Diocesan Shrine of St. Anthony of Padua, Pila, Laguna, Philippines

Last Holy Thursday, we went Visita Iglesia. Visita Iglesia is a traditional Lenten activity where Catholics visit at least seven churches and pray.

Recently, the activity has incorporated the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross) to remember the passion of Christ as he carried the cross to Calvary and to His death. This way, Catholics visit 14 churches and treat each church as a station of the cross.

Anyway, we decided to go to the neighboring town Laguna, and tried visiting seven churches. We followed the route put out by the Philippine Daily Inquirer that week. Our route was Pila-Pagsanjan-Magdalena-Majayjay-Liliw-Nagcarlan-San Pablo.

Our only guide to these places was the route printed in the newspaper. So, off we went hoping that road signs would be as helpful, if not more helpful. They were not. There were roadsigns yes, but they didn’t say how many kilometers away the next town is going to be. We had to rely on pedestrians who also tried their best to give us an estimate of the distance by time.

Which makes me think, that we Filipinos are not really that tourist-friendly. We are locals and yet we had to find our way. Think about the foreign tourists who had to deal with language barrier as well.

Public service is customer service, too. What I want to happen is to request local tourism officials to:

• put legible and understandable roadsigns that guide tourists to your premier tourist attraction(s).
• be repetitive - don’t just put roadsigns along the highways, but also on the side streets all the way to the destination
• be alert, ready, and knowledgeable - deploy policemen, traffic enforcers everywhere, especially in strategic places to help tourists find their way, resolve traffic and parking altercations right away
• protect church premises - avoid having vendors park in front of markers or important emblems in the church; tourists can no longer read or take photos of these things
• preserve the environment - put as many trash bins and clean public toilets as possible, so that tourists won’t have reason to litter

Overall, it was a holy experience.