Baguio flower festival live on Sun.Star website

BAGUIO -- The two-day highlight of the month-long celebration of 2013 Panagbenga Festival in Baguio City will be streamed live for the first time via the Sun.Star website, at www.sunstar.com.ph.

This year marks the 18th year of the festival of flowers, which started in 1996, with the aim of boosting the tourism industry of Baguio City and the rest of the Cordilleras through showcasing various events, exhibition and activities that promote history, tradition, and values.

In partnership with Smart Communications Inc., Sun.Star's live streaming will use the LTE or Long Term Evolution, a latest standard in mobile internet technology, which is capable of up to 100 mbps for faster upload of videos and photos.

The live streaming can be accessed through the Panagbenga micro-site, at http://baguio.sunstar.com.ph/panagbenga. Text and photo updates will also be made available through Sun.Star live blog on Scribblelive.

Sun.Star will also be posting updates on its Twitter account, @sunstaronline, and Facebook page Sun.Star – Philippine news. Sun.Star will use the hashtag #Panagbenga2013 for its Twitter feeds.

Sun.Star will feed live videos from Baguio's Session Road, where all performances will commence starting at 6 a.m.

This year’s flower festival carries the theme "a blossoming odyssey." “Panagbenga” comes from the Kankanaey term which means "a season for blossoming."

This year's flower festival is expected to draw over 1.2 million local and foreign guests from various regions, said Larry Madarang, a member of the publicity committee of the Panagbenga secretariat, adding that the festivity proved to be a major crowd drawer in the past years with over a million spectators drawn last year.

Hotels, inns and transient houses in the city are already fully-booked since the past weeks as vacationers continue to invade Baguio for the annual flower fest. The community is pitching in to help address the lack of hotels for the local and foreign guests, Madarang added.

For this year's celebration, 13 groups will compete in Saturday's street dancing contest while 19 companies will join in the float parade on Sunday.

Street dancing participant include Tanghalang Teatro Pino (Pines City National High School), Tabuk Matagoan (City of Tabuk), Bumabanga ti Kalinga (St. Theresita's School of Tabuk, Kalinga), Tsinakhon Cultural Ensemble (SLU – Laboratory High School), The Kabayan Youth Cultural Dance Troupe (Kamora National High School of Kabayan Benguet), Teatro Mi Pengantaan Pagey (Baguio City National High School – SPA), Bampkabia Cultural Dance Troupe (Baguio City Academy Colleges), Philexian (St. Louis High School Philex), Cordillera Cultural Performing Group (St. Louis University), Apayao Ipasindayaw (Provincial Government of Apayao), Litangfan Cultural Group (Bontoc, Mountain Province), Tribu Ari-tau (Aritao High School of Nueva Vizcaya), Sakusak Traditional Ensemble (Pinsao National High School).

Participants in the float parade on Sunday are City of Baguio, Baguio Country Club, SM Baguio, Psalmstre, Creworks Asia, Smart Communication Inc., Department of Agriculture, Jollibee Foods Corporation, Taloy Norte Farmers Multi-purpose Cooperative, Dole Philippines Inc., North Luzon Express Way, Le Monet Hotel, GMA Network Inc., International Pharmaceuticals Inc., San Miguel Brewery Inc., Argentina, ABS-CBN, La Trinidad, Benguet; and MLhuillier. (Ariel B. Catubig/Sunnex)