"A Place Forsaken" Province of Misamis Oriental by SOLODANCER

Travelling in the Philippines, I came upon the province of Misamis Oriental on the big island of Mindanao situated south of this beguiling country. The province is known for its myriad crafts (sturdy baskets, mats, sun hats especially) and luscious tropical fruits, among them an ovoid white-skinned fruit called Lanzones, probably in the Lychee family, reputed to be found sweetest in this part of the country and more so from the nearby volcanic island of Camiguin. But what attracted me most as gathered from the locals themselves are somnolent little towns and villages which are no more than dots on hills, hasty shacks upon a clearing in a field, storm-scarred wooden plank houses standing close to dirt roads and endless agglomeration of tiny fishing villages with their thatched houses hastily drove down the alluvial soil by the sea - all proud, fatefully joyous but materially mute and seemingly forgotten in the face of modern civilization.

One such village by the sea is Linugos, miniscule, brutally poor, sun-weary and thoroughly neglected even as to be robbed of its original name and legend. It now goes by its new name Magsaysay, after one of the country's presidents who came to town supposedly as part of his election campaign trips. I came to visit the village to check out what I heard was a fascinating story behind the town's controversial name change. The word Linugos is Bisayan-derived, the Austronesian language of the Visayas Islands of Central Philippines with which the greater part of Mindanao's inhabitants commonly speak. So, the word Linugos in its literal translation means, 'to have been taken by force' and specifically and pointedly with reference to a connotation of a sexually-violent abduction and/or rape.

Legend has it that in ancient times when the island was ruled by Moorish Rajahs and chieftains, Linugos was under the protectorate of a beautiful princess. Upon subsequent regional conflicts and inter-tribal wars, the princess was alleged to have been pressured to declare her allegiance to only one eminent Rajah. She refused. The horrible consequence to this firm refusal of hers and to this sad story is the summary abduction and then forced sexual-debauchery of the entire female segment of the town's population. It was also believed that the reason behind the mass rape by the neighboring princeses was actually triggered by a deep-seated jealousy over a special attribute of which Linugos was widely known to have possessed - that of her outstandingly beautiful women, not to speak of the princess herself. The town was decimated and destroyed, as to be expected. But the princess herself was able to escape away rowing herself in an outrigger into the middle of the ocean. There, as the legend says, she layed still and steely for days on end in supine position covered in grief and supplication until her last breath. The gods had heard and seen her suffering and in one strike of divine lightning, she was turned into a new land in the middle of this sea. That island is the volcanic island of Camiguin.

From that day on, Linugos was condemned to fix its gaze with longing and to stare forever at this voluptuously high curbing land in the middle of the sea across its strait.

These days, Linugos remains an eery sleepy village and forgotten. There is nothing of terribly noteworthy about this hapless town. Its small population of just under two thousand subsist mainly from local fishing and home-grown copra industry. But in terms of untouched authentic pysical beauty, the village itself is strangely captivating in its simplicity. In terms of beaches, you'll have a run for them all: great swimming ( literally empty of tourists), beautiful black volcanic sand and the view looking out to the island of Camiguin is simply spectacular.

To visit Linugos however is to discover not grand travel treasures but to seize for oneself another story which time, people and civilization have turn their hearts away from and is fast fading, like so many stories of legend, into extinction.

• Pros:You feel as tho time is only beginning.
• Cons:A sadness in the heart to watch rampant poverty.
• In a nutshell:The smiles are pure and constant, brushing off poverty.