Traveling with five children could be chaotic, stressful, and maddening. Or it could be an experience they would cherish all their lives.
My living room wall is covered with blown-up photographs of our five kids taken from 1979 to 1983, showing them all smiles at various famous tourist spots throughout the archipelago. You would never know where we were.
Although the photos give no clue of the locations, every detail of those outings remains fresh in their memories.

Same fish, different name
A collage shows each one holding up a fishing line with a catch—a three-inch fish dangling after biting the bait. No one has forgotten the major point of the collage It’s the same fish in all the pictures. Forty years ago, before we boarded the banca for a Hundred Islands tour, Albert (the oldest boy) tried to fish at the dock using small shrimp he found drying on the breakwater. When I started clicking away, the other four begged to be in the picture also. With only one fish, there was only one solution—paste their solo shots together.
Trying to identify his catch, Albert dragged us to the town’s fish market, where we all wandered around fascinated by the hundreds of different types of seafood caught in the wild or raised by local fishermen. Mirasol, my only girl, immediately showed off.
“Big danggit!,” she exclaimed upon seeing her favorite breakfast treat. Correcting her, I explained that in Tagalog, that fish is called samaral when palm-sized or bigger and tambol when too small to cook as sinigang.
Once kippered, salted, and dried, it is called danggit. The Ilocana fish vendor waved her hands and said it was malaga in her dialect. With that first lesson, all five grew up asking and remembering the local names of fish, fruits, and vegetables.

Shape dictates price 
Our trips all over Luzon taught us that chefs, housewives, and fish vendors all prefer bangus from Dagupan and tilapia from Batangas. The truly discriminating go even further and specify Taal Lake.
Silangan earns more points than Kanluran. But how can one tell?
Bangus Dagupan has a small pointed head. Its body is flatter and gets wider around the belly so it is easy to know when it is fat.  
With tilapiang Batangas, the distinctions are more detailed. Those in the know prefer either one over fish caught in Laguna Bay. Fortunately, it is easy to tell at a glance when tilapia is not from Batangas.
Tilapiang Batangas is dark all over, unlike those raised elsewhere, which have pink fins and tinges of pinkish red around the mouth. The Batangas body is thick and more fleshy, while the head is short. The mouth looks like it bumped into a wall while swimming. “Parang pango” is how vendors describe it.

Big head = freshwater 
With shrimps, it is easy to tell when they are from the ocean or from fresh water ponds and lakes. Just look at their heads. All fresh water shrimp have big, thick heads. My brood learned that first hand in Los Baños, where we spent a night frolicking in a hot springs resort.
Tagalogs call tiny fresh water shrimp tagunton. Big ones are ulang. Tagunton mainly flavor vegetable dishes or end up as crispy okoy (fritters). Ulang is reserved for sinigang or plainly steamed to be dipped in butter, calamansi, or vinegar. Ulang is more expensive than sugpo (black tiger prawns) and rarely found in the markets. It has sweeter, more tender meat and richer roe.

Black versus white catfish 
It was in San Simon, Pampanga where Kyle first tasted inihaw na hito (grilled catfish) with buro (fermented rice) and fresh mustard leaves. He wondered why the fish had black skin, unlike the grayish white catfish caught in Manila Bay and sold by fishermen every morning on the seawall near the US embassy.
After explaining that they are two different fish, I added that there is another catfish called bunguan, which grows to several kilos in the ocean. When I was much younger, bunguan was regularly sold at the Zapote market, often with sacs of roe in their bellies. The orange eggs, the size of green peas, were hard and chewy.
I tried to find bunguan recently in Divisoria and at the Libertad public market but vendors said they rarely see it. Another victim of man’s reckless treatment of Mother Nature’s gifts?

Dulong is not baby dilis
We were in Ilocos Norte to view the preserved remains of President Ferdinand Marcos when Congressman Roquito Ablan invited us to his Laoag home for lunch. It was a great and rare chance for the young city kids to experience real Ilocano food, prepared by the solon’s mother.
Nana Meneng, famous throughout the region for preparing authentic Ilocano dishes, offered us simple everyday fare. Dinakdakan was the meat dish, inabraw for our veggies. Grilled fish was plated with bowls of dip they call KBL, short for its ingredients—Kamatis, Bagoong, Lasona (native onion).
She summoned us to sit around the huge dining table while still boiling water with tomatoes and onions. Only when we were all seated did she very carefully slide into the pot the last, and major, ingredient, almost microscopic fish called ipon caught in Paoay Lake barely an hour before. A minute later, she slowly stirred in a few tablespoons of freshly squeezed calamansi juice.
“This is a dish that does not wait for anyone,” Nana Meneng explained. “You wait for it.” And she was right. The broth was heavenly. It was sparingly seasoned to highlight the sweet freshness of the fish. Our bowls were emptied before the soup got cold.
My youngest, Andy, sheepishly apologized for identifying ipon as baby dilis (anchovy). He acknowledged that anchovies would have given the broth some bitterness from its entrails. A very visible difference between the two—ipon is white while dilis is grayish.
The kids wondered why I never served them ipon. As ipon is highly perishable, the only way to have it in Manila is to be friends with people who can fly it in from Ilocos. The rest of us have to be content with dulong from Navotas. Ipon caught in the clean waters of Lake Paoay reflect the Ilocanos’ love and care for the environment. Perhaps in time and with changing attitudes, we could look forward to clean, safe fish from Laguna de Bay and the Pasig River.