From Bicol’s Broken Highways to Creative Runways

We left Naga City for Manila at four o’clock in the morning on September 1—the first day of the “ember” months. For Bicolanos, these months herald not just Christmas but weeks of rain, floods, and typhoons. Leaving early was wise. The trip meant braving potholes, half-finished roadworks, and unpredictable traffic—a living testimony to the sorry state of public works from Bicol outward.

The Mariners van—with Ramil at the wheel—threaded through roads battered by rains that had already triggered school suspensions. The journey was a crash course in crumbling infrastructure: drivers weaving through half-finished projects, dodging endless potholes, and enduring stretches that seemed permanently under repair. Only upon reaching the wider highways of Laguna and Manila did the hazards ease.

I tried to catch sleep with a pillow and blanket, but every jolt from a bumpy road shook me awake. Out the window, coconut groves and farmland stretched out, with Mt. Isarog rising in the distance—a reminder of Bicol’s breathtaking beauty: beaches, volcanoes, and historic landmarks waiting to be rediscovered. Tourism brims with potential. Yet all this is overshadowed by broken roads and flood-control projects, now at the center of congressional inquiries with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) under fire.

A decade ago, DPWH promised to widen national roads into four lanes. Today, that promise feels abandoned. The Andaya Highway—meant to be Bicol’s lifeline—remains a bottleneck of erosion and stalled projects. Choke points abound. Leaving early spared us the worst, and we reached Manila while it was still daytime. But the road itself told a story of wasted time, wasted money, and wasted opportunities.

Meanwhile, DPWH officials and favored contractors now rehearse elaborate defenses for substandard projects that collapsed after a single rainy season. They have become, in their own way, masters of “creative writing.”

The Other Creative Industry. In Manila, another kind of creativity was on display. At the restored Metropolitan Theater, the Creative Tourism Conference 2025 opened—the first of its kind in the country. Organized by the Tourism Promotions Board, it spotlighted the fusion of culture, creativity, and tourism. Tourism Secretary Cristina Franco unveiled a Philippine Creative Tourism Roadmap for 2025–2028, underscoring how creativity can shape the future of travel.

The creative sector thrives on talent, imagination, and knowledge. It produces cultural, artistic, and innovative goods and services that blend art, technology, and commerce—spanning design, film, music, crafts, digital media, cultural heritage, and fashion. At the conference, we met Hanna Faith Frago, a food artist turning meals into canvases, and Norman Penaflorida, a designer transforming native materials into elegant dresses.

Bicol, too, has its own wellspring of talent: folk singers, painters, historians, and storytellers. My husband and I, both authors and cultural workers, were in Manila also to secure the ISBN at the National Library for a Mariners book Social Enterprise Development: The Bicol Experience, based on a CHEd project. I thought of Ferdinand Demadura, a Bicolano composer and director, now developing O’Sei San, an epic Rizal musical film. He embodies what it means to be both enterprising and creative.

That same day, my niece, Mara San Pedro, flew to Hong Kong to compete in the Redress Design Award—the world’s largest sustainable fashion competition. Organized by Redress, a Hong Kong-based NGO, it promotes circular fashion: upcycling discarded garments, recycling textile waste, and pioneering zero-waste design. Mara’s participation is not just a personal milestone but part of a global movement to “redress” fashion’s footprint. I hope she makes it among the top 10 from around the world competing for the top prize.

The urgency is real. The fashion industry is the world’s second-largest polluter. Competitions like Redress push young designers to turn waste into beauty and responsibility into style

Two Road, Two Futures. From the broken highways of Bicol to the global runways of Hong Kong, creativity takes two starkly different forms. One squanders billions on roads and flood-control projects that collapse after a single storm. The other turns discarded textiles into sustainable fashion, transforming waste into livelihood and opportunity.

One path sinks under corruption and neglect. The other rises through imagination and responsibility. As a nation, we must decide which road to take. Will we remain trapped in a cycle of failed infrastructure and plundered funds—where, as an artist friend quips, “Congress has become the hub of creative liars”? Or will we invest in creativity that builds industries, communities, and futures?

The rough road from Bicol to Manila shows what happens when promises collapse. The creative road ahead shows what the Philippines can become—if we choose to build it.