- First blog post of the year
- First time to travel without my parent’s accompany
- First time to land in the city of Cebu
- And first time to experience Sinulog Mardi Gras. Yay!
From Wiki, the Sinulog festival is one of the grandest and most colorful festivals in the Philippines with a very rich history. The main festival is held each year on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City to honor the Santo Niño, or the child Jesus, who used to be the patron saint of the whole province of Cebu (since in the Catholic faith Jesus is not a saint, but God). It is essentially a dance ritual which remembers the Filipino people’s pagan past and their acceptance of Christianity.
The festival features some the country’s most colorful displays of pomp and pageantry: participants garbed in bright-colored costumes dance to the rhythm of drums, trumpets, and native gongs. The streets are usually lined with vendors and pedestrians all wanting to witness the street-dancing.
“Sinulog, isyagit ug kusog. Pit Senior! Pit Senior! Tanan magsaulog!” this is the beat we can hear practically everywhere in Cebu and other neighboring provinces just after New Year. I decided to join in the fun as the Grand Mardi Gras is fast approaching!
Yay! I have my comfy slippers and shoes already! I am now prepared to experience Sinulog and ready for a looooooooooong walk around the city. This is great!
With my college mate, Neil and newly found friends, Jean and Pinky, we bound to Cebu on the 14th of January (the day before grand festival). We took Weesam Express, a fast craft vessel with a trip at 8 in the morning because we still have to seek lodging house in the city. Unfortunately when we got there, all of the lodging houses were fully booked. Oh my, this is not good! So we called a friend if we can have an overnight stay on their house but the problem was the house is too far from the city. We called another friend, our college mate Salome who stayed within the metro. Luckily with her help, we found an available boarding room with 1 double deck bed, electric fan and light at 150 pesos per head. In our situation, we were like sardines packed in a small can but its okay since we’re at outside most of the time.
Several activities were lined up already. Traditionally, the Sinulog celebration lasts for nine days. The night before the big event, we went to SM City Cebu to witness the gratifying fireworks display competition.
Here are some of the photos I took that night:
After the activity in SM, we moved to Mango Square. Whooa! It was the liveliest night I’ve seen so far. Back to back parties happened in every corner of the streets. The place was covered with people partying: dancing, singing, eating and of course drinking.
The next day is the much awaited Sinulog Grand Parade. We woke at 7 in the morning not by our alarm clock but by the helicopter roving around the city. Before anywhere else, we went first to Basilica Del Sto. Niño to give thanks to dear Sto. Niño for all the blessings throughout the year. We will have fun and will enjoy the party mood but will definitely not forget to light candles and say our prayer of thanks. As expected the church was packed with thousands of devotees.
Here are some of the photos taken at Basilica.
Time to witness the fun of Sinulog Grand Parade. We stayed along the street the whole day. Thank God the weather really cooperates unlike the previous year. The streets were covered with colorful costumes, props, floats and thousands (okay, scratch that) millions of people, even Koreans, Western People and other nationals witnessed the grandest and biggest festival in the Philippines. There are artists that will perform in Cebu every year. Saw famous artists during the parade. Some of them are Miss Universe runner ups Shamcey Supsup and Venus Raj, Gerald Anderson, Iza Calzado, Angelica Panganiban, Derek Ramsay and many more.
All over again, the San Diego Dance Company together with the governor of Cebu, Gwen Garci are the guest performer this year. Take a look in the video below where I covered the male members of the group dancing the hit wave steps of “Teach Me How To Dougie”. So cute, aren’t they? Haha!
We leave the boarding house around 5 in the afternoon because our return trip schedule to Ormoc will be at 10PM and we still have more places to visit. Our plan was to go SM first to leave our baggage in Traveler’s Lounge and go to Ayala Center afterwards. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on the places we want to visit because of the annoying taxi driver. We took a taxi cab and not on a jeepney so that we can reach the place in a shortest possible time. See what the taxi driver did? He brought us in idunnowhatstreetsarethey because of his reasons, which is a horrible traffic on this street, on that street and so bla! bla! bla! It took almost 2 hours before we reached the SM and pay a fare of Php 300. WTF! We decided not to go to Ayala since we’re running out of time. We just had our dinner and bought pasalubong and souvenirs at SM.
One hour to go and the ship will depart. Instead of waiting for more than 20 minutes on the lane to get a taxi cab, Neil hired a van few meters away from the taxi. We reached the port in a quick time, thanks to Manong Driver! We boarded in the vessel and here comes another problem again. As we landed Cebu on Saturday morning, we went directly to shipping office to get an early ticket for Sunday night trip. Unluckily, tourist and economy class are already full. We have no choice but to avail the seating slots. Imagine, sitting while sleeping for almost 6 hours at night. Pheeeew! This is not good, again. While we are inside the ship, we witnessed the fireworks display of Ayala and SM. In all fairness, Ayala’s fireworks display is pretty much amazing than the SM. And finally after 6 hours of uncomfortable condition, we safely reached Ormoc City.
My Sinulog experience brought lots of happy memories to me. It’s one of the best days and travel happened in my life. I’m looking forward for the Sinulog 2013. My travel for this year just got started. This is great!
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