Lot of things has change from 1997 where I stayed here for
2 years, as I returned to visit the place last March 3, 2013, chasing the last
day of Panagbenga Festival, or they called it as the "Session in
Bloom", the place is not that cold in the morning till afternoon, and
tourists flocks together, and many buildings was been established, I think the
serenity of this city was been ripped out in my own opinion as a residence
before.
When I stayed in Baguio in year 1999, Panagbenga only
celebrated 3-7 days only, and tourist flocks there and media coverage are
everywhere, the City has set an schedules of each event, and the most waited
one is the “Parade”.
Panagbenga Festival is celebrated annually by the City of
Baguio, and a lot of tourists flocks to this place to experience the Floral
Parade, Fireworks displays, concerts, Most of the Inns, pension houses, hotels
are fully booked on this date. This festival is always covered by Media, that
explains why all kinds of tourist want to witness the festival in Baguio. J
I was in my apartment watching docu t.v. when Baguio
appeared on the screen and presto, the features is panagbenga, suddenly I
missed the place, and I started to imagine myself visiting the place again, my
mind is already calculating on how much would I need to spend for a one day
trip. Yes, you read it right, ONE DAY TRIP only.
The following day I talked to my friend about my plans to
visit Baguio and how I really missed the place, I told her I would go there
even if I’m alone, besides it would be easy for me to roam around because I
used to live there, then she decided to tag along with me and she even
persuaded my other friend to come with us, so before 9:30am, my plan going
alone became three.
I am in charge to plan this trip and of course budget is
very essential for this and the Budget is… P1,500.00 each for this trip except
pasalubong.
As the day is passing by for this trip, I was just
wondering if we really can do this trip for only one day considering we need to
travel 5 – 6 hours from manila to Baguio.
March 2 came, after office hours we agreed to meet at Victory
Liner Cubao Terminal at 10:00-10:30pm, our reserved ticket is 11:00pm,
estimated travel time is 5-6 hours, and to my calculation, we’ll be arriving in
Baguio at 5:00am next day.
Victory Liner has a daily trip to Baguio which leaves every
30 minutes and they even added a few buses for holidays just to accommodate a
huge numbers of passengers.
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| Victory Liner Cubao Station - waiting to board |
My plan was to sleep all the way to gain some strength but
no avail, I was just lucky enough to have a little nap while on board.
We arrived in Baguio earlier than my expected time (3:45am),
the moment we step out on our bus, we felt the chill in our bones and our
jackets and sarong are not enough to keep us warm, upon entering at the Victory
Liner Baguio Terminal, we proceeded to the second floor where we can purchased
our return ticket that day, but sadly our selected time is already fully booked
and the available time that we can get is 12:40mn of March 4, 2013, we decided
to get though. After we made our reservation, we did a little freshen up and
decided to take a nap at the terminal until sunrise. The Terminal is a sleep
friendly you know.
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| taking a nap while waiting for sunrise |
Hailed taxi at 5:30am when in my own thought that it would
be safe for us to look for a food, I asked the driver to drop us at session
road to any fast food, then the taxi driver replied that session is closed I suddenly
realized that it was the last day of session in blooms so I just asked him to
drop us upper session road fast food where we could take our breakfast, we paid
only P45.00 for this ride (15.00/head).
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| - My Breakfast - |
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| warm at last |
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| Session Road |
And because we are already in Session Road, we just took a
slow walk and there are already opened store at that early morning. From
session road, we crossed the Harrison Plaza going to Burnham Park, we met a lot
of runner and the other part of the park has a Zumba Session and most
participants are “oldies”, we just watched them doing the zumba as their
exercise I think, and maybe because i was entertained watching them dancing sumba, I wasnt able to take some good shots at burnham park.
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| Here are some part of Burnham park Baguio City |
Botanical Garden change a lot from the last time I visit
this place year 2008, I can say that it improved a lot but the flowers was been
lesser than before.
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| Ready, Get set, Go! (see how colorful I am) :) |
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| stairways of flowers... |
From Botanical Garden we just took a walk going to wright
park where you can find a lot of horses for rent, I think it will cost you
P250.00 – P300.00 for 30 minutes ride from there, there is a connecting stairs
going to “The Mansion” the mansion is the place where the Present President of
the Philippines stays for vacations. We had some jump shots here but we failed
to get even a single good one.
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| connecting stairs from wright park to the mansion |
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| strawberry taho |
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| walk walk walk to the mansion |
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| Doughlas the working dog (so cute) |
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| View Deck - minesview |
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| buying pasalubong |
From minesview, the three of us decided to visit the Good sheperd to buy a few jams, I've heard that theirsjams are good but kinda pricey, Good Sheperd accepts all major credit cards as long as you buy 11 items, and like us that have no enough cash on our pocket it an advantage, I used the plastic card again just to try their jams and in fairness, their products are good, tasty and yummy, writing this one wants me to go there again.
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| see our heavy baggage of pasalubong |
Just a piece of advise, there are 6 lines of counters and the line is too long that you have to wait for your turn, most tourist I encountered bought boxes of producst, and you must write down your "list of goods" and give it to the counter so that it would be easy for them to pack it for you.
After good sheperd we took a taxi again going to John hay but decided to just pass by in this place and go straight to Philippine Military Academy.
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| Camp John Hay - |
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| Philippine Military Academy - Entrance |
Upon entering to this side, the guard would ask you to leave your I.D and beach walk is not allowed in this place. We really had a lot of good shots in this place. One thing I love to this place is the cleanliness. As I've said ealier, we bought a lot of pasalubong in Minesview and we carry a heavy bags, what we did is we left our baggage to "Manong" who manage the Comfort Room.
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| Tree house |
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| Add caption |
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| Me behind the Tree House |
I think we spend more than an hour touring around PMA when we decided to take a break from walking. We waited for the Jeepney back to Plaza to have our lunch, coz we are all starving that moment, after a few minutes of waiting, Jeepney came, paid P18.00 back to plaza, we traveled about 20-30 minutes, we had our nap on this ride, we just awaken when the driver told us that we are already in sm baguio dropping point, we hurried and get our things and give thanks to the driver, we went ahead straight to SM to look for food, but unfortunately all the fastfood and restauarant are jumpedpack with people, and then we tried our luck at KFC even the lines of each counter is long we patiently waited because we really need to eat.
After lunch and fixing ourselves, we left our baggage at SM Supermarket Baggage counter, as usual the line for taxi is very long, and it took us 20 minutes of waiting for our turn. From SM City Baguio we paid only 125.00 going to TAM-Awan village, Tam-wan is just a new place for me in Baguio, I wanted to visit the Mysterious Dominican Hill and take a climb challenge of Lourdes Grotto, but two of my buddies refused because they thought it was a creepy place, and so I agreed with them to visit the Tam-awan village.
The Taxi were so kind that he gave us some ideas about the place how far it is from Lourdes, I thought, the two place was just a walking distance with each other. Anyway, Manong also gave me an idea where to buy good quality "Ukay-Ukay" or thrift market.
Tam-Awan Village has an entrance of P60.00 per person, they will give you some maps, at first we were just giggling with each other because none of us know how to read a map.
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| Tam-Awan village |
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| First Level of the Village |
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| Second Level |
Upon arrving in this place, it was a bit cloudy already so we did expect a few rain showers. My other travel buddy gave up on the Third level and she said if want to go on, we can leave her there to take some rest. Ava and I decided to continue the "Quest" and our main goal is to reach the "Dream Catcher". We took the climbed a little bit slow, no guides here actually, your guide is only your map.
We really had a great time for this quest, we are laughing, at the same time scaring each other. hahahha
Finally we reach the summit according to the map, but where is the dream catcher, sorry guys, forgot to take some shot on that dream catcher, i didnt know that it was the dream catcher that I'm looking for, then both of us laugh when we found out about the summit.
I never regret to look for it because I had a great view, I am surrounded with lush green, and green is good right? Dream Catcher serves as a viewdeck from this place. I accidentally deleted that shots on my phone. We went back holding the map to trace the path back to the third level. It took us more than an hour of walking, and our feet is a little sore that time.
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| Where is the dream catcher |
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| back to the third level |
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| while wating for taxi |
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| see that fog |
Tam-awan village to bayanihan plaza - paid only P75.00 for taxi ride, upon arrival in bayanihan, we took a quick look of the other store open and compare the prizes of the jackets and pants, and we didnt know that outside the rain was pouring heavy.
So from bayanihan we took a jeepney going to SM Baguio to have our dinner and get our things to the baggage counter. P8.00 for this jeepney ride.
Had our dinner at Chowking, I spent P125.00 for this while my other friend is only P79.00. It was a bad decisions when we choose the outside seat, it was already 7:00pm and it was freezing cold outside (we choose this seat because we want to witness the fireworks, too bad, it did not happen because of the heavy rain that evening). After some rest and dinner, we took a taxi going to victory liner terminal and change our clothes, and were a bit of shocked because the terminal was packed with passangers.
We waited for hours for our departure, and we really can feel the cold in our bones that very night, I even catch a cough (that is due to stress, fatique and cold). We had a little nap, finally 12:40 came, again, I thought I can have my time to sleep but i failed again.
It was 6:00am of March 4 when we arrived in Cubao Terminal, headed home thought i still can go to work, but my body wants to rest, so I decided to take a leave for that day.
One thing I realized on this trip, My body cannot take a more than 24 hours no sleep, and If you would asked me if I would do this kind of trip again, my answer is definitely a big big "NO", but will still visit Baguio if time permits me and of course budget is most essential on this trip.
Once again, I thank the Lord Jesus for sustaining us the strenght to accomplished this trip with my Friends.
Summary of Expenses:
Manila to Baguio Bus 445.00
Victory Liner Baguio – Session Road Taxi 45/3 15.00
Breakfast – fast food 89.00
Plaza – Botanical Jeepney 8.00
Botanical – Wright Park walk 0.00
Wright Park – The Mansion walk 0.00
Strawberry Taho 20.00
The Mansion – Minesview Taxi 15.00
Mineview – PMA Taxi 42.00
PMA – Plaza jeepney 18.00
Lunch – Fast Food 119.00
SM Baguio – Tam Awan Taxi 42.00
Entrance to Tam-Awan Village 60.00
Tam-awan Village – Plaza (bayanihan) Taxi
25.00
Bayanihan – SM Baguio Jeep 8.00
Dinner – Fast Food 125.00
SM Baguio – Victory Liner taxi 15.00
Baguio – Cubao Bus 445.00
Cubao – Home taxi 35.00
GRAND TOTAL
EXCEPT PASALUBONG -----------------
P1,499.00
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