Isdaan – Stop Over Restaurant in Tarlac

Each year, our family attends the Feast of Tabernacles. It’s my personal favorite time of the year of all the religious feasts we have. This is because it enables us to get away from it all for 10 days and spend each day focusing on spiritual things and bonding with the family in between religious activities. What could be more joyful than that?!

In the Philippines, there are three regions where this feast is being held: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Since my family and I are based in Manila, we’ve been observing the feast in Luzon for over a decade now. Specifically, it’s usually held in Pangasinan where majority of members in Manila come from.

It takes about 4-5 hours to get to our destination. That’s way too long a drive for someone who’s not too keen about traveling. I like to travel but I must agree it’s quite a stretch.

But that’s until Isdaan, a floating restaurant in Gerona, Tarlac was established. I should say this tourist spot in Northern Luzon is a ‘must see” for people stopping over on the third hour or 54 kilometers of their travel time from Manila.

The most popular feature of this restaurant is the “Tacsiapo” (a local expression almost to a point of swearing) Wall. Think of an area where you can burst all your anger and the restaurant even provides breakable items to vent your anger with. These include plates, saucers, cups and yes, even old TV sets. Mind you though that each piece you break carries a price — literally these will be billed additionally long after you’ve eaten. As if to remind us all that we can’t be anger for too long, or you’ll pay.

Feast of Tabernacles will be fast approaching by third quarter of the year. You can almost tell where my family’s stopover will be the next time we tread along the same road often traveled.