⌛ Masskara Festival in Bacolod...

After planning to see the 31st annual Masskara Festival for a couple months now so we book our hotel in advance. Good advice on that one as the town is packed out! I would venture to say well over 200,000 people hit Bacolod streets for the festival. While it takes place over 3 weeks period, the main attractions are the street dance contests. The participants do some very well choreographed dance routines winding therr way through the streets of Bacolod in a VERY high energy dance.

I'll digress here, for those that don't know about MassKara and it's meaning:

"The festival first began in 1980 during a period of crisis. The province relied on sugar cane as its primary agricultural crop, and the price of sugar was at an all-time low due to the introduction of sugar substitutes like high fructose corn syrup in the United States.[1] It was also a time of tragedy; on April 22 of that year, the inter-island vessel Don Juan carrying many Negrenses, including those belonging to prominent families in Bacolod City, collided with the tanker Tacloban City and sank. An estimated 700 lives were lost in the tragedy.[2]

In the midst of these tragic events, the city's artists, local government and civic groups decided to hold a festival of smiles, because the city at that time was also known as the City of Smiles. They reasoned that a festival was also a good opportunity to pull the residents out of the pervasive gloomy atmosphere. The initial festival was therefore, a declaration by the people of the city that no matter how tough and bad the times were, Bacolod City is going to pull through, survive, and in the end, triumph." SOURCE: Wikipedia

We took the 540am aircon bus from Dumaguete to Bacolod and terminal to terminal was 283Pesos and 5 1/2 hours. Nice bus, comfortable, TV with movies, etc.

On the return, the 830am aircon bus was cancelled due to mechanical problem and we were stuck on the non-aircon bus...YUCK! 230Pesos and 6 1/2 hours back to Dumaguete. While not horrible, it's not the most enjoyable ride without aircon as the dirt and dust hits you as well as having much smaller seats and legroom.

Hotels in Bacolod:

Sugarland is my hotel of choice! Nice rooms, nice lobby and a very good restaurant serving some of my favorite salads and pastas. 1200P a night without breakkie and 1600P a night including a horribly cold buffet that's barely edible. Obviously opt for the no buffet including and order breakkie from their restaurant. the restaurant food is good. For Masskara, they were booked solid and nothing available.

Stayed in Circle Inn and had the Zen Room. Nice room with sitting chair, complimentary coffee/tea in the room, etc. 2400P a night...it's festival time! :-) Stayed there one night. Food was bad and service was even worse in their restaurant

Moved to the Sylvia Manor @ 2350P which had a great location for the festival. 2 blocks from the town square and parade route. But, rooms small, TV was small, hot water was luke warm and room was dimly lit. Wouldn't stay there again despite them having VERY attentive service, smiling staff and generally trying to make up for rooms that fail. Morning breakfast buffet was toast, fish heads in water, chicken adobo, fruit and rice. Fairly disgusting.

Next time in Bacolod i'll either try the upscale L'Fisher hotel or stay in Sugarland exclusively.

The first day of the festival we sat at the town square and got inside seating for Photographers and each of the competing Barangays comes in and does a choreographed dance routine. I thought they were all impressive. There's 2 categories: Elementary aged kids and then the Barangays. Here's some shots from the town square

 

Here's a small segment video of a dance i did with my canon sd990is point and shoot camera
Dance Video - Town Square

There was only 2 other foreigners that were photographers there and they were shooting for European publications. The remaining were Filipino and had all the latest camera kit. I was drooling over their 70-300 f2.8 lenses. I was well out-gunned but tried to hold my own! hahah

Exhausted that night and with rain beginning it was time to grab a bite to eat and get some sleep. The next day I wanted to photograph the street parade.

 

Here's a small segment video of a dance i did with my canon sd990is point and shoot camera
Dance Video - Town Square

There was only 2 other foreigners that were photographers there and they were shooting for European publications. The remaining were Filipino and had all the latest camera kit. I was drooling over their 70-300 f2.8 lenses. I was well out-gunned but tried to hold my own! hahah

Exhausted that night and with rain beginning it was time to grab a bite to eat and get some sleep. The next day I wanted to photograph the street parade.

 

The princess and I decided to walk up and catch the street parade on Lacson Street at the starting point. It was due to start at 4PM and it actually started at 4:10PM, not bad eh?? :-) On each corner along Lacson was a TOWER OF POWER! I'm telling ya....30 foot wide, 20 foot tall colums of speakers powerful enough to put out windows...and defenitely can be felt vibrating your lungs.



This guy....was in oblivion!


While this lil dude couldn't help but to get his groove on! :funnyanimation12:


Princess and i worked our way to the start fo the parade route to capture the street dancers. The detail of these costumes just amaze me....

 

Street dance Video clip here
Street Dance Video 1

Street Dance Video 2

For those wondering a bit about Bacolod. I like the city...friendly people, fairly safe feel and it's got quite a cosmopolitan feel to it which is unusual here in the Philippines. Cars, not motorbikes, are the run of the streets. There's evidence of some serious money around. There's some fine dining options, art galleries and boutiques.

One of my favorite times in Bacolod was one night the princess and I left Robinsons mall and had a cup of coffee in Bob's Restaurant just a short distance away. Leaving Bob's we decided to walk a bit and see the street life. We dodged in and out of some good lil spots....restaurants, bakeries, high end hotels, seafood restaurants, etc. Here's a few pics to get a feel of Bacolod

 

Before we knew it....and after a few rains that left us soaked, we had walked all the way back to our hotel some 4KM from where we started.

Fried chicken at 10P per piece (.22 US Cents!) ended up being dinner....




Well, that wraps up this bit of info and I'm off to the festival in Dumaguete tomorrow.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Great photos! Is the road construction between Dgte and Bacolod fully completed?