THERE is an elaborate house of cards perched on a cliff facing the sea, where a panoramic view of the sunset makes you wax poetic verses and dream that one day you could touch the ochre sun. But if you’re, otherwise, on the other side of the threshold and see this landmark from the vantage point of that sun, you might as well long to go to the place the way you might long to reach the sky, wondering if God is somewhere up there.
Because even from afar, the cosmic clump of white-washed domes looks like an abode of the heavenly, the imaginary kind you see floating in the clouds and dissolves to a mist. It commands the same profound sense of wonder as the Parthenon, except that, while modern albeit it is inclined to be ancient and august. The place that is hogged by the teal West Philippine Sea and is collectively called the Thunderbird Resorts, found on the Peninsula of Poro Point in La Union and reminiscent of elsewhere in Greece: Santorini on Aegean Sea.
I was recently at Thunderbird Poro Point on business and I was told that the vision was to really make the destination the Santorini of Asia. But Santorini or not, Thunderbird exudes its own charm and one might get at once convinced that it is the missing piece of heaven on the face of the Earth.
This, especially when, even in the inner sanctum of a room with the view, you wake up in one of the resort’s 25 premier rooms with the morning sun on your face, as well as a lot of coming to your senses that you’re at least nestled somewhere earthly. Here, there’s a constant sense that God has a room number, maybe just upstairs, or elsewhere in the property, but one could be sure that He’s sleeping in a room not too far away.
Everywhere, Matisse artworks map the walls, arched ceilings and parapets to define the gods and goddesses, and the art of the ancient times, ones that suggest how they became gods by making love. It is romantic, if only because the divinity of the place is one that spells forever and whose sincerity and tranquility translate to some form of an aphrodisiac.
At night, when everything is not as much candlelit as moonlit and even when the resort is abuzz with all manners of merry-making, what with all the cabanas that punctuate the shoreline and the Mediterranean-Asian-themed Olives and Ouzo restaurants, the atmosphere is pervaded with the same romantic calm of the sea. And there, for the briefest of moments, when everything sticks out and rolls toward the sky, and you overlook the vastness and the divinity of it all, you are the lord of all creations.
