SUBSCRIBEPahiyas Festival
15 May and it seems that all roads lead to Lucban, Quezon for the annual Feast of San Isidro Labrador, the Pahiyas Festival. Known for its colorful kiping, leaf like decor made from riceflour and painted with the colors of the rainbow, this is an agricultural festival. Houses are decorated with different fruits and vegetables, life size papier mache dolls, parts of coconuts, rice husks painted and assembled into patterns…
Visitors and revelers move along the road posing and taking pictures, eating pancit hab-hab, a noodle dish eaten sans utensils and hands and one has to literally do habhab, or to gorge on it direct from the native plate and banana leaves. Or the other delectable dishes of pancit lucban, another noodle dish and the obiquitous lucban longganisa, a delicous native sausage with a taste that reminds me of the equally delicious laoag longganisa of Ilocos. Unlike the other native sausages in the country, this is not too sweet but spicy and garlicky.
But I was told that spending the night there during the festival is equally beautiful with the decor lighted up. Next year, I guess.
One of the decorated house along the road. Here, colorful kiping makes up the red, yellow and pink decor as well as the yellow flowers. In some houses, fruits and vegetables form a tableau.
Revelers, posing in one of the displays while one boy rides the horse effigy.
Lucban longganisa hung for sale while a note selling tocino (sweetened and treated meat, a popular fare for breakfast) made of pork and water buffalo.
A great view of Banahaw de Lucban.
