by Romy Sabaldan

Davao City — AS the dancers go back to the streets in the native Indak-Indak or the tip-toe and stamp-your-feet upbeat dances in the streets, the young and energetic boxes it up in the ring again while the reggae bands and the melodious M.O.R. regulars prepare their kind of music to spice up this year’s biggest festival in Davao City.

The culminating activities will be the most colorful fluvial parade at the historic Bankerohan river and the floral float parade around the city’s major thoroughfares on Saturday and Sunday, August 18 and 19, 2007.

The City Tourism Office announces that the month-long festivities commence with the official opening rites at the Centennial Park of the Sangguniang Panlungsod on Wednesday August 8, 2007.

The celebration of thanksgiving actually starts on the first week of August as the fruit stalls are beginning to be flooded with durian, pomelos, rambutan and all the exotic fruits growing in abundance with the rains in the evening and the glorious sunrise in the morning in exquisite Davao weather.

Vendors of the king of fruits have already raised the price tags starting at P60 per kilo and are usually expected to drop down to only P45 at the peak of the harvest. That is something we can relish on considering that the fruit barkers in Tagaytay shout it out – “Durian, durian galing Davao ” while the price tags range from P180 to P200 a kilo.

Soon, the city’s different venues will be filled up with streamers announcing the different sports festivals from basketball to football, boxing to wushu, taekwondo to karatedo, and the more passive billiards, bowling and chess tournaments headlining in all the sports events the name of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, Davao City’s No. 1 sports patron.

The first to organize in sports is the “Kapitan Ibuyan Ist Tri-Media 9-ball Tournament” while the Scope Events and Productions have started filling up with the Bob Marley kind of reggae bands the music corridors of Times Square along Duterte Street.

The most awaited events, however, remain to be the bigger all-Mindanao parade of dances called the Indak-Indak sa Kadalanan and the Sunday’s scents of the parade of orchids and flowers from the hinterlands unique flora and fauna.

More visitors are again expected to come from the different cities and provinces of Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon and more have in fact been enticed to stay for good. (PIA XI)

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