At the hot-air balloon festival in Lubao

-
Lubao, Pampanga

My annual pilgrimage to Pampanga was two months later than usual: the Philippine International Balloon Festival was moved to April from its typical February schedule. And this year, it wasn't held at Clark, Pampanga. Instead, I had to drive an additional hour (or so) to Lubao, Pampanga. With my kites given away by my mom and dad in February (I kept the kites in a closet and they got discovered when my parents cleaned the space up), I had no choice but to buy myself another kite... This time, I bought a big one. One day, I'll have to get one of those dual-line kites, similar to what my siblings and I used to have.


With my gear in the car (camera, tripod, pillows, tent... Yes, I packed a tent!), my cousin, my nieces, and I drove north before sunrise. Anna should have been with us but she didn't respond to my calls en route so she wasn't able to join us. It took us over six hours to get to Lubao, with pitstops and with a snail-paced traffic jam (because I missed the turn to the diversion road). By that time, I was raring to buy a kite and start flying!


My passengers chose mostly to take refuge under the shade and to keep in touch with their friends via Facebook and Instagram (yeah, with lots of self-portraits) while I was flying my kite. Hence, I'm the only one who got dark. As in, really DARK... And red. I look like I've been on the beach all day!! I didn't even get this dark when I was actually on the beach!


Finally, the day turned into night and the hot-air balloons started floating in the cool air. It was nice to watch them glow against the darkening sky. Alas, we still had a long way to go and we were fetching Anna in Quezon City so we didn't hang around to watch the program end.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more