Camp John Hay

Mar 17, 2025

The Philippines is located on the ring of fire, and there are a lot of volcanoes, many of which are still active. Baguio City is built way up in the mountains, and is therefore built on an old volcano which we hope is not active. The town is actually built in the crater of the old volcano, and has an enormous amount of American influence.

Being a rather cool climate and fairly close to Manila, it’s become the summer capital of the country. The grand old house was the summer residence of the US Governor General after the Americans booted out of the Spanish, and decided that they would keep it from themselves. It’s also the site of a US airfield where the last of the American forces fled the Japanese in World War II. Until America returned its bases to the Philippines not so long ago, Baguio was the R&R centre for all American forces located in the country. There are numbers of US military camps around, many of which have now been repurposed. However, they were where the Japanese interred American prisoners during World War II, and America returned the favour and interred the Japanese when they re-took the country.

Today we hiked all the way across town, past the children’s park with it’s huge playground and rides, around the central lake and market, and up the hill to Camp John Hay. John Hay was the Secretary of State (Foreign Secretary) for William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt at the time that they decided to occupy the Philippines, and so probably oversaw the ‘acquisition’. Camp John Hay was the US commandant’s headquarters, and was developed as the playground for the US forces. Now it’s been converted into a huge public park where lots of Filipinos go to enjoy themselves. 247 hectares huge. Think Stanley Park in Vancouver.

There are hotels, convention centres and restaurants. There are camping areas, a large area where scouts congregate, amusement parks, zip lining, paintball, a golf course, and mini golf. The American heritage is very noticeable with such things as a Starbucks, Yellow Cab Pizza, and New York Steakhouse. But the piece de resistance at the top of the hill in the centre of the park is a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

It’s a lovely shady park with a gentle breeze. Can see why it’s popular, and we certainly enjoyed our morning there.

Had a restful afternoon after retracing our steps, having walked a total of 10K.

Braved the streets at peak hour to find something for dinner, and ended up at Gilligan’s Island which is a general style of restaurant with an extensive menu. After spending some time working through the options, four young women came and stood around the table to try and take our order. Intimidating. Our best guess is that one of them was our waitress, one of them was there to translate English, one was a supervisor who is making sure everything worked correctly and we were happy, and the fourth – well, we have no idea.

Endured another night of second class Filipinos singing songs of the 70s. I’m sure that none of them were born when the songs were first released. However, the food was great.