Lucban, Quezon is a small town sitting on the slopes of a dormant volcano, Mt Banahaw. Every year on May 15th, the town comes alive with a colorful celebration known as the Lucban San Isidro Pahiyas Festival attracting thousands of visitors. Although I'd been to the town many years ago, I'd never been for the Pahiyas festival. This year I was determined to go. Tony and I managed to crawl out of bed in time to catch a tour bus leaving at 4:00 am for the three hour drive south. Most communities throughout the Philippines hold an annual town fiesta, but Lucban's Pahiyas is one of the most colorful and festive. Households throughout the main streets compete to outdo each other decorating their homes with brightly colored kiping, a large thin wafer made from rice, together with rice stalks, bamboo, local fruit, vegetables, handicrafts, flowers and even longganisa, a famed native sausage. I thought there might be two or three blocks of these decorated houses, but there were dozens and dozens of decorated houses throughout many of the town's streets. It is an incredible explosion of color.
Dating back hundred of years, the festival is a thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest and is in honor of the patron saint of farmers, San Isidro. In the beginning, harvests were displayed at the doorsteps of town homes where the parish priest would bless them. The term Pahiyas loosely means jewel or precious offering and soon became the name of the festival. This grew into the competition seen today.
This was a town fiesta like none I'd ever seen, and well worth visiting!
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