MINDANAO TRAVEL: The Barn house in the middle of nowhere (Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur)

Every year, my Family and I travel to my mother’s province — Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur. It’s almost a 4-hour drive from Iligan City and we go there for a family reunion that happens yearly during the summer. This time though, I didn’t go there with my family but with a few girl friends just to visit this Coffee Shop we recently discovered hidden at the middle of nowhere namely, “The Barn House”.

Look at how cute they made their menu book!

(Disregard the bad photo quality. I wasn’t able to bring a good camera because the whole travel was spontaneous and we only brought in a few stuff with us, including this crappy camera.)

I couldn’t handle the whole place! It was too cute! It felt like I was inside a huge doll house filled with every cute thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on. How could something so cute and adorable be situated in the middle of nowhere?

How to get there?

Again, Aurora is almost a 4-hour drive from Iligan City. If you're from Mindanao, it's not going to be hard for you to travel to that place because bus lines leading to Pagadian City pass through Aurora. But if you're one of those travel junkies from the north, the nearest airport would be Pagadian Airport. From there, it would take an hour bus-ride to Aurora and viola~ you're in the middle of nowhere!

Here's the good part. Almost all of the motorcycle drivers know that Barn House and so if your bus arrives in Aurora Bus Terminal, a lot of motorcycles await you. Just give them you're biggest tourist smile and let them know where you're off too and for certain, you will be lead safely there. I know this for a fact because my mother's a local there and the place is too welcoming especially to tourists.

What about the food?

The food was a bit pricey considering the location but then again, the whole place was far from the city so it all made sense. However, some of the dishes on the menu were not available and I wondered how all the other customers enjoyed the place when the only food available felt like it was just stuffed inside a microwave oven. (Only fries were available at that time, by the way. Sheesh.) The food presentation was excellent, though. Thank goodness for that.

Aurora always had this bad reputation of chronic black-outs and power outage and we had to wait for a few more hours before we were allowed to go inside the shop. Maybe our timing was bad at that time since our service experience was a thumbs-down on my part. We were not able to have our lunch at the exact hour and then we found out later on that they had a generator! We wasted two precious hours of waiting and doing nothing without having any clue that there was a freaking generator! And we had to leave for Iligan City in the next two hours. Ugh!

I tried calming and composing myself because the lady on the counter wasn’t really doing such a great job in serving her customers. The fact that she was just busy pampering herself with a pedicure while we were outside, completely hungry, was just too much to take! She probably didn’t know we travelled all the way from the city just to have this Barn House experience and she ruined it right before we started loving everything about the place.

But I guess bad experiences happen once in a while during travels, right? This one isn’t an exception to that. I find the experience fun, nevertheless. Having that quality time with your friends during the middle of a busy and hectic work schedule is something that could never be replaced. It’s about doing something worthwhile and unexpected with your loved ones that make the whole experience memorable. Despite that bad experience, the place was awesome. I couldn’t wait to go back and visit again sometime soon. Maybe then I'll have a different (hopefully, better) service experience.