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The Philippines contains more than 7,000 islands. Most visitors reach three or four on a single trip, which means the first decision is not where to stay but where to begin. The wrong starting point is trying to cover everything. The right one is understanding what each major destination actually offers and matching that against […]
Best Island Trips in the Philippines: A Guide to the Top Destinations Read More »
The first thing you notice when you drive into Mabinay from the coast is that the ground is hollow. Not literally, not in any way you can see from the road. Mabinay sits atop more than 500 documented caves. This is the largest concentration of caves in the Philippines. Once you know that, the landscape
Natural Wonders of Negros Island: Volcanoes, Caves, Waterfalls, & Wildlife Read More »
My family has a home in Mabinay, in the interior of Negros Oriental, not far from Mabinay Springs. When you drive in from the coast, the land changes. The sugarcane flats give way to karst limestone hills. Then the hills fold into each other, and you understand that you are somewhere old. Mabinay sits atop
The History of Negros Island: From Ancient Kingdoms to the Sugar Republic Read More »
Every traveler to Negros Island faces an early decision: which province to visit? A central mountain spine divides the island into two provinces, each with unique cultures, economies, and attractions. Negros Occidental, on the west, is known as the sugar province. Its capital, Bacolod, is the island’s largest city. The province features hacienda-style architecture and
The waters surrounding Negros Island lie within the Coral Triangle. This is a roughly triangular area of tropical seas bounded by the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. It contains more species of reef fish, coral, and marine invertebrates than any other comparable area of ocean on Earth. The Coral Triangle is to marine biodiversity
I watched the MassKara Festival street dancers for the first time and understood. I learned something about Negros Island that the history books had been circling around. The dancers were not performing happiness. They were insisting on it. The masks, hundreds of them, painted gold and white with fixed smiles, were not decoration. They were
The first time I dived in Cebu, I was already in the water. The boat captain had said sardines, and I pictured a school. What I dropped into at Moalboal was not a school. It was a city. Millions of them, moving in formation thirty meters below the surface, compressing and expanding in shapes that
The first thing you see when the plane descends toward Hobart, Tasmania, is the mountain. Not the harbor, not the colonial streetscape, not the waterfront that every travel summary leads with. Mount Wellington. It sits above the city at 1,271 meters, and from the air it looks as if it has not yet decided whether
Hobart, Tasmania: What the Island Capital Keeps Revealing Long After You Leave Read More »
In the late 1970s, I walked through Camp John Hay not as a tourist. I was U.S. military, there on rest and recreation leave, and the facility had been built specifically for people like me. Pine trees, organized pathways, and a golf course that looked completely out of place in the middle of the Philippines.
Baguio City: What the Summer Capital of the Philippines Keeps Hidden in Plain Sight Read More »
The noise hits you before you see anything. The Sinulog Festival of Cebu fills the streets of Cebu City with an estimated two million people on the third Sunday of January, and their collective voice produces a sound you feel in your sternum before you locate its source. The chant is “Pit Señor,” a Cebuano
The Sinulog Festival of Cebu: The Dance, the Devotion, and the Lechon Read More »
The first view of the Banaue Rice Terraces from the main viewpoint does something unexpected. It makes the scale incomprehensible. You know they are large. You read that they cover more than 10,000 square kilometers in Ifugao Province. Those numbers do not prepare you for the moment you stand at the viewpoint railing and try
The Banaue Rice Terraces: What Two Thousand Years Actually Looks Like Read More »
Vigan City survived the Second World War for a reason that is easy to overlook when you are standing on Calle Crisologo taking photographs. General Yamashita withdrew his forces from the city without fighting for it. His decision, whether strategic or otherwise, meant that no firebombing, no artillery, no urban combat carved through the colonial
Vigan City: The Colonial Streets, the Burnay Pottery, and the Food That Survived Read More »
