Last February 24, 2012, me
together with four friends gear-up to experience the Panagbenga Festival in
Baguio. And since, this is a huge event in the City of Pines we prepared early
for the trip.
During the last week of January we
are already inquiring different hotels in Baguio for a reservation on February 25-26.
To make our search for a hotel accommodation easy, my friend got a list of all
the e-mail addresses of the hotels in Baguio and send them a message inquiry. From
the long list of e-mail addresses that she has only 2 or 3 replied for an
available room.
The next task on hand is for a
bus reservation. Luckily Victory Liner has an online reservation, so there was
no hassle in reserving the tickets. You just need to go to their website and
fill-up a form to make a reservation. Victory Liner will then sent you an
e-mail confirming your reservation and instructions on how to make the payment.
Here is the link to reserve online http://www.victoryliner.com/reservations/. Victory Liner charges an additional Php100.00 if tickets are bought online for the courier fee; but it's worth it than falling in line.
Though, we made early preparation
for the Panagbenga Festival, unfortunately we were not able to witness the
festival. Our departure from Manila was delayed by more than an hour (our
scheduled departure is 11:50 pm, we left the Cubao Station at 1:00 am) and even
at 3:00 am there was traffic, so the usual 6 hours became an 8 hours travel. Thus,
we were not able to watch the street dancers perform on Saturday morning. The
next day Sunday, the Float parade was scheduled at 8:00 am, we wake up early to
witness the parade, but when we reached Upper Session Road, the streets was
already jam packed by people. We tried to find a nice location but to no avail.
Because of the said experience we
learned some lessons that we will remember when we returned again to Baguio for
the Panagbenga Festival. Here are our lessons learned:
1. Make
early hotel reservations; start hotel inquiry as early as the first week of
January.
2. Choose
hotels that are along or near Session Road or Burnham Park.
3. Check
the event or program schedule of the festival. Here is a link that you can
check for the schedule http://www.panagbenga.ph/
4. Make
early reservations for the bus ticket. It is better to make two-way
reservations already.
5. Leave
Manila early. Since the event is done every last Saturday and Sunday of
February, file a vacation leave for Friday.
6. Wake
up early. According to a taxi driver, starting at 5:00 am people are already at
Session Road finding a nice location to watch the parade.
7. Best
location to watch the parade is SM Baguio and the Post Office at Upper Session
Road.
