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Clockwise from top
right: Legendary
Jamaican musician
Jimmy Cliff and
Brit soul siren Joss
Stone headlined
this year’s festival;
Quest, featuring
Rjay Ty of LDP, and
the Grace Nono-Bob
Aves Group also
performed
You can reach Puerto Galera
from Manila either by private
vehicle or by bus, passing
through the South Luzon
Expressway in an hour and a
half to Batangas Port. From the
port, there are several ways to
get to Puerto Galera — from
the huge ro-ro boats that dock
in the port of Muelle to the
outrigger boats that bring you
to the diving mecca of Sabang,
or to White Beach, Tamaraw
Beach or Talipanan Beach.
Malasimbo Music Festival
is getting bigger each year, so
book as soon as the line-up and
schedule are announced, and
stay at the quieter but prettier
Tamaraw (or Aninuan) Beach.
Try Sunset at Aninuan (
aninuanbeach.com
)
for a more
comfortable stay. White Beach
gets pretty crowded most of
the time, but it has plenty of
options in case your choices
are limited. If you are tired of
the beach, try Amihan Villa
(
email
or call
+63 917 562 0345 or 908
122 2335).
Amihan Villa has
five rooms on top of a hill in
Aninuan, overlooking the sea,
and is a short walk away from
Aninuan Beach.
THERE ARE MUSIC FESTIVALS.
And
then there is the Malasimbo Music and
Arts Festival.
There is something magical about
Malasimbo. Perhaps it’s the thought
that you are heading up a mountain
in the middle of nowhere, the jeepney
weaving along winding roads in the
dead of the night, and you don’t know
what to expect. Then you hear the
beats from a distance. The music
floats around like a butterfly among
the coconut palms. As you walk closer
and closer, the music explodes and
a rainbow of lights reveals the famed
amphitheater, carved from the soil
nestled along a verdant coconut grove,
under the shadow of Mount Malasimbo.
Malasimbo Music Festival takes
place every year around March on
the foothills of its eponymous peak
in Puerto Galera. It used to take six to
eight hours to reach Puerto Galera from
the capital, but with the smooth South
Luzon Expressway now connected to
the STAR Tollway, a bus or car ride
from Metro Manila is a breeze. Now
it only takes an hour and a half to
reach the Batangas Port; from there,
numerous outrigger boats and ferries
take you to Puerto Galera in another
90-
minute stretch (see sidebar).
The island has changed drastically
since my college days in the 1990s,
when it was our regular weekend haunt.
The now popular and crowded White
Beach used to be a sleepy settlement
where you could enjoy a bottle of beer
under the stars in one of the huts near
the beach. There were no disco bars
then, and a few bancas parked at the
beach served as an impromptu bed just
in case you had one beer too many. At
one time, there weren’t even any bottle
openers, and a beautiful island girl used
to open our bottles using her mouth. I
hope she still has her lovely teeth.
But places change. Today, White
Beach looks more like a beach in
Thailand, a smaller but less crowded
version of Patong Beach in Phuket.
Native huts have been replaced by
multi-story concrete guesthouses, and
booming bass has drowned out the
gentle guitar strums. But some changes
still surprise even the most jaded
Pencil it in!
G R O O V E N A T I O N
Malasimbo is magical because it
is raw and fresh... It
,
s not bound
by any set of rules, so disparate
genres easily blend together
