SO far, so good.

This was the assessment of Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, Executive chairperson of the Dagupan Bangus Festival 2008 a week into the 19-day festivities that ends May 4.

Fernandez hailed the mammoth crowd participating in the festival, especially those who lined up in the streets even under the blazing sun to watch the featured “Gilon-Gilon ed Baley” street dancing last Monday afternoon.

Fernandez described street dancing as the most attended activity so far, as she assured that there will be more street dancing to come when the city unravels the Festivals of the North on April 26, where all street dancing champions in Northern Luzon will see action.

The Dagupan Bangus Festival beauty pageant on the night of April 16 that picked five Dagupan prettiest led by a beauty and brains from Lasip Chico also packed the city plaza.

In the second day of the festivities, the vice mayor as well as Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. Councilor Alfie Fernandez, vice chair of the Bangus Festival, and Councilor Jesus Canto opened the Dagupan Foodstrip on Galvan Street which featured food shops serving Dagupan native delicacies, among others.

The Dagupan Foodstrip serves among others, such Dagupan delicacies as “pigar-pigar” and “kalekes”, bangus cooked in many ways, “puto”, “dinuguan” and others.

“We were overwhelmed by the huge number of people who flocked to patronize the Dagupan Foodstrip, where a competition called “Tunog Bangus” or Battle of the Bands was also being held,” she said.

Unlike in the past Bangus Festival, no heavy traffic was noted as the executive committee saw to it that transport6 sector need not to be deprived the opportunity to earn from their trade.

Dagupan City Planning and Development Officer Romeo Rosario said the executive committee gave unrestricted access to the public in all places where the multi-events are being conducted as the festival is really for them.

“To me, this is the best and the biggest festival ever,” Rosario said.

City Councilor Alfredo Quinto, president of the Dagupan Hotels and Inns, Inc., confirmed that all their member establishments are now fully-booked with hardly any room available anymore for those who are still coming.

Also a stunning success in terms of audience that crowded was the “Beauty Talk” at the city plaza on the night of April 16 by beauty connoisseur Dr. Vikki Belo, whose popular clinics in Manila are being patronized by movie stars and starlets.

Dr. Belo mesmerized the crowd, dominated by women, in her solo lecture on how to retain beauty in face, skin and body, just with the use soap and water, even without the use of cream.

Among other beauty tips, she astounded the crowd when she said that eating bangus belly can help freshen ones’s skin, and that the best way to sleep is to lay on the back and sideways, which could flatten and deform the side of the face.(PNA)