Hot Air Balloon Fiesta
Air Force City, Clark, Pampanga - Every year in the month of February there is a Hot Air Balloon show in Clark, but this year they celebrate it together with the centennial year of Airplanes in the Philippine skies. There are about more than 20 Hot Air Balloon that flew every morning and afternoon during the 2-day celebration.
Dark Knight balloon riders
Clark is about 3.5-4 hours from Baguio City via SCTEX. We arrived at the Air Force City around 3pm. Since it's already late in the afternoon we decided to enter the field the next day. The admission starts at 5:30am and the Hot Air Balloon show is at 6:15am. We stayed a hotel in Angeles City. It's not a 5 star hotel but it's just good enough to stay for a night, we paid 800php for 2 rooms because we will be leaving early in the morning so, the owner charge us the 12hrs rate. You can find hotels just outside Clark near S.M Clark located at the Friendship highway. We woke up early the next morning to catch the Hot Air Balloon show at 6:15am, so we headed Air Force City Field around 5o'clock in the morning but surprisingly upon entering at the Clark entrance it's already a heavy traffic down to the field parking area which was I guess about 1km or 2 but good thing was it has a wide range parking space for everyone and the parking area costs 50php. Entrance fee to the field is 150php per person/kid. You can witness different shapes of Hot Air balloon, there was Dark Knight of Star wars, Animal cage, Mushroom, a Barrel, a snowman and among others. No worries of foods because there are many exhibitors inside. The good news is you can bring food inside, you can even bring a tent so that you can have a place to shed when the sun is coming up. We don't have an idea that it is something like a picnic ground inside if we knew we can bring along our tent and stay there until the sun downs in the afternoon (too bad,we kept on transferring a shed from the other just to make ourselves shed from a super heat of the sun).
If you tag along your kids, it's the best place too to fly a kite so it's nice to bring a kite but if you don't have one you can buy a kite inside. You can witness a different show in a day there was skydiving and fighter plane show off. You can also have a tour , I call it "aviation tour" (isnt is nice?, LoL) because the exhibitor will make you a tour on the different planes and they will make overview about every plane you pass by, I really didn't enjoy that tour, I thought it was a tour for a Hot Air Balloon ride but to our dissappointment it wasn't, we paid 250php per person for that tour =(.. then we knew you can ride a Hot Air Balloon for $150, yeah that expensive, hehehee.. so, nevermind nlang..
Upon going home, You can buy souvenirs. We bought 3 little Hot Air Balloon replicas as a souvenirs it cost 200php for the big one and 150php for the smaller one. It was a nice experince though, the highlight centers of course on the Hot Air Balloon shows who only has two schedule in a day. 6 A.M and 5 P.M, if you come after 6am you'll witness the next schedule of Hot Air Balloon show in the afternoon. So you'd better know the schedule first before entering the field so that you can catch the show in the right time.
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