it’s that time of year again…

(No, not Christmas…) Almost exactly last year, I flew to Bacolod City (more or less an hour’s flight from Manila) for arguably the biggest festival/street party in the Philippines - the MassKara Festival.

(from Wikipedia:) The MassKara Festival is a festival held each year in Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental province, every October. The word “MassKara” was coined from the word “mass” meaning “many” or “a multitude of the people”, and the Spanish word cara meaning “face”.

A prominent feature of the festival is the mask worn by participants; these are always adorned with smiling faces. MassKara thus means a multitude of smiling faces. The word is also a pun on maskara, the Filipino term for “mask”:

unwearable masks being sold on the street

venturing out for food on our 1st morning in town

the famous Bacolod Chicken Inasal at Manokan Express

dark Chocolate Ice Cream at SM Bacolod

fresh oysters at only 10 pesos a pop (if I remember correctly)!

waiting for the performers

impulsively got a balloon that refused to stay up

with Sabs for dinner at Trattoria Uma located along Lacson St near the L’Fisher Hotel

Some photos are from Tam’s camera - the nice ones, mostly! haha. I need to get my hands on that magical lens. (View the entire album from the Canon DSLR here and from the digicam here)

I find it hard to believe that this was already (or only) a year ago. So much has changed since then. I somehow still wish I could go back… I would have done things much more differently. If only I had the chance.