Balangay returns home

THE balangay fleet of three precolonial boats that made a five-day stop over in Benoni port here February 7, 2010 on their way across Southeast Asia finally returned to the Philippines from a 15-month journey around Southeast Asia, Inquirer report says today.

The boat was manned by the same Filipino team that earlier conquered Mt. Everest.

An article on the balangay visit in Mahinog appeared in Mahinog Trumpet on February 8, 2010.

The balangay team which started their voyage on Sept. 1, 2009 at the CCP complex in Manila, had gone to six Southeast Asian countries—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, through storms and turbulent seas using only wind power.

The three boats—Sama Tawitawi, Masawa Hong Butuan and Diwata ng Lahi—are replicas of the precolonial balangay boats patterned after the one dug up in 1975 in Butuan and carbon dated to 320 AD, an evidence of pre-Hispanic Filipino civilization.

“It was a successful journey. We have made it and we have showed again that the Filipinos can do it with unity and team work,” team leader Art Valdez, a former transport undersecretary, told Inquirer.