20-Peso Ticket

We went to Mercedes, it's a town about 10 minutes away from our province, Basud, and 5 minutes away from the town proper of Daet. In there is a port or wharf (I don't know the difference) where fishermen market their day's catch. People go there to bid for fish at the time when they're sold wihtout the mark-up. And yes, it's a bidding process you have to go through when you're there.

They only sell using a type of silent auction. We call it "Bulungan," which directly translates to whispering. Buyers will have to whisper their bid to the auctioneer and, of course, the highest bidder wins.

Though we would go there on a Good Friday, this time we went on a Black Saturday and we came late in the morning, little near noon, and so all the biddings have been done and the churn of people mumbling has been replaced by fishermen hoping to sell their late catch. I missed the sun rising from the dark sea into the purple and orange sky. The feel of the cool morning breeze has turned into the scorching of the mighty sun.

Nonetheless, it was good going back to the place. The unpleasant stink helped me reminisce what I had missed (ironically, it was the unpleasant that reminded me of the pleasant memories). But going back to the photo, it's a picture of the ticket we paid as entrance to the port. Twenty for cars and five, I think, for tricycles. A small price to pay when you can buy at really cheap prices. We went home with shark, crabs, and different types of fishes we don't know the names of all for a little over 500 (mind you, we bought a lot). The bad part is that they all stank at the back of the car.