IF, like the old Hong Kong tourism ads urged, I stayed an extra day, I would’ve explored the ukay place we whizzed past on the way to the airport in Dumaguete. Crammed under a galvanized roof held up by spindly posts, and hedged by sako and tela to keep the alikabok at bay, it stood beneath the sprawl of an ancient acacia.

David, who edits a news website, craned his neck and looked alternately elated and dejected as a bookstore zipped by, just a few meters away from the ukay.

But we were late, we were laden, and this was the end of the weekend spent with a patchwork group of writers, journalists and information officers from Manila to Bacolod to Zamboanga trying to take in the principles of peace journalism. While having as much fun as possible, of course.

So on the final day of the workshop, three hours before we were to fly back to Manila and resume our dense lives, we hustled into two vans to scour the tiny city and grab as much pasalubong for everyone and his third cousin we left back home.

Students make up 30 percent of the population

If Dumaguete is a city, then the handful of us who get to go home at the end of our work days to mild-mannered Quezon City, are Manhattanites by comparison. City simply feels like a political description for Dumaguete, because its vibe is best described by what it’s called, The City of Gentle People. Credit that to its seaside location and the fact that sprawled across 3426 hectares , 30 percent of Dumaguete’s population of just a little over 100,000 is made up of students.

There are around 12 colleges or universities and an equal number of high schools I didn’t see…though a couple whizzed by. What I did see were swarms of uniformed kids hanging on the wide grassy apron fronting the City Hall, which turned out to be the Ninoy Aquino Freedom Park. In Manila, these kids would’ve been trolling the malls, or jammed glassy-eyed in internet gaming centers.

The city is the capital of Negros Oriental and located on the southeastern coast of Negros Island.

Ironically, Dumaguete, which comes from the Visayan word “daguit” meaning “to snatch” or “kidnap,” seems to have done so with the kids here, but obviously in a pretty good way. According to the website dgte.net, “It originated from the time when Moro pirates frequently carried out marauding attacks on the place and snatched beautiful native maidens.” The villages were referred to in 1572 as Dananguet; in 1734 Murillo Velarde gave its present name.

According to the same site:

• The people of Dumaguete farm, fish, weave, make pottery, engage in cottage industries, process foods and make shoes and clothes for a living.

• They grow sugar, corn coconut, abaca, rice, root crops, fruits, vegetables and tobacco and fish for squid, oysters, shrimps, prawns and mussels.

• Delicacies include mangoes, budbud kabog (a creamy suman made from birdseed), lumpiang ubud, chicharon, danguet hayob (dried fish), bocayo, banana chips, dried fruits, peanut brittle and sugar-coated peanuts.

Panic shopping

Much as we had wanted to do the whole tourist bit and check out the 1811 Dumaguete Belfry, a landmark that was once used as a watchtower against marauders; or linger over the architectural details of the city’s genteel old houses along the seaside Rizal Avenue (named for the hero who dropped by the city on his way to exile in Dapitan in 1892); much as we wanted to do everything in as short a time as possible, the minutes were tightly budgeted, and we spent them panic shopping.

We were dropped off a souvenir shop, jammed with curiosities and key chains and anik anik (ethnic dust gatherers) and whoppingly priced curio items and handmade girlie accessories and banig toiletry cases and wallets and souvenir T-shirts. One of the women in our group got herself a delicately beaded thong sandal that the rest of us turned green with envy for, except that her toes were far more photogenic than ours.

Over to another side street, in front of a dive shop and just off the main seaside avenue, we burst into a pastry shop serving what was said to be the best sans rival in town. Used to big city gastronomy, we were skeptical and ordered a sliver to taste test. After 15 of us tore through the thin wedge, a collective swoon reverberated through the shop. It was better than best; buttery but not aggressively so, its wafers as delicate as fine souls of the city.

A babel of voices quickly replaced the swoon as everyone began ordering all at once even if we were warned that the cake, unrefrigerated, might turn into a puddle for those who wanted to lug it home to Manila. I opted for the hardier silvanas, a close cousin to the sans rival, and microwaveable containers of other baked goodies purchased only because the odors of rising dough and kick-ass coffee freshly brewing on the pot did something to loosen the zip on the wallet.

Poop, taho and lessons from a 7-year-old

We then headed to the main avenue bound on one side by the sea wall. Prettified by landscaping, and flanked by a walkway, street lamps and a monument representing the first Paulinian nuns who sailed to Dumaguete in 1904, we loitered by the sea wall. We also tried not to watch as a one-armed man with a tabo scooped water from a ground leak and then carried it off to someone who looked like his wife squatting behind the breakwater, quietly defecating.

Instead, we called on a passing taho vendor and began slurping the soft soy custard in tiny plastic glasses, while the seven-year-old son of one of the workshop coordinators said peeing on the ocean was okay because the salt would kill off all the germs in the urine.

I nodded encouragingly, but wondered idly if human poop floated or sank.

At our next hurried stop at the Dumaguete public market, I picked up a few bags of danggit (I am unimaginative when it comes to pasalubong) and then hoarded a few local papers to see what was happening that day.

The Cebu Daily News was a publication of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. As such it was slick and respectable. A local Dumaguete paper ran news about projects funded by local businesses which took up about 30 percent of the paper. The rest were local ads and classifieds.

Perhaps, I thought, scanning the papers, the van would make a quick detour through Silliman, the most renowned university of the province founded in 1901. It is home to the country’s pre-eminent writers’ workshop where a slot guaranteed participants the terror of having their work deconstructed and their egos shredded by the country’s legendary lit giants. But hey, getting into the workshop was a real pain so being torn apart tells writers they’re talented enough to warrant the assault.

But we were late, no thanks to the fabulous Fhabie, who sauntered back to the van from the wet market with two men carrying her prized pasalubong: four kilos of fresh crabs and prawns stuffed into two Styrofoam chests packed with ice.

The thrill of departure lounges

So laden, the van groaned its way to the tiny airport, where recent terror alerts halfway round the globe meant checking in took an eternity as we unzipped toiletry cases and showed them to guards baffled by our array of potions.

I was impatient for the departure lounge as we inched our way in. I love departure lounges – in airports, seaports, bus stations. Even if departure portends a return home, these waiting rooms will always be portals to DIY adventures. I love the anticipation of coming, of going, of being on the verge of whatever comes my way. But that day, it was anything but. We sat where the early afternoon sun hit us head-on, and where the view of the short runway, bound on either side by towering acacias before jutting out into the sea, dissolved in the glare.

I wished myself quickly back in hysterical Manila. I wished I could rewind the last three days and transport myself back to the resort where among its grounds a small boat inexplicably balanced itself on the upper branches of a sheltering talisay tree; where pigeons pecked on the winding footpaths and then scattered like confetti as we sauntered past. I wished I had bought the sans rival at the patisserie. I wish I had time to meander by the sea wall of Rizal Avenue, wait for nightfall till the lamps glowed and the streets filled with college kids ducking into homegrown restaurants lining the avenue. I wished for my view of the sea by the resort’s breakwater, where restless waters splooshed as I sank easily into a difficult book I could never get through back in Manila. I wished, like every time pressed traveler, for an extra day.