UPDATE: How to get tickets for Third Eye Blind in Manila, and how long their set is going to be. Details are at the end of the post.

Yup, you read that right, San Miguel Pale Pilsen is bringing Third Eye Blind to Manila for the grand opening of this year’s Oktoberfest. On September 5, this world renowned rock band, along with Philippine’s top bands will be gracing one of the four stages along San Miguel Avenue. San Miguel is aiming to break two Guiness records with this year’s grand Oktoberfest: the most number of people toasting, and the longest bar. Apart from the copious amounts of beer, participants can also interact with SMB’s personalities, like Efren Bata Reyes and PBA players.

Through the years, San Miguel Oktoberfest has been enjoying strong support from the Filipinos, that the Department of Tourism now recognizes the event as a local Fiesta. Aside from the grand kick off party at the Ortigas Center, there will also simultaneous parties all over the Philippines: in Olongapo, Sta. Rosa, Lapu-lapu (Cebu) and Davao. San Miguel Oktoberfest 120 (siento bente) will span for 120 days, starting September 5, until December 2008. The kickoff party is open to the public. For only Php120, you can watch Third Eye Blind, Rivermaya, The Dawn, After Image, Rico Blanco, Pinikpikan and 35 other Pinoy bands.

San Miguel Beer is also premiering its limited edition beer, the San Miguel Oktoberfest beer. This beer is 100% malt, meaning it’s full flavored, light bodies, sweet to the taste and promises a smooth finish.

So… where will you be on September 5?

UPDATE:
To buy tickets for Third Eye Blind and Oktoberfest 120, call 632-2226 and look for Jel. Amanda called the number and shares this info:

Apparently the General Admission ticket (P120) only gives you access to the longest bar and when I asked the employee from San Mig if you can see Third Eye Blind from there she said that it’s very far from the area. Ugh. So, if you want a really good spot you have to buy the “Gold Ticket” (or whatever it’s called) which costs P1500. Gives you access to all the areas and also a front view of 3EB playing. Purchase of tickets is in the San Miguel building itself.

Tickets can also be bought at the gates during the event proper, but I’m not sure if they would also be selling the Gold Tickets then.

Juned further explains the Gold Ticket for 3EB access:

Ticket Type: Gold Ticket
Special Viewing Section: Php 1,500.00 per head inclusive of 2 San Miguel Pale Pilsens at General Admission Section and 3 San Miguel Oktoberfest Beers & food at the Special Oktoberfest Marquee Section

Source: Dilis Media

Reader Jel shares that the Third Eye Blind will perform for at least one and a half hours, playing around 15 songs. Cameras are allowed inside, so better have those batteries charged! Third Eye Blind will be performing around 11 pm.

Related Posts:
Third Eye Blind on San Miguel Oktoberfest 2008!
San Miguel Oktoberfest 2008 brings Third Eye Blind live in Manila!
Third Eye Blind at the Opening of San Miguel Oktoberfest
Details: SMC Oktoberfest & Third Eye Blind this September 5

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I scheduled a post to go live last Saturday, announcing where I was headed for the weekend, but WordPress has failed me >_< Anywhoo, I'm back from Davao, where I went along with Gail, Marc, Karla, Eric and Melo for the Kadayawan Festival.

I’ve always been in awe with the colorful costumes and amazing performances of the contingents from Mindanao, so this was an opportunity I can’t pass up. Here’s a small collection of the photos and video snippets I took during the Kadayawan 2008 Festival in Davao:

More photos, videos and stories to come soon!

I was looking through my archive and in my personal files and I was surprised to find out that I didn’t have any spreadsheet on my first Cebu trip’s expenses. I’m pretty certain I wrote down all my expenses, but I guess after tallying it, I passed out because it was pretty darned expensive. I *am* quite a high maintenance traveler. I can rough it out, but as long as I’m traveling with people who doesn’t mind splurging, my weekend jaunts will always be over 10K >_<
Read the rest of this entry »

The great thing about traveling with friends is that you have more energy and motivation to go out and explore. I remember the first time I went to Cebu. It was my first solo travel, and I was exhausted and I found the heat intolerable. I didn’t have the energy to explore Cebu, checking out only one or two landmarks. This time though, with two avid travelers as my companion, I was determined to see the places I missed the first time I was in Cebu.

Three icons of the Chinese culture: the 8-sided pagoda, the lion and the dragon

 
First in the itinerary was the Taoist Temple. There’s a huge population of Chinese and Chinese-Filipinos in Cebu, and the influence of the culture can be seen where ever you go. The temple is not easily accessible — located inside the posh Beverly Hills subdivision, you’d have to take a taxi to go there. From the area of the Fuente-Osmeña Circle, the fare is around Php 80. The Cebu Taoist Temple is best visited early on in the day or in the late afternoon, when the sun is not too hot. There are 99 steps to climb to reach the main temple, and from there you are rewarded with stunning views of the city below, as well as the islands of Mactan and Bohol.

The Cebu Cathedral

 
From the Taoist Temple, we took another taxi to the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral. Since it was a Sunday, the cathedral was packed with people hearing mass. We only took some outdoor shots and made our way to the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu. The two churches are within comfortable distance from each other. Like the Cebu Cathedral, the Basilica was likewise packed. The church was located in a main thoroughfare, so most public utility vehicles are driving by. There are tons of street vendors outside the church, selling clothes, flowers, balloons, and even prayers.

Burning candles outside the Sto. Niño Basilica

 
Right beside the Basilica of the Sto. Niño is the Magellan’s Cross. The shrine is filled with tour groups filing in and out at intervals. There are ladies milling around the shrine. For a fee, they will perform the traditional Sinulog — a prayer done while dancing and waving a bunch of candles.

The Oriente at Colon Street

 
From the Basilica, we made our way down the road to Colon street, the oldest street in the Philippines. I was getting pretty tired and hungry at this time, and I just wanted to breeze through Colon. It turns out that there is plenty to see in Colon. Like the rest of Cebu, there are plenty of beautiful architecture that’s just begging to be photographed and restored to its full glory. Unfortunately, the traffic, the banderitas and the powerlines made for an annoying photoshoot, so we cut it short and hopped on a SM-bound jeep.

Cebu’s CNT Lechon

 
SM wasn’t really our destination — it’s what’s across SM that we’re after. CNT Lechon’s restaurant across SM was our target. It was already 1pm, yet the restaurant was still packed. This is not a fancy restaurant, mind you. The place was not airconditioned, and it’s like a glorified turo-turo wherein you go up to the counter and point at the dishes you want to order. A trip to Cebu isn’t complete without a taste of the local lechon, and CNT delivers with the cripy skin and flavorful meat that doesn’t have you reaching for that bottle of Mang Tomas.

Guitar from Guitar Master

 
Our Cebu lechon craving satisfied, we headed out to Mactan, to look for a Cebu guitar factory or store. We ended up at Guitar Master, and after a passionate sales talk from Mr. Ronie, we headed back into Cebu to look for danggit. Tabo’an Market is the place to go for anything dried: they have danggit (rabbitfish), dilis (anchovy), pusit (squid), and every variation of daing (dried fish).

Daing at Tabo’an Market

 
We were welcomed with mini mountains of every variety of dried seafood. After a round of photos, it was down to serious pasalubong shopping. While everyone is busy buying danggit, I opted to buy some Cebu chorizo, something I just discovered and tried the night before. A kilo of danggit goes for Php 400+, while the chorizo goes for Php 190 per kilo. Apart from the chorizo, I also bought some packets of Guadalupe brand dried mango strips, a brand I read about in other blogs, and something I am longing to find in Manila because it’s so good.

University of San Carlos

 
With our plastic bags tightly sealed (the dried fish tastes good, but it has that strong smell when uncooked), we jump into a taxi and headed back to the hotel to freshen up before meeting the Cebu bloggers. By the time we changed our clothes and headed out, the sun was almost setting, casting a fine soft light on our hotel’s neighboring building, the University of San Carlos.

Meeting the Cebu-based bloggers was an experience. It was great seeing and meeting new faces. Fresh new faces at that… they were all so young! To Arnold, McBilly, Jorich, Wilhelmina, Aileen, Empress, Xerxes, Kevin, Rodel, Sinjin, Maibe, Winston and Mark, thank you for meeting with this weird group of Manila travel bloggers

Apart from fresh and dried mangoes, otap and danggit, one of Cebu’s other major product is its guitars. Filipinos know that when you want the best quality local-made guitars for the best value prices, you go to Cebu.

Being avid travel photographers, going to a Cebu guitar factory or store is in the itinerary. We hopped on a cab and told the driver to take us to Mactan island, where most of the guitar shops are located in Cebu. We ended up at Guitar Master, and was met by Ronie, a passionate man who believes in making good quality guitars without the expensive price tag. The conversation turned technical, so I resorted to playing around with the Canon Ixus’ video feature and patched together this little piece.

I’m not a music expert, but that guitar sounded pretty nice.

Guitar Master
Quezon National Highway
Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu
Philippines
Phone: +6332-495-2412
Mobile: +63920-224-3767
Contact: Ronie Pangatunan

How to get there: From Cebu, take the Mandaue-Mactan bridge to cross to Mactan Island. At the first intersection, turn left. Guitar Master is on the right side.

Last Saturday, I flew into Cebu with Eric and Melo to participate in the Pasigarbo sa Sugbo. This is a festival of festivals — contingents from all around Cebu are converging in the big city to show off to the rest of the province what their town’s festival is like.

Here’s a very short video clip, a tiny sampling of the contingent’s street dancing perfomances during the Pasigarbo sa Sugbo. I was anticipating that I’d be taking a lot of photos and videos for this trip, so I bought an extra 2GB SD card. Unfortunately, my foresight didn’t extend to my camera’s battery — it died shortly after the contingents started dancing their way from Mandaue City Hall to the CICC.

After much excitement over the NAIA Terminal 3 opening, I was finally able to experience the terminal personally last weekend and yesterday night. Together with Eric and Melo, I flew out of Manila and into Cebu to watch (and shoot!) the Pasigarbo sa Sugbu, a festival of all Cebu festivals (which is different from Sinulog).

Plenty of open check-in counters

 
Now, I heard of horror stories about the terminal: flights getting delayed because they can’t assign a gate to use because most of it are broken, facilities not working properly, etc. Fortunately, none of these things happened to us. I guess the two weeks that the terminal has been in operation have helped them find solutions on making the most out of the huge airport.

The empty immigration booths

 
The first thing that would greet you when you enter the airport premises are the seperate lanes for private and public transport. Then, as you enter the cavernous terminal, you’re met with a blast of cold air. It’s too cold inside! Unlike the other airports, well wishers can accompany the passenger inside the terminal. There are food kioks in the outer area (Kopi Roti, Jollibee), so families and friends can spend some more time together before parting. Starting at the check-in counters, passengers are on their own. Well wishers, however, can go up the viewing deck and have a bird’s eye view of the area after the Immigration booths.

Plenty of wide open spaces

 
The airport was huge. Because not all flights have been moved to the terminal, the only crowded places are the waiting areas near the boarding gates. Beyond the Immigration, there’s a Delifrance, Go Nuts Donuts, and a convenience store, ensuring that you don’t go hungry while you wait for your plane. Smokers can likewise enjoy a stick or two inside the smoking area (which is basically an empty room with a window open and a view of the Makati and Taguig skyline).

Walkalators!

 
Lavatories are clean and have plenty of stalls. I saw some water fountain in some places, but wasn’t able to check whether they’re already functional. There are also power points around the waiting area, so you can charge your cellphone and camera batteries or plug in your laptop while you catch up on work (not sure if there’s Wi-Fi inside the airport though). And to further empahsize the size of the airport, there’s a walkalator, a standard feature in some of the world’s biggest and busiest airports.

Aquarium?

 
Each gate has facilities for front and middle loading. Unfortunately, these aren’t being utilized. We had to walk down a flight of stairs and into the tarmac to board the planes. It’s the same for arrivals. Depending on where your plane parked, there’s a pretty long walk from the plane to the terminal entrance. It’s fairly easy to find your way to the exit, as there are signs along the way. On the way out, we passed through the un-manned immigration booths and Customs inspection tables. Beyond that, are the doors that takes you out into Manila.

No lines at the loos

 
Similar to the old international terminal, passengers are advised to exit on the doors specified for the first letter of their surnames. This is to make it easy for friends and family coming to pick up their loved ones. If you’re taking a cab home, you have three options: take the expensive Airport Taxi, which has a fixed price (super expensive), a “metered” yellow taxi (I hear from Melo that they were charging a flat rate of Php 400. What the heck, right?), or the regular (and true) metered taxi. The first thing you’d see when you step out of the terminal are the airport taxis. Keep walking to the right and you’d see the line of Yellow taxis. I had a bad feeling about these yellow taxis, as I saw a huge concentration of their ilk in the airport parking lot, so I kept on walking, knowing that there should be a line for regular taxis, since I saw an MGE taxi pass by as I stepped out of the airport doors. True enough, there was a line of MGE and EMP taxis at the very end of the terminal, with nobody else lined up, since everybody’s already queued up for the airport or the Yellow taxi. Not only did I have to line up for a cab, the driver didn’t even give me a spiel about adding Php50 to the meter or trying to bargain a price for the ride to Quezon City.

Conveyor belts

 
All in all, I’m quite happy with my NAIA T3 experience. I can’t comment on the effectivity of the conveyor belts though, since I didn’t check in my bags (which was a boon, because I was able to get out of the airport before the hoard went out and a long queue formed at the taxi stands). I just hope my experience the next time I use the airport would be just as good.

Finally, the super delayed continuation of my Coron adventures post!

Everybody was nodding off as we putter from the Siete Pecados to the Maquinit Hot Springs. As the boat docked, Gail and I were only concerned about finding the toilets. We hurried through the wooden brige that winds though the mangroves and into the Hot Springs’s only two toilets.

Afterwards, we settled into a hut. The day’s exertions in the sea left us famished, and our dilemma was that we haven’t any food. Ferdz and Marc made their way to the concessionair stand, and came back with a couple of bags of chips and a bottle of soda — the only things that the store sells. Once the chips and soda were gone, Marc, Eric and I went off to dip in the hot springs. And boy, was it HOT! I’m used to soaking on heated pools, but at the spa, it’s advised to go gradually — first taking a dip in the 36 degrees Celsius pool, then the 38C, and finally, the 40C. In Maquinit, however, there’s only one temperature, and nothing to prepare you for the near 40 degrees Celsius water. That’s why we were adviced to go here during the evenings!

The heat of the pool certainly woke us up. As the sun set, we made our way to the entrance. Roge, our boatman, promised to send his brother-in-law who owns a tricycle to pick us up at 7:30 pm. As we were walking, the lights went out. Perfect! To makes matters worse, the tricycle wasn’t there, and we’ve no way of contacting Roge!

The way tricycles work in Maquinit, is that you hire one at the town to take you there, wait for you, and take you back to the town. Since we went there by boat, we didn’t really have any arrangements, save for the tricycle Roge promised to pick us up. Luckily, Roge sent two — but only one arrived. We waited for a couple more minutes, and as hunger and made its presence felt, we managed to convince one of the drivers to drive us to town while waiting for his passengers.

My camera’s battery died on me, and we were pretty tired to take any more photos, so this is the only one I have.

 
Since we were fairly dry and utterly starved, we decided to have the trikes drop us off at a restaurant for dinner. We ended up at La Sirenetta, a fancy restaurant out in the water, which is a short walk from Kystal Lodge. Revived by the thought of food, we eagerly studied the menu, not really caring that the prices is going to blow our budget. Hey, we deserved a treat! Excitement, however, soon became annoyance as our orders took a lot of time to come to the table. After close to an hour, we were finally served the dishes we ordered. The food was quite good, making it somehow worth the price and the wait. But as much as we enjoyed our pasta, chicken, fish and pizza, it was hard to fully appreciate the service.

With our hunger satiated, we made our way to Krystal Lodge. Seeing houses with the lights on left us with hope that we had electricity in our lodgings. However, it seems only a portion of the town has electricity, and unfortunately, Cyrstal Lodge wasn’t one of them. Slowly, we made our way through the narrow alley and unto the rickety wooden bridge to our accomodation, with Ferdz’ headlamp the only thing ligthing our way. We finally made it to our little shack on the sea. We were all exhausted, but we just had to shower before heading to bed. I gathered my bath things and went to the bathroom. I turned on the tap and was welcomed by a very weak trickle of water. Uh oh. I left the faucet on and went out to fix my things as I wait for the bucket to fill with water. Thirty minutes after, the bucket was less than a half full. This isn’t good.

With three of us needing to use the bathroom, this wouldn’t do. It was almost midnight. Ferdz went to wake up Mhai, the resort manager. The power outage somehow affected the water pump in our room. It couldn’t be repaired until the morning, so in the meantime, Mhai let us use the bathroom of the other hut that was recently vacated. I used Unit 9′s bathroom, while Eric used the bathroom inside Gail & Marc’s room. It was almost 2 am when we finally finished. What a day!