When you put together complementary elements, you can achieve harmonious relationships and a beneficial flow of qi, or energy. Feng Shui is about harmony and balance that is necessary in our everyday life. It’s important to surround yourself with elements that complement yours. By applying simple principles of feng shui, one can maximize the flow of energy within one’s natural surroundings. Identify your dominant element and this will point you in the right direction, for a wonderful vacation that’s quite plainly written in the stars.

Fire

Those dominated by the element of fire are flamboyant and charismatic types who love to be mystified by a good puzzle. Whether you’re in a formal suit or rugged outdoorsy attire, you are likely to command attention.

The elements recommend:

• An exhilarating mountain trek is in your future. The challenge: Mount Talinis, the 1,800m peak nicknamed Cuernos de Negros, or the cliffs on Apo Island. The Cuernos de Negros Mountaineering Club organize a three-day trek up Mount Talinis. Sights along the trail are Lake Yagumyum, an ancient crater, and the Tolkien-esque forests of mossy maribuhok trees. Sleep under the stars by majestic Lake Nailig.
• Take a side trip to Apo Island, a short boat ride off the coast of Dumaguete. The limestone cliffs that surround the 12-hectare island are a rock climber’s dream. Scale them and then dive 12m into the ocean. Book a rustic hillside cottage on Apo Island Resort’s private cove.
• The enigma of Siquijor. With its long history of faith healers and mysticism, it may appeal to your analytical mind. Just a short ferry trip from Dumaguete, the smallest island province in Central Visayas was named “Isla de Fuego” – the island of fire — by enraptured Spanish explorers. Embark on a challenging trek through Cantabon Cave with its underground stream and huge chambers dripping with rock formations. Be mesmerized by the drove of fireflies that give the island’s mangroves an eerie glow at nightfall. Then ignite fires of a different kind at the romantic Coco Grove Beach Resort.

Wood

Artistic types born under the element of wood exhibit an inner strength and stability. The infusion of heat and moisture brings blossoms forth from wood, so the cards advise a rejuvenating, sun-drenched holiday by the sea.

The elements recommend:

• A quiet weekend soaking up the rays in Bohol. Bohol is bounded by an endless coastline of blindingly white beaches, with a myriad more to discover on its 73 surrounding islands. In the spectrum of the country’s many spectacular beaches, few come close to the 1km stretch of white sands of Alona Beach on Panglao Island. Book yourself a villa at Amorita Resort with its 180 degree view of the Bohol Sea. Laze on a private sundeck, dip into a private plunge pool, and sample local delicacies such as the seashell creature sa-anganon, fresh off a sizzling grill.
• Dip in the healing waters of Camiguin Island’s natural hot springs. The volcanic island of Camiguin has a coastline dotted with beaches and secluded swimming holes. Esperanza Ardent Hot Springs, which can hit temperatures of 40 C, bubbles from the depths of dormant Mount Hibok-Hibok. Bathe in mist-shrouded pools rich with sulphur, believed to have healing properties. Take a deep breath and focus on the rejuvenating atmosphere, and focus on restoring whatever ails you. Spend evenings at Bahay Bakasyunan, a former private villa featuring a beachfront pool.

Metal

Your steely resolve and determination indicates that metal is your dominant element. You are self-reliant and a born leader. Make sure you stay away from heat, which can melt you even the mightiest ores.

The elements recommend:

• A challenging dive trip to El Nido, Palawan. At 96,000 hectares, these waters surrounding the pretty islets of El Nido form the largest marine sanctuary in the country, where sightings of manta rays and the rare dugong are common. Seasoned divers will find comfortable accommodations at the new El Nido Cove Resort and Spa which offers nighttime dive packages and a 15-day dive master course.
• The rush of a rugged island adventure in Caramoan. Koh-Lanta, the French edition of Survivor, shot its eighth season on the Caramoan Islands in Camarines Sur. Producers praised the unspoiled, off-the-radar appeal of Caramoan, which led contestants to believe they were truly lost in the wild. The idea is to move out of your comfort zone and test your physical limits. The Camsur Watersports Complex in nearby Naga City, a water-sports park designed for wakeboarding attracts enthusiasts of the sport from all over the world. Villa Del Rey offers tiki huts and villas just steps from all the wakeboarding action.

Water

People who are water-dominant prefer an indirect approach to getting things done. Water is a gentle element, yet nurturing, bringing entire forests to life.

The elements recommend:

• Birdwatching in Bais. The Bird Sanctuary and Mangrove Park is 400 hectares of lush forest that hugs the Bais coastline. To spy the Philippine Mallard and White Heron in their natural habitat, hop on a short boat ride from South Bais City, then take a stroll on raised walkways of split bamboo. For more information, contact the Bais Tourism Office. Book a beachfront bungalow at Dumaguete Springs Resort. The staff can arrange a car or motorbike rental.
• A trek through Bulusan Volcano National Park. Three supreme peaks dot the 3,600 hectares of rainforest of Bulusan Volcano National Park, declared a wildlife sanctuary in the 1930s. Pristine Lake Bulusan, one of two lakes in the park, is steeped in local legend. Tread softly on quiet trails shaded by a canopy of wild orchids and giant ferns, being careful not to disturb monitor lizards and geckos. Watch the skies for rare birds such as the flame-breasted dove and Philippine hawk eagle. Book a room at the delightful family-run Villa Luisa Celeste. Named for the daughters of a retired sea captain, the mansion is clean, comfortable and charming, and boasts of views of Mount Bulusan and the Pacific Ocean, and is located just 20 minutes from the city.

Earth

The person born under the earth element is practical, methodical and hardworking. You are naturally drawn to fire.

The elements recommend:

• A gastronomical foray into the fiery Bicolano cuisine. Try spicy-creamy dishes made with chilli and coconut milk — laing or Bicol Express, pork stewed in coconut milk, and a stingray dish called kinunot.
• A tour of Pampanga’s heritage kitchens. Viajeng Cusinang Matua is a hearth-side visit into the old kitches of Pampanga, the culinary capital of the country. The day trip begins at dawn in Manila, with stops for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two teatimes. Sample native tsokolate, dinuguan, galantina, and tamales, and kamaru or deep-fried crickets. Historian and chef Lillian Borromeo offers a baking demonstration of San Nicolas cookies, and a glimpse at her family’s heirloom cooking tools and a history of food.

Find your element

Every set of two years is governed by Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, and Earth. If your birth year ends in 0 or 1, you are a Metal person; those born in a year ending in 2 or 3 are under the Water element, and so on. The cycle ends with a year ending in 9 (Earth) and starts all over again with a Metal year.

Birth year ending in 0: Yang Metal
Birth year ending in 1: Yin Metal
Birth year ending in 2: Yang Water
Birth year ending in 3: Yin Water
Birth year ending in 4: Yang Wood
Birth year ending in 5: Yin Wood
Birth year ending in 6: Yang Fire
Birth year ending in 7: Yin Fire
Birth year ending in 8: Yang Earth
Birth year ending in 9: Yin Earth

Rustan’s Supermarket has an organic produce section with vegetables priced at 30%-50% more than their non-organic counterparts. Rustan’s also carries Seventh Generation recycled tissue paper, trash bags, and household cleansers.

Cash & Carry and Makati Supermarket carry Nature’s Path Organic Granola and Muesli at very reasonable prices. Try the Hemp Plus Granola, a crunchy, combination of toasted oats, rice crisps, and nutritionally rich shelled hemp seeds that add omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, as well as extra protein and fiber.

Weekend markets like the Saturday Market in Salcedo Park (Makati), and Manila Seedling (Quezon City) feature several organic farmers and free range poultry products. Mara also serves organic dishes at P180 per dish. Her famous organic tofu cheese has gained loyal fans in the past decade.

Weekend markets are a great place to find interesting items such as the Citrocello, an alcoholic drink made from organic lemos.

Not all food and products in these markets are 100% organic however. It is still best to exercise your right as a customer and ask about the ingredients.

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.

Balai Isabel is named after the only daughter of Nelson Terrible, president and CEO of Techno-Asia Construction & Development, the resort’s developer. Opened in April 2007, Terrible says they originally had no plans of opening a resort, since his company specializes in inner city residential developments. But after big name companies like Pepsi Co and HSBC approached him looking for a suitable venue for corporate events and team buildings, developing Balai Isabel into a residential resort property seemed like the natural thing to do.

The resort now has several residential units, as well as rooms available for those looking for a short but relaxing stay. There is also a clubhouse (catered by Makati Skyline), an infinity pool, a wellness center, convention hall, recreation center with a videoke machine, billiards, game room, and Internet shop and lots more. But a definite prize amenity of the Balai Isabel resort is the Mobi-Deep, a multi-function floating bar and pool right on Taal Lake. Chill out and enjoy an unparalleled view of the majestic volcano, while your friends play around in one of the five pools with depths varying from 3 to 21 feet. Invented by a Frenchman, it’s the first of its kind in the Philippines, and is reason enough to spend an unhurried and restful weekend. Whether you’re sampling fresh-off-the-net tawilis or gliding over the waters of the lake on-board a canoe or catamaran the Balai Isabel experience is a unique and as memorable as the enchanting Taal Volcano and Lake.

The city covers some 253,982 hectares of land stretched over 106 kilometers. There are lots to do in the city that you can possibly have time for.

Must-See Tourist Destinations:

1. Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park

A must-visit is the Subterranean River National Park, commonly called the Underground River, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the longest navigable river in the world, stretching for 8.2 km and emptying into the South China Sea. At the mouth of the cave, a clear lagoon is framed by ancient trees growing right to the water’s edge. Monkeys, large monitor lizards, and squirrels have been sighted on the beach near the cave.

Tour the river on board a paddle boat and cut across the water through the underground lagoon featuring stalactites and rock formations. The park is located in Bahile, Puerto Princesa, 81km from the city proper.

2. Babuyan River

You can kayak through this river, reputed to be the longest river in the province. It meanders across 64km, through the upper valleys and mountainous region of Tagbinet, Cabayugan and Marufinas and extends eastward to the low-lying barangays of Mauyon and Babuyan before finally emptying into Honda Bay. Alternatively you can also explore local Tribal Ancestral Domain Claims of Cabayugan and Kayasan. The trek traverses from the eastern side of Puerto Princesa to the west and takes two days. The traditional way in which the Tagbanua and Batak tribes use forest products provide visitors valuable insight into their way of life.

3. Honda Bay

A favorite of swimming, snorkeling and diving. The Legend Palawan’s package tour (P1,300 per person) gets you to small white sand islands that dot the bay and promise sightings of giant turtles as you sail from the reptilian shaped Snake Island to Pandan Islands, said to have good reefs for diving. Other islands include the Cannon Island, Senorita Island, where the lapu-lapu (grouper) breeds and Bat Island, home to the nocturnal critters who swoop out at sunset for food in the mainland. There’s also Meara Marina, Starfish Island, and Lu-li Islands that are visible only during the low tide. Honda Bay is located in Sta. Lourdes, Tagbanua, Puerto Princesa City. If you plan to go on your own, you can hire pumpboats in Sta. Lourdes Wharf, 12km east of the city proper. Sailing from island to island can take 15 minutes to less than 1 hour.

4. Palawan Wild Life Rescue and Conservation Center

Formerly called the Crocodile and Nature Park, the center does conservation work and research on reptiles. A guided tour includes a visit to a small museum, breeding tanks for crocodiles and a series of outdoor pens where full-grown crocodiles can be viewed from an overhead catwalk. The center will allow you to take your photo with baby crocodiles, their jaws held together by duct tape, and visitors are free to roam the grounds where ostriches and other wildlife are kept.