A Beautiful Sunday At The 22nd Philippine Hot Air Balloon Festival

       

heart-shaped hot air balloon

       It suddenly came to my mind how I always wanted to see a real hot air balloon. It's February and I thought there's annual hot balloon festival usually held in Pampanga-I decided I will go.

sunrise at Clark Field, Pampanga

      The Philippine International Hot Air Balloon this year was in its 22nd year. It was held at Clark Field, Pampanga. And as its tagline "everything that flies" says, the festival is a showcase not only of hot air balloon but also aircrafts including FA-50 of the Philippine Air Force and vintage design biplane and air acrobatic shows from skydivers and paragliders. 

uniquely shaped hot air balloon

        The Philippine Air Force's 2 FA-50 grace the event and exhibited the aircrafts might for a total of 8 passages, the most number of times in the festival's history. As mentioned previously, the festival also featured paragliders that made several stunts up in the air like the spiral dive. There are also skydivers, among them is someone waving the Philippine flag from above just in sync with the singing of the Philippine national anthem.

selfie under the morning sun

         As the morning went on and the beautiful sun rose, the hot balloons started to fill the runway as they get inflated. There were several uniquely shaped hot air balloons like the happy heart, strawberry, the Yoda balloon among others. It was such a magnificent view as they started to float in the air and fly. As soon as the hot air balloons disappeared on the sky, the crowd started to roam around and do other activities like flying kites and of course eating.

the clown about to get ready

        As the sun continued to give more vitamin D, the show also continued to thrill with biplane stunts that features an steward on top of the yellow aeroplane without harness! The plane made several jaw-dropping stunts that wowed the crowd. It was indeed an spectacular Sunday (we went Sunday but the festival is held for 4 days) that is worth the land travel and waiting in long queue to get inside the festival grounds at wee hours, the dust, the heat and the crowd. I made ashort video of the festival and it's below:

Highlights of our tour at 22nd Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Festival

P.S.

        Here's my complete expenses. We got a travel package for Php 1,099.00 that includes a comfortable roundtrip van ride from Manila to Pampanga and the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Festival's ticket.