PARADOXICAL
The faith chroniclesSaturday, December 27, 2025
A Meditation on Extreme Wealth
A Meditation on Extreme Wealth
(A reflection on my visit to Baluarte, Vigan City, a side trip from Byaheng Tirad Pass 2017)
Nothing prepared me for what I would see in Baluarte, an attraction in Vigan said to be owned by kingpin Chavit Singson. Despite myself having a steady media diet of newspapers and mags, I had never come across anything on it. Except that I once read that Mr. Singson had bred a 'liger,' an unbelievable cross between a lion and a tiger, which reminded me of zebronky (zebra + donkey).
Greeted by a gold-color multi-story building said to be Chavit's house and a giant long-necked dinosaur seemingly chewing its cud in a vast expanse of what looks like a replica of an African savanna, we were in for a big surprise every step of the way.
Soon we were communing with dwarf ponies and deer, and were dangerously close to a gaggle of wide-eyed ostriches that looked ready to pluck out our heads with their gigantic beaks, camels frothing at the mouth with their humps and menacing hooves, and other beasts that remind us how nature is both good and bad, both beauty and horror.
Baluarte turned out to be an 'open enclosure' type of zoo, where both domesticated and wild animals can roam freely but in a controlled manner.
But it's the Safari Gallery housed in well-appointed air-conditioned building that takes the cake. Inside are entire bodies and busts of a beguiling number of taxidermied animals, from polar bear to elephant, lions, tigers, the works! It's like Noah's ark of sorts, but a kind of reversal: In Chavit's ark, preserved inside are specimens of dead animals.
One thing notable (aside from the no entrance fee policy) is that you can park yourself beside an animal's seemingly alive (because posing in action) carcass and see for yourself the actual scale of its size relative to human size.
What got me so impressed is seeing a lot of game species that I am not familiar with and have never seen in any of the zoos I had been too. He has in his collection species not just from the great African savannah but from other biomes or ecological niches of the world. Name it, the man has it. Some guys indeed have all the luck. But wait, did he really have to kill game for pleasure?
Stunned in silence or struck dumb is how I would describe by reaction. I couldn't understand what I was going through, whether it as personal crisis or mental struggle of some sort.
In the ensuing silence are the questions to myself begging to be answered. How much is Chavit worth? I understand the passion for killing game animals as trophy, but how could he afford all these? Where does such fabulous wealth come from?
I was traumatized in a positive way, if that's even possible.
But the biggest question to myself came later on. If money were not a question, what projects would I myself fund?
I recall my most naive childhood wishes, and they get resurrected in my mind one by one like retrieving deleted files from the Recycle Bin.
I realize that, after satisfying all the needs and wants of my entire clan and extended families, I would:
- put up a Dog Zoo featuring, breeding, and selling all the known dog breeds of the world. We are talking about probably more than a hundred breeds. Dog breeds are like origami to me. Just as a single square sheet of paper can produce a hundred different forms, a single species such as Canis familiaris (dog) can produce so many forms in surprisingly different ways.
- build a Filipino Art Deco and Art Nouveau version of Acuzar's resort in Bagac, Bataan somewhere in my town.
- buy an island where I could house all the most endangered animals and plants in the world and a research center to figure out how to reverse the numbers in the reservation site or if we could farm these species so they could bounce back.
- built something like the Pinto Art Museum for Pangasinan and Northern Luzon artists and art students, but it will be about the history of both primitive and modern art, housing representative artifacts or replicas from around the world.
- farm agarwood for sale.
- farm rainforest trees for logs and lumber if I could get away with the legalities, or reforest all denuded mountains in a way that's profitable, properly managed, and sustainable, using native bamboo, shrubs, and tree species instead of monoculture of foreign and, worse, invasive species.
- buy out the following resorts: Acuzar's Las Casas Filipinas, Ocier's Tagaytay Highlands, Alphaland's Baguio Mountain Lodges in Itogon, Benguet, Balesin, several Amanpulo and El Nido properties, Shangri-la Boracay, and The Farm at San Benito wellness resort in Lipa City.
- buy Charlie Cojuangco's entire car collection and put them on public display. Then each day, I shall call my valet, "Facundo, ilabas ang auto na ___ (name of random luxury car for the day)! Gusto kong mag-halo-halo sa Intercon ngayon!"
- build a park featuring the landmarks of the world in miniature just like the one in Brussels but with a long functioning miniature train ride at the center. The experience should serve as an educational architectural tour for students and enthusiasts alike.
- update Imelda Marcos' Nayong Pilipino concept by including more richly detailed and largely unknown interest points: all the 100+ vernacular house architectures (from the idjang fortress houses of Batanes to Samal longhouses), native boats and water vessels largely unheard of, and indigenous farming and fishing implements. Featured will be an arboretum of Philippine trees, especially hardwoods, and museums of Philippine birds, mammals, corals, fishes, seashells, butterflies, insects, etc. and living museums (training centers) for basketry, textiles, other wovens, other native handicrafts, folk arts, weaponry, etc. to educate the public about our incredibly rich biodiversity side by side our incredibly rich culture and want to preserve these for posterity.
- put up a place where anyone can choose from 200 restaurants, each one offering a distinct cuisine from all of the countries of the world.
- put up another place where regional Filipino restaurants would be in one place, because why not -- we have literally hundreds of dishes that are largely unknown and untried outside many towns, cities, and regions, and it's time for these to cross-pollinate or something like it.
- build an updated version of Market! Market!'s Pasalubong Center, to offer the freshest farm produce and OTOP brands flown in from around the country, from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi.
- put up the Center for Pangasinan Culture (as detailed in an earlier post)
- create a national index of the most historically and culturally significant films, books, novels, artworks, etc. for protection and preservation because we are a society that loves to forget and trivialize what's important.
- to assuage my guilt, build homes for the homeless and orphans, but on one condition: they should find a way of paying the property in increments until they get to own it.
- build a new Center for Mental Health as a rehab center for all kinds of addicted people (drugs, gambling, porn, sex, shopping...), plus the depressed, the panicky, and the schizophrenic, etc. but using the latest interventions or therapeutic approaches, the ones that are effective and have no harmful side effects. ...Provided that the client/patient himself want to change.
- put up a plastic trash processing center using the newly discovered plastic-eating bacteria, and with the Philippines being the world's number one plastic polluter, launch a company that would sieve all those floating plastic trash across the oceans and the seas, for a fee.
- donate land for the equivalent of NYC's Central Park and High Line for Metro Manila.
- restore all colonial churches, prioritizing those in Intramuros destroyed in WWII and keeping all the fusion (Filipino + foreign) elements intact.
- construct giant cisterns for all the most flood-prone places in the country.
- explore alternative clean energy sources to solve the problem of the high cost of fuel and electricity.
I think I am just getting started. I have more in store in the pipeline, but you get the idea. Each project is meant to produce and support entire professions, careers, jobs. There are so many great and noble things that can't be done all because of money. That Cyndi Lauper hit song is partially right: Money changes, not exactly everything, but a lot of things.
When I finally come to, I realize I am hallucinating, and the next thing I recall of the trip is that we were outside Baluarte haggling for Vigan empanada, bagnet, chichacorn, royal bibingka, calamay, sukang Iloko, and other regulation Ilocano treats while mentally calculating whether we had enough money left going home.
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