A visitor taking in one of the festival photo op.

“The kiping, thin, delicate and edible rice crackers is the festival’s identifying decor.”15th of May and the best place to be is nowhere else but in Lucban, a town in northwest Quezon bordering Laguna where the annual harvest festival, Pahiyas, is in full swing. Multicolored kiping, thin, delicate and edible rice crackers, in the shape of a leaf decorates windows, doors and just anything else on the house’s exterior is its most identifying decor. Not only that, fruits and vegetables, some, arranged in anthropomorphic forms covers every inch of space while life sized papier mache and grass farmers and carabaos in a tableau can be found at the house’s front.

Multicolored kiping decorating one of the houses.

While the Pahiyas (originally means, to decorate) and celebrated in honor of San Isidro Labrador, is also held in the neighboring municipalities of Tayabas and Sariaya, Lucban is more known, more festive, more colorful and unfortunately, more commercialized.

Curiously, this is the biggest celebration and its not even the towns’ main patron saint.

A house in full decoration.

The decorations are really exhilarating, very colorful and a testament to the Lucbanin’s creativity. Kiping can take the form of leaves, rosettes and bouquets. Crush and arrange these and you have an instant edible wall. Suman (wrapped, elongated native rice cakes) lines one end to the other while clusters of stems of unhusked rice run from one edge of the roof to the other end.

One of the owners framed with his decoration.

Other decors can take the form of unhusked rice glued to a board and painted. Anything is possible as long as the base materials are all farm produce.

The band marching along the streets during the daytime procession.

Lest one forgets the reason for the festival, a morning procession is held around the town to the church. Originally, what was practiced before was that after the carozzas have passed, the faithful can pick the fruit and vegetable decorations along the way. Now, with this annual celebration becoming a major tourist destination, its hands off and more for the tourists and visitors.

The hat lady posing infront of her wares.

Its really chaotic but fun. Along the sidelines are many vendors like this hat lady selling anything from native wares, food, ukay ukay, to the now ubiquitous China made products. Just about anything!

An enterprising vendor in one of the stalls.

Of course the souvenir stalls aren’t far behind with all those Pahiyas t-shirts, keychains, and stuff bearing the phrases “I love Pahiyas,” “Pahiyas Festival,” “Pahiyas Quezon, Philippines” and so on and so forth. But what I do like most after walking around the streets is just go to a streetside eatery and order either pancit habhab or longsilog with original Lucban longanisa or if the budget is not too tight, hardinera with rice downed with an ice cold Coke.

Estan Cabigas is a multiawarded blogger and freelance photographer based in Makati City, the Philippines. A true blue Cebuano, he makes stunning images and meaningful photo stories. He has writtten for CNN Go and his photograph will be published in the May 2010 issue of the National Geographic Magazine.

To know more about him and his photography, visit estancabigas.com.