Philippines

I have worked with quite a few philippino crew on ships over the years and have found them to be generally fun, good humoured and hardworking. Thus, I have always wanted to visit the country for this reason. But the main reason is of course biological. It is a fairly major part of the south-east Asia biogeographic region, but also forms its own region in its own right, with many endemic rainforest plants and animals. It is also an area of high coral reef diversity, and part of the vast tropical Indo-Pacific coral reef biogeographic area. Both of these are subjects of future titles in the "ecosystem guides' book series. But I have not managed to get there due to it being further away from the south-east Asian mainland. However, flights around the region are quite cheap now, and I needed to get some photographs for upcoming 'ecosystem guides' books "Rainforest of south-east Asia" and "Coral Reefs of the tropial Indo-Pacific", so I visited there in 2011.

general travel..

As part of south-east Asia, the Philippines have many of the advantages (there are many) and some of the disdadvantages (not many) of the general region.

Some of the usual advantages are the general good value of everything a website for coverting your currency to Philippines peso So everything is cheap! Food, accomodation, travel. Food is generally yummy and available everywhere. Accommodation is great value, you can usually get your own room for 500-1000 pesos. If you pay more than that, you'll get a nicer room with hot water and cable TV etc. And transportation is cheap and everywhere. The roads are surprisingly good, and you can usually get anywhere you want, with ships, boats, tricycles (both human powered pedal, and motorcycle joined), motorbikes, habal-habal (motorbikes with extended seat so you can sit on there with the driver - hang on!), taxis, 'jeepneys', buses and planes everywhere! Even the plane journeys are very cheap, thanks to Cebu Air. (they offer a very cheap base airfare, with which you then add on extra luggage, seat preference, insurance, etc etc).

Here are some places you can go...