Malasimbo Music Festival

The following schedule of events shall be retold from vaguely recollected images.

Friday March 2^nd

11:00am                    Board bus in Manila

1:00pm                      Arrival in Batangas

1:30pm                      Board boat for Puerto Galera after astounding number of ticketing inefficiencies.

2:30pm                      Arrival in Puerto Galera

2:45pm                      Check in at hotel

3:00pm                      Asked the hotel where I could find some good chicken.  Directed to a restaurant where they serve grilled chickens for roughly $6.  Proceed to consume an entire chicken.  No messing around with body parts down here, just chop that thing up and gimme it all. Perfect wrap up to the week on my four hour body diet.

4:00pm                      Meet friends at Big Apple bar on beach. Drinking commences.

5:30pm                      Hop on Jeepney to Malasimbo festival. Really Drunk german with gangrenous wound on foot joins us.

6:30pm                      Arrival at Malasimbo music festival – Venue is a giant tiered grass amphitheater on top of a mountain.  Seriously.

6:35pm                      Drunk German Guy with Gangrenous Wound on foot realizes that festival is not free.  Follows us in without paying.

6:45pm                      Purchase 10 drink tickets for $12.

7:00pm-9:00pm     Band called De Oro plays a set.  Band is built around grammy nominated American Cellist from Juliard, playing everything from bluegrass to rock to hip hop.  Excessive Drinking.

11:00pm                    Buy drink for drunk German guy with gangrenous wound on foot. Realize I am out of drink tickets and begin borrowing from friends. 

12:00am                    Crowd moves to second Stage for hip hop show.  Introspective socially conscious selection of songs from African American with afro and fluorescent tie dye shirt and shorts.  Barefoot. 

1:30am                       Bar runs out of beers and switches to very strong rum and cokes, which cost 2 drink tickets.  Total ripoff.

2:30am                       Drunken conversation with aforementioned hip hop artist, in which I ask him who he likes to listen to and if I can get a CD.  He turns out to be an 18 year old jazz guitarist and likes MF Doom.

4:00am                       Jeep ride back to Big Apple bar.  Sit at same table on the beach.  Bar has turned into a hotspot for hookers and johns.  Order and consume many dishes involving cheese.

5:00am                       Pass out.

Saturday March 3^rd

8:00am                       Wake up to sound of puking in bathroom

10:00am                    My alarm goes off.  Decision not to go scuba diving made instantaneously.  Alarm turned off.

10:30am                    Asshole frat guys at my hotel screaming and jumping in the pool directly outside my room.  Excessive noise.  So tired that it hardly matters.

1:00pm                      Roll out of bed and order 2 full breakfasts at my hotel. 

2:00pm                      Meet friends at Apple Bar on beach.  Same bar, same table.  Drinks refused.

2:30pm                      Swim out to floating bar with water slide.  Try to one-up little Filipino kids playing tag and doing tricks off the slide.

3:00pm                      Jeep to white beach.

4:00pm                      Fruit shakes, swimming and football on the beach.  Drinks refused.

5:30pm                      Chicken curry served by transvestite.

6:00pm                      Sun goes down.  Bracelets and devil horns purchased from kids on the beach.

6:15pm                      Pitcher of rum and coke ordered.

7:00pm                      Trike to festival

8:30-10:00pm         Joe Bataan, Jazz/reggae artist from new york takes the stage.  Awesome set, Excessive drinking.

10:00pm-1:00am   Run into Spanish friends by the bar and hang out up there for most of the night.  Many great musical artists missed.

12:30am                    Bar runs out of beers, again.  Forced to switch to Rum and cokes.  Having run out of my own, I am once again borrowing drink tickets.

2:00am                       Jeep back to town ahead of the group

3:00am                       End up in the wrong town – hail motorcycle taxi

3:30am                       Arrival in correct town.

5:00am                       Pass out

Sunday March 4^th

10:00am                    Alarm goes off again, but no way I’m going scuba diving. Alarm turned off.

12:00pm                    Breakfast at Big Apple bar on beach, same bar, same table.

2:00pm                      Catch last boat back to the mainland.

3:00pm                      Board bus for Manila

3:15pm                      Food vendors board bus to sell. Purchase and consume 3 hardboiled eggs and a bottle of water. 

5:30pm                      Arrival in Manila

7:00pm                      Pass out