Baguio

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The weekend of April 25th, some members of my team and I planned a trip to Baguio. This trip came about because someone mentioned that it was their famous Flower Festival that weekend. The flower festival is called Panagbenga 2017. The travel time from Cavite (where the office is) to Baguio is around a 6 hour drive north towards the mountains. So the team and I changed our shift so that we could leave work at 12 AM so we could get to Baguio around 6 AM. So on Thursday I worked the normal 9 PM to 6 AM shift. On Friday, we get into work for 3 PM so I had just a few hours of sleep. At 12 AM, we hit the road. I was hoping to sleep in the van, but probably only got 20 minutes of sleep the whole ride. The traffic getting there was really bad because of the festival, so we ended up arriving around 9 AM. With the traffic being stop and go traffic, the steep roads we were traveling, and us having 11 people in the van, at one point we ended up rolling backwards. It was pretty terrifying. So we all got out of the car and walked up the road and Malvin met us at the top with the van.

Once we finally reached Baguio, we went to a family style restaurant and ate dinner/breakfast/lunch there. After eating, we checked into the hotel. Malvin needed to sleep since he had been driving for 9 hours. So the rest of us hired a driver who took us to a few different spots in the city. We stopped at famous haunted house. I took a snapchat picture of the house and sent it to Hayley. She ended up sending it back to me with one of the windows circled because there was a face in the window. Pretty creepy. After that, we went to Mines View Park. It has a beautiful view on Baguio with all of its mountains. We also did a little shopping for souvenirs.

The driver then took us to a famous cafe called The Cafe in the Sky. It is so high up that it is known for having a sea of clouds around it (which is clouds that actually look like the ocean). Recently, the area where the cafe is located has had strict rules put in place for preservation. So only local people are supposed to be able to go there. For us, the drive had us get into another van with another driver. He was able to get through the checkpoint area and drive us up the mountain to the cafe. Unfortunately, it was so foggy we weren't able to see the sea of clouds.

After that, we went back to the hotel to take a rest. We rented two rooms between the 11 of us. Girls in one room, boys in the other. I shared a bed with Andeng, one of the girls on my team. Carey, the 72 year old exchangee, shared a bed with our driver Malvin. After sleeping for a few hours, we woke up, had dinner at a Korean restaurant, and walked to the night market. It was vendor after vendor and an extremely small pathway. It was very packed but was cool to experience. After the night market, a group went back to the hotel to sleep since we had to wake up at 6 AM on Sunday for the parade. However, a group of 5 of us went to a bar with a live band and had some buckets of beer. We had a great time singing, talking, and drinking. We ended up staying until the band stopped and Andeng and Ally went and asked the lead singer if he wanted to have a beer with us. He said yes, so when he came over I introduced myself to him. He said I was gorgeous haha. Then he asked how old I was, and he guessed I was 21. Definitely trying to flatter me. He also asked the group if Carey and I are related. He thought Carey might be my grandfather! When the bar closed, we went back to the hotel. I got into bed at 4 AM when Arianne's alarm was going off to wake her up. I ended up getting 2 hours of sleep and we were off to the festival.

Carey and I were the only two that went out drinking and still went to the festival. I figure I can sleep when I am back in the US. The festival was packed. People slept in tents near the parade route the night before so they could get front row. It was extremely crowded and very hot. The parade was very cool. The had people dressed in outfits made of flowers, floats all made of flowers, and marching bands playing music. There were also a lot of local celebrities on the floats. The crowd was going wild for them.

After the parade, it was so nice to be able to walk around and not be stuck to someone next to you. We went to a market to pick up some fresh strawberries and brooms (two things that Baguio is known for). Then we hit the road back to Manila. Again, we were stuck in tons of traffic and ended up getting back to the condo around 10 PM on Sunday night. On Monday, I finally caught up on the sleep I had missed all weekend. All in all, I would say it was a successful trip! And I do think that I have the best team in the office =)

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