HOME |
RSS | 
Your bread might get soggy, but the view is worth it. At the Villa Escudero resort in the Philippines, you can dine right next to a waterfall. Don’t bother wearing shoes because the water runs right through the dining and buffet area.
Link -via Bit Rebels | Photo: maryan54
The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in the Philippines was built decades ago, but was never put into use. The facility’s maintenance is quite an expense, but its owner, the National Power Corporation, has turned the site into a tourist attraction! You can take a tour of the nuclear reactor (something you certainly cannot do in the U.S.) and stay in a cabana on the beautiful beach nearby, which also serves as a turtle sanctuary. Relax, there is no uranium here! But if you can’t just pick up and go to Bataan, take a tour with a gallery of photographs and information from National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: Jay Directo, AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: Terry Gosliner, California Academy of Sciences
That’s what scientists are calling this newly discovered species of nudibranch off the coast of the Philippines. Take a look at more neat photos of other discoveries over at NatGeo: Link
There’s a lot of green activity happening in this Coca-Cola billboard in the Philippines. The cola giant partnered with the World Wide Fund for Nature to create a 60×60 ft. billboard made of 3,600 Fukien tea plants, a breed excellent at absorbing air pollutants. The pots the tea plants sit in are made of recycled Coca-Cola bottles, the potting mix within is made of industrial by-products and organic fertilizers, and a drip irrigation system was installed to properly hydrate the plants.
I guess I can feel a little bit better about my caffeine habit now.
Meet Father Jose Francisco Syquia. He’s a Roman Catholic priest in Manila, Philippines, with a rather unusual job: he’s head of the Manila Archdiocese’s Office of Exorcism.
A blood-curdling scream echoes through the Roman Catholic chapel in Manila as Father Jose Francisco Syquia says a prayer of exorcism over a Satanic cult member believed to be possessed by the devil.
"It’s very painful," the woman cries in an unearthly voice, her body contorting in an attempt to break free from the tight grasp of Syquia’s assistants. After a few minutes she falls silent, her limp body exhausted.
The case is among hundreds documented on video and kept by Syquia, who heads the Manila Archdiocese’s Office of Exorcism — the only one that exists in the Catholic nation of 94 million people.
"She would have levitated had she not been restrained," Syquia said of the woman in the video, portions of which were shown to AFP during a rare interview at his office in the basement of a seminary in Manila.
Syquia believes he is in the frontline of the battle between good and evil on earth.
"There is a great dramatic increase of possessions right now," said the 44-year-old priest. "More and more the demons are gaining a foothold into this society."
At first site these amazing hills on the island of Bohol look as if Willy Wonka and his Oompa Loompas have upped sticks and relocated. However, although local people have their own legends as to the presence of the conical shaped hills, reality is somewhat different.
The limestone of the hills is actually called karst. This topography is caused when layers of bedrock made up of a soluble substance such as dolomite or in this case limestone. The landscape has been slowly eroded through a process called solvation. The hills are that which is left behind.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
If you want to sing in a karaoke bar in the Philippines, be forewarned not to sing Frank Sinatra’s My Way … that tune by Ol’ Blue Eyes could just be your last …
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.
Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times has the fascinating story: Link (Photo: Jes Aznar/NY Times)
At the age of six, Miko Andres from the Philippines is thought to be the world’s youngest competitive practical shooter. Practical shooting is a sport in which participants shoot rapidly at multiple targets around an obstacle course. His father says:
“As a growing, normal kid, Miko is also into other children’s games. He enjoys the company of his schoolmates.
“Miko is very young but is determined to excel in the practical shooting sport,” says Mike.
“He has been taught a lot of discipline and respect.
“Miko, I and his team coach, constantly talk about the dangers of the sport and we are always reminding him that he is in a ‘big boys’ game and that safety of of the utmost importance.”
A new species of pitcher plant has been discovered in the Philippines. The giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii) lives high on Mount Victoria, and was reported by missionaries who were lost in the mountain area in 2000. An expedition to find the giant pitcher was held in 2007 by natural history explorer Stewart McPherson, botanist Alastair Robinson, Andreas Fleischmann, and three guides.
Pitchers create tube-like leaf structures into which insects and other small animals tumble and become trapped.
The team has placed type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University, and have named the plant Nepenthes attenboroughii after broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough.
“The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats,” says McPherson.
(image credit: Stewart McPherson)
Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught a megamouth shark, one of the rarest animals in the world with only 40 documented sightings ever recorded.
What did they do afterwards? Why, they ate it, of course …
The 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) 13-foot (4-meter) megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen’s net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten, said Gregg Yan, spokesman for WWF-Philippines.
Yan said a WWF Donsol Project Manager Elson Aca took pictures of the megamouth and tried to dissuade the fishermen from eating it. Shark meat is the main ingredient in a local delicacy.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
An extremely rare bird was photographed by a TV crew in the Philippines in January, just before it was sold at a poultry market.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct.
The buttonquail is a reclusive bird, and no one knows how many may remain hidden. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Arnel B. Telesforo)
Ronnie Dabal was fishing in Puerto Princesa Bay in the Philippines when a squall capsized his small boat. He avoided drowning by hanging onto a piece of styrofoam. 24 hours later, he woke up on the beach. He told a tale of being rescued by dolphins!
Dusk came as Dabal’s hopes started to vanish and a creeping darkness began to envelope him. From out of nowhere, a pod of around 30 dolphins and a pair of whales measuring about 10 meters in length came and started to flank him on both sides.
“Dumating yung mga dolphins. Ang dami nila. Tapos may lumapit na dalawang balyena. Dun sila sa tigkabilang tabi ko lumalangoy,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. (There were dolphins, lots of them. Then a pair of whales started swimming on both sides)
Dabal, 35 and father of two kids, swore it was not his mind playing tricks on him even as his energy was starting to fail him.
As he lay still on top of his piece of plastic board, Ronnie narrated how the dolphins would alternately nudge his tiny life raft using their pectoral fins towards the direction of land.
Dabal is a part-time dolphin warden for the bay. His duties include spotting dolphin groups for tourists and removing garbage from their territory. Puerto Princesa City Mayor Edward Hagedorn was excited by the story.
“Ronnie’s experience is the greatest proof that what we are doing to protect our marine environment is worth all the effort that we are putting into it. I’d like to think that this is the animals’ way of also thanking us for helping protect their habitat,” said Hagedorn.
Link -Thanks, Marco Martinez!
(image credit: Flickr user julesnene)
