kalibo (19 december)

something about having over 7000 islands makes the philippines difficult to travel along. your options are generally either to take a boat (and normally these are not “fast craft”, but generally take five plus hours to travel relatively short distances) or to fly (which is expensive). brad really wanted to meet my host family and see long beach / san agustin, but romblon province is quite high on the level of isolation and how difficult it is to get to, so after leaving bohol, we went to cebu (main city outside of manila) and then took a plane to the town of kalibo, on panay island. kalibo is about 60 kms from caticlan, which is where we had to catch our boat to looc on tables. (phew that’s a long explanation). the point is, there is basically nothing in caticlan, so we thought it’d be better to spend the evening in kalibo.

kalibo is the original site of the famous ati-atihan festival, now celebrated throughout the philippines. it commemorates some agreement with a local tribe and has also taken on a more catholic, religious aspect – it’s celebrated by a big festival with street dancing, costumes, masks etc. the festival, sadly, is in mid-january, so we missed it, but the city is already gearing up to prep for it.





kalibo is also a center for pinya weaving in the philippines – a traditional style of weaving from pineapple and banana (called abaca) fibers to make the traditional formal clothing for filipinos. we visited a few craft shops and then came to a place where they actually do the weaving. there, a woman offered to show us through the process and gave us a private tour of the small factory. apparently, this place has over 200 weavers, but most work at home where they can care for their children. there were, however, a few women working while we were there. they weren’t doing any pinya weaving at the time, but were working on abaca products. they separate the different fibers by thickness …





and use looms to weave them together in different patterns.





the above are pillowcases, and they are making them for a contract with calvin klein yes, with calvin klein. the lady giving us the tour joked, “we can’t even afford our own product” … my jaw almost dropped to the floor. both brad and i were absolutely stunned. talk about seeing how the first world country takes advantage of the developing country straight in your face. unbelievable.

and then this woman was sewing patterns of silk into a pinya base.





it was truly amazing to watch these women making these beautiful handicrafts. the shop was full of bags, scarves hats, wallets, pillowcases, and just rolls of the fabrics themselves to be sent off to shops to make the traditional shirts.

what a cool place kalibo turned out to be! it was much less touristy than loboc and cebu and felt much more filipino, even though it still ahd a chowking and jollibee (the big fast food chains here). i was glad we ended up sort-of stumbling upon it – it’s definitely not a common tourist destination, which was refreshing.