Did You Know Where the Party Started?--Hala Bira! Aklan!

I have been telling too much about Mindanao, now let us see what Visayas has to offer. When we say Visayas things that always come in our mind is; Boracay, Chocolate Hills, Bohol Island, Magellans Monument in Mactan, Daing, Dried mangoes and many more. But let us dig deeper to explore more about this one of the wonderful place in the Philippines.

This place is known because of the famous island of Boracay and where the street dancing really originated from . I had a chance to stay in the place where you can see unconditional tourist attraction and I can say that Aklan is one of those places that people should go to. In my short stay in that beautiful place, I have experienced the best festival ever. My mom is a pure Aklanon so we decided to visit my mom’s family in Aklan. Mommy told me that Aklan was the one who started the dancing in the street with their face painted with black . I realized how great the place is, I’m not being biased here but I really do adore Aklan.

So the story goes like this, it was January of 2008 when my mom told us to pack our things and prepare our bikinis ‘coz we are going to Bora. Who would scruple to go to the cut above the rest beach resort? NO ONE!! So, off we go! We had a connecting flight from Cebu Airport then proceeded to the teensy airport of Aklan. My dad’s political friends welcomed us and we opt to have some seafood luncheon in a restaurant near the airport (I forgot the name though). The food was extremely good! You must try their fresh oyster and imbao, it’s their specialty. We rented an old small apartment near my granpa’s house for the reason that all the hotels in Aklan were fully booked, lessons learned? We should have reserved rooms earlier.


It was the 19^th of January then and it is the day of Aklan’s festival called “Ati-Atihan”. So, before going to the beach we planned to join the festival first because we were so agog about it. The festival had a street dance where all the barangays in Aklan had their own group of people dancing with their face painted. After the sun settled the party started. This is the time where people in the street join a bunch of dancing people that was going around the plaza, it was called “Sad-sad”. It was so fun because people would not care about how you dance all they want is to whoop the festival up. The party lasted until morning, no brawling happened in the celebration even most of the people there were drunk. 

In my brief visit in my mom's place, i will never forget the warm smiles from the locals even if it was more than three years ago. Now I'm looking forward of going back to the place where the greatest mom is hail from.