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To Market To Market to buy…

For many, a trip to Baguio would never be complete without a visit to the market.  Tourists flock to the market to buy local produce to take home with them.  I too feel that a trip to Baguio would never be complete without a visit to the market.  Unlike tourists, however, my purposes is no just to buy the local produce, but also, to visit old friends and be reminded of my childhood.

When I was a child, my grandmother and mother would take me with them to the Baguio market to buy meat, fish, vegetables, fruits and coffee from their vendor-friends.  When I got older, I would  go to the market on my own to buy things from the same vendor-friends.  Those friends have seen me become what I am today and  are  privy to my  many childhood antics.

Nowadays, when I see those vendor-friends, they would remind me of how I was as a child.  For example, as soon as the ladies at the fish and seafood section would see me, they would remind me that when I was a child, I would always pinch my nose upon entering that section of the market.  Some vegetable vendors would also remind me about  the time I got lost in the market and was later found in the police outpost.  Of course, my mother gets uneasy when she hears this because she was the one who lost me in the market.  Loosing me in the market was more traumatic for her that it was for me.  Then, there is Ray, the guy who owns a meat stall in the market where we get the yummy de recado longganisa (garlic sausages).  My mom updates him on the goings on in my life like when I graduated, when I moved to Manila and I suspect even about my love life.

Apart from visiting friends and being reminded of my childhood, I have always loved the Baguio market.  It has never ceased to stimulate my senses.    The smell of that part of the market where the Garcias sell coffee is wonderful.  In the section where the ingredients for ginataang halo-halo (a coconut based sweet soup filled with jackfruit, bananas and sweet potatoes) is sold, the sound of coconut being grated is hypnotizing.  I enjoy looking at the fresh vegetables piled up on top of each other.  While I do not get too excited over strawberries, they certainly brighten up the market by adding a plash of bright red color to the predominantly green produce sold there.

In the early hours of the morning, interesting things are sold in the market like hard to find vegetables, fruits, fish or herbs.  In those days when I was relaxed enough to want to be creative in the kitchen, I would go to the market  early in the morning to buy whatever I found interesting and would think of a way of cooking it.  Those were exciting times.

I am comforted by the fact that, no matter how much Baguio has changed through the ages, the market looks, smells, sounds and feels the same to me.

A note about this article:  I wrote this article a few weeks before the vegetable section of the Baguio Market burned.  I suppose that things are not as they were the last time I visited the market.  I just wish that the market would be brought back to the way I know it to be.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 12:08 am and is filed under The Baguio I Remember. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.