MANILA, Philippines - We were a van-load of culturati let loose for the weekend, taking the three-hour drive to Morong, Bataan last week. For months now, we had been egging on a friend to get us an invite to this private estate in Bataan where old houses from various places are reportedly reassembled and reconstructed. Most, if not all, of them are well-known ancestral houses from Luzon which had gone on the block and would have been reduced into rubble or buried in the conflicting memories of their previous occupants, had their surviving parts not been bought by a collector/builder and rebuilt in his coastal estate in Bataan.

Finally, last Sunday, Jimmy Laya gathered a mix of writers/scholars, architects, culture officials and kibitzer (me) for the trip. It didn't turn out to be that long, owing mainly to the hilarious commentary and encyclopedic recollections of people, events and gossip, both ancient and recent, by book author Martin "Sonny" Tinio, whose landmark book with Gilda Cordero Fernando, "Philippine Ancestral Houses," has been a reference for anyone interested in our heritage architecture and period lifestyle. On that trip, Sonny made my iPod useless; we preferred to listen to him.

The sprawl of Bataan construction magnate Jose "Jerry" Acuzar is out of this world. We gasped in disbelief and near-silence (loose, instantaneous comments from our dear culturati couldn't be helped, like one's involuntary muscles) at the sight of centuries-old "ancestral" houses transplanted to this green open space so alien from their original environs. There's nothing like it in the country, I said. Jimmy noted that the only such resettlement he had seen was in the US East Coast.

Acuzar and his wife Tess welcomed us to the biggest house in their estate -- a reconstruction of a Baliwag home.

From there, we looked out to the newest addition that was still being built, the Enriquez home from Quiapo that was in the news last year because its sale was bemoaned by the culture sector since it was the original home of UP Fine Arts and there was fear the structure would be lost forever. But it was not to be as the building is now resurrected from the salvageable parts of the old structure. It is more than 800 sq m and you had to stretch your imagination to believe that such an expansive residence had once been located in today's congested Manila.

In the noonday sun, the group walked from one house to another, climbing each nearly finished structure. There's the house from Candaba, Pampanga, which veteran editor and art book author Johnny Gatbonton and his wife, book author, Chita, remembered clearly from years ago.

There are other houses - from Sta. Cruz and Binondo (Manila), Bulacan, Pampanga and Quezon. In the latter, a member of the group recalled a feature - a trap door, which the wife of the household used to flee the "tulisan" (town bandits) and escape and the tragic end the family met.

It was enthralling to hear Sonny narrate his recollections of the unique features of each home. We realized that this author and scholar of Philippine heritage had indeed scoured the country for architectural and culinary traditions, encountering many of these homes we were touring and committing their history to memory.

The architects in the group, conservation advocates Tina Turralba and Joven Ignacio, noted how important it is to use the right construction technology and materials (for instance, lime, instead of cement) in this reconstruction effort, an expertise that should hark back to the period in which each house was built.

But all, including Cultural Center of the Philippines president Nes Jardin and the usually hard-to-please writer Ramon Villegas, agreed that Acuzar's effort is a unique feat. Acuzar is an art collector with initial interest in paintings until an old house was offered to him three years ago. That led to an obsession with old houses.

There are 14 such structures in the 40-hectare estate by the sea. In this vast open space, the houses can "breathe," unlike, you imagine, in their birthplaces of a century ago. And, in the quiet of the night, you imagine, they must be speaking, telling their stories and secrets of old.

Were this estate to be opened to the public, what a destination it would be! And what an education for today's generation.