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 The Philippines, a scattering of more than 7,000 islands between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, offers the holiday-maker a Kaleidoscopic variety of entertainment, scenery experiences and culture activates.
Here, the influences of the Spanish, who ruled the Philippians for four hundred, the Americans, who were here for half a century, and those of Asia have met and mingled- and the results is a way of life that is uniquely Filipino.
Visual evidence of the cultural confluence can be seen everywhere - in the ornate Iberian facades of churches; in the conical-hatted tillers of rice fields who would not seem out of place any where in South -East Asia; in the "jeepneys"(extravagantly flamboyant pieces of mobile art converted in to minibuses from world war 11 American jeeps); and in the dresses worm by girls at fiestas, which owe their origin more to Andalusia than Asia.
The Variety is not restricted to the people. The islands, rimmed by seemingly endless palm-fringed beaches, are amongst the loveliest in the world. There are irresistible seascapes where the water changes from azure to Sapphire blue as its deepness seaward, laced every so often by a white frieze of breakers on reefs; the perfectly symmetrical cone of a volcano reaching up above its encircling band of forest; rice terraces racing like gigantic
Staircases 1,500 meters up mountainsides; quit islets where the loudest sound in the waves lapping the beach; and Metro Manila, the sprawling, pulsing heart of this intriguing nation.
Amidst this diversity is the unifying factors of religion, for the Philippians is, alone in South-East Asia, a predominantly Catholic country-but Catholicism with a uniquely Filipino accent Throughout the country- and through the year there are a series of fiestas: Easter, Flores de Mayo, Santa Cruzan Caracal, Thanksgiving and Christmas follow each other in colorful, exuberant succession, interspread with local celebrations.
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