Photo credit: Manila Book Fair
As we all know, the biggest and longest-running book fair was held at the SMX Convention Center from September 11-15, 2013. In addition, you've probably heard us raving about it for the past month. The Manila International Book Fair—or more commonly known as the MIBF, is where bibliophiles, like us, experience sheer glee. We went on Saturday and Sunday (September 14-15, 2013) and it was our first time. With our wallets and stomachs full, we ventured farther into the unknown!
This being our first time, we arrived at 8:30. Talk about early birds! With too much time to kill, we decided to go to Caffé Bene. (It was so homey! and the aroma emanating from their counters was heavenly.) The downer was the café doesn't have free wifi, or any wifi at all.
Our first stop was: FullyBooked (of course!)...
....and it was good! When we passed by the doors, our jaws fell to the floor upon seeing what seemed like endless shelves that went on forever. The sight that stood before us was breathtaking. After gathering our bearings, we immediately scanned shelf by shelf of books. And guess what? Most of the books are YA/NA! We slipped into a book coma not long after. (Who could resist such temptation?)
Our next and final stop was: National Bookstore.
There were plenty of books in the National Bookstore as well. One thing we hated was the floor plan of National's booth. There were so many books and lesser walking space! (We even lost a friend of ours here, haha!) The books on sale were okay, but not as great as Fullybooked's because we're YA readers more than anything else, and only 25% of the books in there were YA/NA, others were classics and self-help or biographies (cringe).
One word could easily sum up our first MIBF experience: Stressful. Many factors contributed to our being stressed, the money, or lack thereof, being the chief reason. We were practically reading premise after premise, comparing one premise to another because we couldn't buy everything we pick out, and that was really stressful because a lot, and we mean a lot, of people were book shopping as well. We couldn't just take up the whole aisle now, could we? Other than that, the other problems were expected, namely: a wide sea of people, a whole lot of elbow touching, and foot pain. Oh yeah, foot pain was such a pain in the butt. We were tired by 12nn and we rushed to go home because we couldn't take any more walking! We don't know why we got tired that easily (4 hours). Nonetheless, we enjoyed our first experience and we would gladly attend again next year (See you there!).
I believe I speak for the both of us when I say that I wouldn't miss the MIBF for the world!
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