These interesting trivia about the Philippines will entice you to explore its 7, 107 islands.
Every country has its idiosyncrasies and the Philippines is no exception. In fact, these quirks are what make our people and the culture even interesting. Here, we bring you strange, entertaining, and humorous bits of trivia to make you fall in love with the islands.
For Filipinos, there’s always a reason to celebrate, whether it’s a saint’s feast day or a bountiful harvest. And yet, there’s also room for honoring a fruit with concerts, street dancing, a regatta and even a 4×4 offroad challenge — in this case the sweet pineapple at Pinyasan sa Daet or Pineapple Festival, which takes place every June in Daet, Camarines Norte.
As if that weren’t enough, there is also the Banana Festival in La Castellana, Negros Occidental in January, and the seasonal Kesong Puti or White Cheese Festival in Santa Cruz, Laguna, where the tasty white goat’s cheese is made.
Want a little more variety? Why not join the Mudpack Festival in Mambukal Mountain Resort, Negros Occidental every third week of June? Participants use colored clay for body painting, making sculptures and mixed media competitions, and then trip the light fantastic with lots of tribal dancing.
Filipinos love nicknames, and that’s why just about every city or province has a moniker that describes its specialty. Think of it as a tagline that markets the district’s top industry, source of livelihood, tourist attraction or main draw. Just fill in the blank in the following phrase, “the _____________ capital of the Philippines.” Here are a few examples: Surigao uses “surfing”; Baguio, “summer”; General Santos, “tuna”; and Puerto Princesa, “ecotourism.”
Want more? The list goes on! Marikina is for “shoes”, Pateros is for “balut” or duck egg, Bukidnon for “pineapple”, Negros Occidental for “sugar”, Roxas City in Capiz is for “seafood”, Dipolog is for “orchid” and Abra is for “natural dye.”
On the other hand, when an area seems to possess certain characteristics of the world’s greatest cities, we use it to sell the city. Lipa in Batangas is sometimes called the “Rome of the Philippines” due to its numerous religious establishments like seminaries, retreat houses and convents. The Day-Asan Floating Village in Surigao has been called the Little Venice of the area.
A very unique tagline, which also draws in visitors, is that of Cagayan de Oro City, which is also called “the city of golden friendship.”
Here are some interesting record-breaking statistics about the Philippines:
- The people of Bacolod City drew even more attention to their love for food, when they built what should be the longest barbecue grill in the world last May 2009. The grill measured 3.985 km in length, on which they cooked their famous chicken inasal during the first Chicken Inasal Festival. The behemoth oven needed 800 sacks of charcoal to fire it up for the task at hand.
- Two teams of high school athletes from Iloilo played 19 games of marathon soccer for over 35 hours (the last Guinness World Record was less than 33, in Australia).
- If there was a “largest sticker wrap in the world,” you can bet we’d get it. Sure enough, Focal Point Advertising and Golden Touch Imaging was awarded by the Guinness Book of Records for their Levi’s wrap-around building billboard along EDSA, which was 200ft long, 235 ft wide, and covered a staggering 47,000 ft2. It took 15,120 hours, 130 liters of ink, and a digital file of 2.36 terabytes to complete.
Food
- The people of La Trinidad in Benguet, on the other hand, seem to have a penchant for baking huge cakes — there’s the sponge cake that weighed 1.2 tons in 2002; the two strawberry cakes that were 6 ft long and 6 ft high in 2003; and the strawberry butter cake in 2005 which had them landing in the Guinness Book of Records for having the largest fruit shortcake.
- In 2002, the people of Baguio City made the world’s largest salad with almost three tons worth of veggies in a 20 ft long bowl.
Super Stats
- UNESCO has included five of our cultural and natural wonders in its World Heritage List: four Baroque churches (Immaculate Conception in Intramuros, Nuestra Senora in Ilocos Sur, San Agustin in Ilocos Norte and Sto Tomas in Iloilo), Vigan, Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, the Rice Terraces, and the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park.
- We have two Miss Universe and three Miss International winners, making us the first country in Asia to have five major beauty pageant queens.
- According to the World Records Academy, the 1,588 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center strutted their way to the record of “most inmates dancing simultaneously in the same place,” and “the most number of individuals dancing to Thriller at one time and location.”
- Around 4,000 Pinoy moms broke the 1,135 record set by California moms for most number to simultaneously breastfeed.
- According to the National Statistics Office, the country’s projected population for 2009 is 92.23 million; next year, it will be 94.01 million.
- We may not be the richest in the world, but The Happy Planet Index slots the Philippines in 14th place in terms of high life expectancy, high life satisfaction and low ecological footprint in their 2009 study.
Thanks to Filipino scientist Abelardo Aguilar, we now have the antibiotic erythromycin. The product was named Ilosone (after Iloilo, where Aguilar’s samples came from) by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly when it was launched in 1952. Also from Iloilo is Alexis Belonio, an associate professor at Central Philippines University, who created the environmentally friendly and award-winning rice-husk powered stove.
Pisidum, the world’s smallest shell, is found in the Philippines; so is the smallest volcano, said to be Taal. Th four- to five-inch tarsier from Bohol is one of the world’s smallest primates.
Cebu City is said to be the first Spanish settlement of the Philippines with the oldest street, Colon — believed to have existed since the time of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi.