A Trip to Baguio Part I: Lessons Learned

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.