Isabela’s Bambanti Festival 2014 is ‘flying high!’
01 Feb 2014 Written by Leonardo Perante II / Correspondent
One of the fastest-growing cities in the region is Cauayan City, which plays as the literal domestic gateway to the valley, home of the Cauayan Domestic Airport.
“Name it, we have it,” Isabela Gov. Faustino “Bojie” Dy III said.
It is precisely these reasons that the Bambanti Festival was born during the term of the late Gov. Benjamin Dy, brother of the incumbent governor. Because of its predominantly agricultural landscape,
bambanti, an Ilocano term for “scarecrow,” became the adopted name for the yearly thanksgiving festival as it symbolizes food security.
“This year’s festival theme, ‘Flying High,’ means aiming higher to strengthen further the province’s gains as an agricultural investment and tourism destination not only in the Philippines, but as well as
in Southeast Asia,” said Vice Gov. Tonypet Albano, festival executive committee chairman.
To launch an international market, the province represented the Philippines in the China-Asean Expo in Nanning, China, last year.
Major highlights of the festival are individual display booths showcasing homemade products and eco-tourism potentials of the province’s 34 towns and three cities.
Designed after the festival theme, the most attractive centerpiece of each booth are flying Bambanti images like the corn rocket ship design of Ilagan. Cauayan depicted it with an airplane-style
Bambanti, while Palanan expressed it with a giant Pegasus covered with enormous dried fishes.
“Every year, we have different concepts of the festival because of the massive developments in each town, which need to be showcased for marketing, and the traditional street dance showdowns are
expected to exhibit our people’s best creative skills and live performances as the product of cooperative efforts,” said Dy.
http://businessmirror.com.ph/index.php/en/news/regions/26832-isabela-s-bambanti-festival-2014-is-flying-high
