More Pictures From the Panagbenga Flower Festival 2009

Baguio City is celebrating it’s 14th Flower Festival, also known as Panagbenga, with this years theme “Our Festival, Yours Too.” The heart of the festival, The Grand Float Parade, was just held March 1.

Although there was lesser display of flowers as compared to the past celebrations, the festival drew a massive number of people literally filling every corner of the streets. According to reports people came as far away as Surigao, Mindanao to Vallejo, California. Authorities estimates that the number of guests reached 300,000 or more.

Here are simple but real life pictures I personally shot from the Athletic bowl where the 23 floats were displayed after the 2009 flower parade.

Important Update:
I just noticed some user confusion viewing the pic gallery above.

When you click on each small pics (thumbnail) to view the large version, it’s normal that your screen goes dark while the image is being loaded. Loading may take time especially with Internet explorer browsers (also depends on internet speed).

Just click the << or >> at the bottom of the enlarged pic to view previous or next pics. To close and return to this page, just click on the image itself.

If you don’t like your screen going dark, you can easily see the original pic version by just right clicking your mouse over each thumbnail and then clicking the “Open in New Tab” option or “Open in New Window” for Internet Explorer users. The Panagbenga picture gallery is best viewed using Mozilla or Firefox browser.

Disclaimer: Please don’t take seriously the annotations I made for each picture. It’s just my fun way of describing it. If by chance you’re one of the people who was accidentally included with one of the pics and don’t wish to be featured here, please contact us and I will removed the image immediately. And please pardon me for the poor color quality, all images were just taken with a cellphone cam.

Share Your Pics: If you have Panagbenga pics and want it to share with us just contact us or you can send an email at dongki[@]baguiocar[dot]com. It will be featured on future posts.

The Story Behind The Pics

The entrance to the city’s sports complex was so tightly crowded with people trying to find their way in. It was around 10:30 in the morning when I arrived there. It was a sunny hot morning but eager spectators seem not to mind it.

I’m not used to jostling my way into a multitude of tightly crowded people but I joined the “pilgrimage” thinking it must be fun. Boy, it’s somewhat close to a stampede. Once you’re trapped in the middle there’s no way to turn around. People behind keep pushing and your physical strength is not enough to control it even if you’re the strongest guy in town. No wonder the guards just stood there scratching their heads.

The Athletic bowl’s main grandstand was also jampacked with spectators but I managed to take vacant seat at a smaller grandstand located just near the entrance. It was so far from the main stage and one can barely hear and understand what the speaker is saying.

Anyway, long story short I waited until around quarter to 1 PM for the authorities to let the crowd move in and have a closer look at the floats. Or, I must say the persistent crowd finally broke into the barricaded compound of Flower floats. Crowds just idling by the sides came swarming like a battalion of angry Spartans – just to have a closer look at the flowers and floats.

More Panagbenga Photos from Webshots.com