El Diez de Mayo.

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El diez de Mayo, no special holiday, as far as I know. Just the day the Local Filipino Community in Hawaii happened to pick for their Annual Fiesta in the Park. The Parade started at ungodly hour of 8AM. Sorry don’t have any photos for you on this event.

When I finally arrived at the Park, a Escrima or Kali demo was going on with guys in Kendo Armor battling each other with a pair of sticks each. Latter came performances, that seemed Catholic in nature, resembling scenes from Mexican movies of villagers honoring Jesus or Mary. Next were performances that seem Moro or Muslim in nature, combined with Spanish colonial type ballroom dance.

As most Culture events seem to have their audience participation portion, where for comedy relief or other reasons, such the Koreans with their Kimchi (a hot fiery cabbage pickle) contest, the Chinese with their Manapua (Siu Bao, pork filled bun) eating contest, and Okinawans with their most hairy chest contest; the Filipinos this year had their Papaya Dance contest. According to the MC it’s a dance craze in the Philippines similar to the Macarena where one goes through a set repetition of movements to some torture invoking music.

It finally came down to two contestants, a young man about 20 and a maturish middle age man. It seem inevitable that the younger guy would win, since he threw in some break dance move, (one hand balancing, somersaults, etc.) However, the silver streaker held his best moves for last, and did a Tina Turner hair tossing thing and that brought down the house.

Towards another section of the Park a large group with various type of costumes and flower bedecked arches were getting ready to do something. The announcer seems to be announcing that a “Santa Maria Group” was set to perform soon. However, I was not able to stay to see what it was all about. However, I did manage to discreetly sneak some shots in as the colors and costuming was too irresistible to miss out on.

Interspaced with these photos are shots of the Honolulu Skyline from a Round Top-Tantalus scenic drive, I took on a following day. It’s a looped drive, where one goes through rain forest with several scenic stops to view Honolulu from various angles.

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