although it could be simply because they ran out of bulalo due to the whole-rainy-day influx of diners.

Even if the pace has quickened a bit, the people have remained famously warm, with a melodious, singsong way of speaking that makes even small talk sound like an invitation to linger, to sit down, to share something sweet. I prefer the Tagalog term: malambing.

"Smile! You're in Bacolod!" goes the slogan, but smiles aren't just for tourists craving inasal, batchoy or piaya; it's how the locals face life. And like a bride on her wedding day, the city wears something old and something new, blending heritage and modernity into a cultural ensemble that's uniquely its own.

Take The Ruins in Talisay. Unrelated to Café by the Ruins of Baguio hipster lore, or the Parañaque haunt once infamous for pirated CDs and DVDs, this Ruins is the skeletal remains of a mansion built in the early 1900s by sugar baron Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson for his wife Maria Braga.