The Philippines - About the Country

The Philippines are a number of islands between Asia and Australia, at the western rim of the Pacific Ocean, and belongs to Asia. The Capital City is Manila. Nearly 70 Million inhabitants speak Filipino (Tagalog), English, and Spanish.

Traveling in the country has many dangers, 20 Hurricanes per year, earthquakes, eruptions of volcanoes. Fortunately English is one of the main languages, so it is possible to check the local news. There is also a high criminal rate, a drug war, and terrorist attacks by muslim extremists. There are official warnings to avoid several areas:

But the highest dangers for tourists are scams and thefts. Public transport is important for the locals, so the network is rather good, but the quality of the vehicles is quite low, most are unsafe, and they are often overloaded. And the roads are quite poor too. The climate is tropical and the according deseases are rather common. There are no compulsory vaccinations required, though some may be a good idea. The most common travel illness is diarrhoea. Avoid drinking water and certain foods, be careful with hygiene.

The country has several show caves, more than half of them are actually bathing spots. The reason is simply that they have good trails and even electric light, which other caves do not have. Most "tourist" caves are actually cave trekking caves which require crawling, climbing, getting dirty and the necessary equipment, which is not provided in most cases. Numerous such caves have a fee and guides, which must be paid extra, and that seems to be the only criterion for a cave to be labelled a show cave. We have actually refused to even list the more difficult caves, and only list the easy ones, which seem worth the effort. Actually, we are not happy about such organised caving, because it is much worse for a cave than a real show cave. The cave tourists touch the speleothems when crawling and climbing, disturb the cave animals, leave dirt and more. In the end, cave trekking simply means using a protected cave as a piece of sports equipment.