Before I left in ‘89 to go to college, I had this picture inside my head about bicol that was really bad: poor, remote, poor, no TV, typhoon prone, poor, undeveloped, un-modern, poor, with terrible insurgency problems and poor. Did I say poor already? Hahaha! Forgive me bicol, I’ve been so harsh on you.

Well now that I’m back? I see that here are more private schools (in all levels), better hospitals, television, internet, cell phones, landline phones. And should I forget the department stores, bigs supermarkets and fast food chains? I’m not so sure though if that means people are richer and not poorer. Just check out the queue in Jollibee Sorsogon even on normal days. This definitely isn’t the bicol I used to know.

Still typhoon-prone but people do get by, generally. Definitely the lifestyle here have changed. Tourism is booming kuno and people are coming to bicol for the beautiful, undeveloped beaches and the hidden gems.

This time I wanna hold on to the undevelop-ness and keep it that way a little longer.  I still tell my friends not to expect too much of the accommodations there are for visitors. Even in Sorsogon, there are no laughlin hotels but what we have  aren’t so bad I’m starting to realize.

Maybe people are getting tired of the uber-developed and commercialized islands? There are still natural beauties of nature that remains. How long this region is going to stay that way nobody knows. Or maybe only the province of Sorsogon remains undeveloped?Ha ha!

I still can hear when my last german boss said after driving to Donsol (from laguna): bicol is beautiful Glo! I said yeah it definitely is.