Iloilo Breakthrough

We went to Iloilo for  a business trip. It was my second time to visit the place. The first time was about 6 years ago enroute to Boracay from Davao City. I never had a chance to visit the place since then. 

I used to remember that Iloilo's airport was near the sea. I was quite surprised that we were about to land in an airport amidst green fields. The airport was relatively new - clean and sleek. It reminded me of a junior version of the Davao City International Airport. 

The city was a few minutes away from the airport. We were billeted at the Westown Hotel in Smallville area(I hope I got the names correct). My colleagues and I decided to be adventurous then as it was mostly our second time to go to Iloilo but we never had a chance to tour the place during our first visit. Included in our list of things to do list in Iloilo was to try their Batchoy, eat in a great local restaurant and try out Chicken Inasal as well as fulfill our business duties of going on trade checks, cascade to the Iloilo team our plans for next year and attend the provincial Christmas party. 

After checking in, we decided to go out for lunch. Unfortunately, most of the establishments near the hotel are only open from 5pm onwards as the area was known to be a gimmick place. We asked the taxi driver on where it would be great to eat for lunch and we were led to Breakthrough - a seafood lover's delight. The place was quite far from the city proper but the long trip was all worth it after savoring their version of Aligue rice, fried and grilled version of hito, Halaan soup, sisig na lechon among others. We even had a refreshing Buko Juice! We loved everything that we ordered. Moreso, we were shocked to see that our bill was only half of what we've expected it to cost. We had a hard time looking for a taxi back to the city but we cared less as we were fully satisfied during lunch time.

Afterwards, we did our trade check at SM, bought a few pasalubong from BongBong's stall and proceeded with our cascade to field sales in the afternoon. At night, we attended the area's Christmas Party held at Nelly's Garden. I was relatively impressed with the set-up that I would like to commend the organizers for putting up a great show. Since we were not able to eat Batchoy and Chicken Inasal for lunch, after the Christmas party we decided to try La Paz Batchoy at Deco's and had to give up trying Chicken Inasal since we were already full.

In my next Iloilo business or personal trip, I would definitely try out Chicken Inasal and hopefully visit the famous Miag-ao Church which is a few miles away from the city.