Quaint Little Tourtown









Take a slow moving "trisikad" ride or try a brisk walk to breeze around town. In the very heart of Glan, you will see first Plaza Rizal of four small sections fortified with weather beaten pergolas in the eastern and western points of entry. The sunken garden is greenfenced with gumamela topiary. Two-quarters-of-a-century old narra trees bloom bundles of thin golden rings in the park. Stop and pose for souvenir onstage a semi-winding rotonda or at a fountain in the middle of trimmed grass carpet.

Pass through the archway leading to Osmena Park and spot the children's playground and the town's cultural center edifice. Osmena Park's archway is a time-tested memento to the locals' fine architectural sense - designed and built by local artisans. And never let your gaze skip the US barn type postal office built by an American soldier years ago. Deserving a second look is another colonial structure a few blocks away - the old infirmary. Restoration will be undertaken soon.

Keep ambling along J. Hombrebueno St. and E. Alegado St. where rows of several ancestral houses show off old-world charm. Mostly built in the 1920's, guests will certainly be awed by their high balconies, canopies and walls of 'kalados' or 'callados' and concrete stepboards leading to wide wooden staircases. A few of these houses retain the 'batalan' or cupboard of the 'bahay kubo' of yore. Some of them bear stunning collections of precious antiques and oriental sets right in the living room. Heirloom pieces all handed down from a grand era of prominence and affluence.

At the corner of C. Lapaz and Colony No. 9 Streets is another old, imposing facade and a landmark of sort when you view it from a nearby seaport. In one of its rooms, the late President Diosdado Macapagal slept for a night during his first sojourn to Glan. On the opposite corner is the town's foremost historic structure - the Colono Marker. The sculpted images in what seemed to be a pose for posterity were meant for real. Ask any local and he will give you names of those. This is the town's fitting tribute to the first meeting of Christian and native settlers of Glan. This much fabled statue, accordingly, must be kissed by first-timers for good luck.






Sarangani Province ... The little paradise at the southern tip of Mindanao Region, Republic of the Philippines.