Nobody’s really certain as to when the process of making Asin Tibuok was introduced in Bohol or how it actually began. Some ethnographic research in recent decades indicate that the earliest written account on what seems to be a similar process of salt-making to that of the Asin Tibuok was written by the 17th-century Spanish missionary Father Francisco Ignacio Alcima. In his chronicles, he describes a method for producing “Sal de Bisayas” that is unique to the Visayan region, and unlike the others in the archipelago. This method involved soaking chopped driftwood in seawater, to be dried and slowly burned into ashes, which would then be collected and filtered into a brine, then finally boiled in earthenware vessels until producing hardened pieces of salt. This method pretty much sums up the way Alburanons have been making their salt, with the exception of using coconut husks instead of driftwood.    

~ An excerpt from “The Price of Salt” as published in Volume 8.