If you were lookng for native handicraft souvenirs, chances are your friends would recommend that you got to Quiapo and rummage through the stalls under the bridge and find whatever fancies your Pinoy nostalgia fits. But if you want, you could go down south, to Tacloban's Basey town proper and feast your eyes on up to 30 groups or shops offering weaving-based handicrafts--from the old-favorite banig or woven sleeping mat, to woven baskets, basket-weave handbags, basket weave purses and all sorts of other basket weave handicrafts.
Basey is the country's basket-weave hotspot as much as Paete is the woodcrafter and sculpture capital of the Philippines. In Basey, almost every household has someone working all day long weaving a mat or any other useful item that can be put together by weaving sea grass, reeds and all the other readily available grass or leaf weaving materials growing in the area.
