As part of its promotions for the holiday season, the Marianas Visitors Authority gave away over 400 Saipan-da backpacks to visiting children arriving at Francisco C. Ada International Airport on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.<\/p>\n
All passengers arriving on Dec. 24 and 25, 2013, were greeted by a life-size Saipan-da and two Chamorritas. Children ages 11 and younger received backpacks of the character, which is well-known in Japan and loved by children from all Asian countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe annual holiday backpack giveaway is busy two days for Saipan-da, but he\u2019s always happiest making children smile,\u201d said MVA marketing manager Bruce Bateman. \u201cBy that account, this year\u2019s giveaway was a grand success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saipan-da is a well-known, panda-like character, helping potential visitors remember the destination name Saipan. (MVA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As part of its promotions for the holiday season, the Marianas Visitors Authority gave away over 400 Saipan-da backpacks to visiting children arriving at Francisco C. Ada International Airport on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}