Of some baryo kwento.

It has been more than a decade since I last went to a real hardcore perya. Usually, big-themed amusement parks in the Philippines will try to copy our baryo perya. I still find baryo perya fun. One reason: baryo perya is cheap (oh and yeah no tokens involved).

The closest to baryo perya is Boom na Boom and Payanig sa Pasig. (payanig sa what? Payanig still exists, uhm… ask your guy-friend, he might know where it is.)

So, here’s a description of a common baryo perya (or a probinsya perya it doesn’t matter). A baryo perya is a local version of U.S.’s state fair. Usually, a baryo perya consists of areas (let us call the places inside the baryo perya areas since there aren’t really any permanent names for those areas).

In these areas you’ll usually see some of the areas that I will mention. There’s the pachinco marble game, the color game, beto-beto, and the traditional bingo.

So in short, a baryo perya is usually a local version of a casino. Sometimes there are even rides involved (think some unsafe rides ala Enchanted Kingdom) and I’m not sure if the main attractions are still existing as of this day (I haven’t seen any home made mermaid, if ever you visit something like this, please inform me. I’m interested in grabbing a picture).

Now, you can’t remove some… uhm… unnecessary experiences in this kind of event. Here is mine:

When I was kind of young, there’s a baryo perya near the house of my cousin where I’m staying in (the place is near the border of Baliwag and Pampanga. They called the place Pulang-lupa). Now, there was a baryo-perya nearby and since I was still young and I know gambling I joined in the fun.

There was this instance when I was playing the color game when this girl kept on looking at me and she kept on smiling and it was uhm… unnatural for me to smile back. And that’s it. (Bwahahaha, you thought this was kind of an extreme story noh?).

I relayed this story to my mom and the reason why I didn’t smile back is… uhm… she’s beautifully-challenged.

Hey, I know I’m bad. You can’t blame me. I was a child then and children always tell the truth… and we’re not afraid to offend people.

This was still memorable to me up until now. I can still remember the insults that I can share but opt not to.

I’m a changed man. (not really. It just feels good when I say it)

*missing some hardcore baryo pyesta*