Philippines Street Foods

In Philippines, you can observe various street foods being sold in any part of the busy city streets or at the small community.

barbecue vendor

Street food is food obtainable from a streetside vendor, often from a makeshift or portable stall with the very affordable prices. Most street food is both finger and fast food.The most common Philippines street foods include fried squidballs, fishballs, kikiams (a type of processed chicken, which are served on a stick, with a variety of dipping sauces).

fish balls and squidball vendor

Roadside stands also serve barbecued pork, chicken and offal, such as pig's blood (colloquially, Betamax after its rectangular shape), chicken heads (helmet), chicken feet (adidas) pig's ears and chicken intestines (isaw). Among more esoteric foods are balut and penoy (duck eggs; with fetus and without, respectively), tokneneng and quek-quek (battered, deep-fried chicken and quail eggs) and deep-fried day-old-chick.

selling balut, chicharon and boiled quail eggs (above)

balut (from youngest to eldest chick)

You can also discover Taho, a type of soft beancurd served with syrup and tapioca balls is another snack.

taho

Palamig (literally, coolers) are sold, such as traditional offerings like halo-halo (halo means mix) and many kinds of fruit juices. Sorbetes (or, colloquially, "dirty ice cream") and locally-produced ice-cream in exotic flavors such as mango, cheese and yam.

There are a lot more street foods that i have not mention. It's up to you to discover those foods when you will visit Philippines.

Kalesa in Philippines

Another transportation that can be found in the country is a kalesa (sometimes called a karitela). It is a horse-driven carriage use in the Philippines. The word, also spelled calesa, meaning "wheels." This was one of the modes of transportation introduced in the Philippines in the 18th century by the Spaniards that only nobles and high ranked officials could afford, but today you ride kalesa so you can save fare. They are rarely used in the streets nowadays, but here in our city you still can see it at the market area going to some baranggay. Only a few times i ride kalesa (tartanilya as it is called in iligan city), the first time is quite uneasy because i'm afraid to fall off from the cart but it's fun.

Philippine Fiesta

Last August 28, 2008 we celebrated our fiesta here in our barrio (small community) for our patron San Agustin. The fiesta is part and parcel of Filipino culture. Through good times and bad times, the Filipino fiesta must go on. Each city and barrio has at least one local festival of its own, usually on the feast of its patron saint, so that there is always a fiesta going on somewhere in the country.The Philippine fiesta is a lot more that it seem on the service. It is the tie that binds Filipinos from a region or an area together, a time to reunite with our extended family and our countrymen. No matter where they are, they are expected to attend. It is a time to rejoice in friendship, spend all you have, forget the expense, just be happy you can afford to entertain and feed others, if you can. When i was still a kid, i was wondering why we really need to prepare something just to feed those people who will be our visitor on our fiesta. My mother answered me that it's like a thanksgiving for all the graces that is given to our family and sharing it to others. City fiesta are more fun than those in the barrios (small community) because usually big events happen. After the fiesta celebration of our barrio, Iligan City will celebrates its City Fiesta this September 29. Before the fiesta dates, there will be many events. Highlighted by the traditional Diyandi, Eskrima and the street drama. The Diyandi (ritual dance) is performed only during the feast of Iligan Patron Saint, Senior San Miguel. Other curious dance-forms, also performed during the San Miguel Fiesta, include the Eskrima (a dance simulating a fight between San Miguel and his enemies, and the Yawa-yawa, literally, devil-devil), a dance from depicting the celestial battle between the forces of good and evil as impersonated by St. Michael, the Archangel and Lucifer.

KASADYA(street dancing and merry-making) was started, as a local form of entertainment has become a major tourist attraction of Iligan drawing crowds both local and tourist alike. This happens every 27th of September at early morning. It is considered as a non-income generating project having the most number of spectators both in the streets and in the showdown venue proper as compared to other tourism related activities.

Letchon Baboy in Philippines

Filipinos are very fun of celebrations especially birthdays, weddings, fiestas and many other occassions. The whole roasted pig or "lechon baboy " is a popular dish in any of the festivities in the Philippines. Usually parties are not complete without this. Lechon baboy also economical and easier than preparing many other kinds of pork recipes because dealing about cost of spicies to be used for different foods, which is become expensive. The method of cooking the lechon is that the whole pig is roasted slowly over live charcoal. The tedious method of long-hours roasting the whole pig leaves the meat very tender inside and a crispy skin outside. Here is big lechon baboy photo taken from my friend's birthday.