Of Flying Colors and Big Balloons

Author's Note:

I decided to change the theme of my blog from this post forward. All posts will be in "letter form" now. The idea is, I am writing letters to my 50-year old self.

I hope y'all enjoy!


                                                                        *************************

13 February 2016

Hey Ram,

Today I had the chance to see the famous Hot Air Balloon Festival in Pampanga! There were a lot of travel agencies on Facebook organizing events for the festival with sidetrips to different attractions in Pampanga. The festival schedule was from February 11-14, 2016. I chose to join Esure Travel on their Feb 13 schedule. Their Hot Air Balloon tour includes a sidetrip to SandBox. I didn’t get the Feb 14 date ‘cause surely, that’d be jampacked since it’s Valentine’s Day and lovers will be everywhere. (Oh how I hate lovers. Haha just kidding!) :)

We were picked up by vans in Quezon Ave. at around 3 or 4am and we headed straight to Clark Field Pampanga. At almost 500 meters from the venue, there was already a long queue of cars looking for parking spaces. Thankfully, we were able to get parked at almost a hundred meters away from the main entrance.

Ticket to the show!

The main entrance.

There were also a lot of photo ops display at the venue. You can take pictures with them so I made the most out of my free time. The guide said we’ll re-assemble at around 12am to go to SM Clark for lunch.

Me on camouflage.

And then… the Hot Air Balloons exhibitions!

There were a few who parachuted from the sky. And at that moment, I thought, I should try flying someday. After all, that has always been my childhood dream. Yeah, I wanna fly. :)

At around 9am, I saw a group of familiar people assembled at our meet up point, I approached them and asked where would be their next destination. They said they’d be picked up by the van that would take them to SandBox.

(Now here’s the thing: you actually have an option if you want to include a sidetrip to SandBox or just stay at the Festival. I opted with the one with the add-on, of course for an added fee.)

Apparently, I was in the wrong van. The organizer thought that I’m not included on the SandBox trip. But luckily, well as fate would have it, I saw the group before they left. And it was cleared with the organizers that it was their mistake. So… on to the SandBox trip!

UNFORTUNATELY, 95% of tour organizers had SandBox as part of their sidetrip. And so you can only imagine how long the queue at the entrance was. It was even longer than our queue at PUP during enrollment!

We were asked by the organizers if we still want to pursue SandBox or just refund the money. My vanmates couldn’t decide just yet so we opted to have lunch first. One of the girls from the van that I was in suggested that we take our lunch at Marquee Mall.

This is Toll House. They said it has only one branch and you can only find it in Pampanga.

The food at Toll House was really good. They also serve desserts which are also nice. Well, I’m not really a foodie so I can only give general comments. Hahaha.

One of my new friends (Nell) bought a cake and shared it to the rest of us:

Back at the van, we decided that we would just refund the money we paid for the SandBox sidetrip and then we told the organizer that we would head straight back to Manila.

WE LIED. We contracted the driver to just take us to Tree Top Adventure in Subic instead. We paid him with the money we refunded plus an additional amount. There were a lot of attraction in Tree Top that’s mainly physical activities. There were packages and promos posted on the main entrance and there was a staff assigned to orient everybody about each activity before letting the customers choose packages.

We chose Outdoor Adventure 2, which consists of Canopy Ride + Superman Ride and Trekking. I really enjoyed the Trekking part because I’ve learned so much from our guide!

Our cool guide!

He introduced us to different kinds of trees and their uses. He even taught us how to make fire from bamboo trees!

Kuya showing us how to make fire from bamboo.

At the trail.

With some other people who joined the trekking

And then we did the Superman Ride which is actually a motorized zip line (I didn’t have pictures of it because they won’t allow action camera that is not attached to the wrist). Finally, we went into the Canopy Ride where you “travel through trees 100 feet above the ground using a network of five motorized cable rides”.

I'm flashing my happy face!

And then we were on the road again. This time, on the way home.

We had a stopover at Caltex in NLEX and had dinner at Chego, a Korean Restaurant.
The food is OK but what I love about this place is the "FREE" food. Hahaha. Apparently, there was a mixed up of orders kasi may nag-attitude na babae dun. Hahaha kaya yun, lalong nawala yung order niya, napunta sa iba. Talk about Karma. :)

Well... I had a new adventure again. Some new friends. Some more pictures. I hope you enjoyed reading through them as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

I hope you’re doing well, too. I’d love to hear your stories. Till next time.

With Love,

RAM