By Vincent Cabreza
Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau

BAGUIO CITY–The summer capital’s signature fog lends atmosphere to old stories about its wandering ghosts, and that always means profit for local businesses.

Frequent visitors from Manila still look for the now closed “Spirits Disco” the moment they arrive for the long All Saints’ Day weekend, believing they can finally glimpse the facility’s elusive specter.

But they will more likely encounter street dancers wearing garish monster masks and makeup outside one of the homegrown Tiong San Bazaar buildings here.

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By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–A total 4,024,067 foreign visitors, mostly tourists, visited the Philippines during the first nine months of year, six percent more than the 3,781,713 visitors who came to the country during the same period last year, the Bureau of Immigration said Wednesday.

“The influx of tourists could be partly attributed to the bureau’s recent reforms such as the lifting of restrictions on the length of stay of foreign visitors in the country,” Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said in a statement.

Libanan explained that unlike before when foreign tourists and businessmen were allowed a maximum stay of one year in the country, they can now extend their stay up to two years and even longer “if the bureau finds that their reasons for doing so are meritorious.”

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By Estanislao Caldez
Northern Luzon Bureau

TUGUEGARAO CITY–An Asian Spirit Boeing plane carrying 18 casino players from Macau landed at the Tuguegarao airport last Thursday to start its flight from that Chinese gambling center.

The Macau visitors were invited by officials of the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport in Sta. Ana town.

Cagayan officials led by Gov. Alvaro Antonio led the group that welcomed the visitors, who were entertained with songs and dances at the airport.

“The historic flight opens the development and progress of Cagayan,” Antonio told the visitors.

With the flight from Macau to Tuguegarao, Asian Spirit plans to have other flights from 14 cities in Asia and the Pacific to ferry tourists and investors to Cagayan, he said.

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

BANGALORE, India–It rained hard.

Just a few hours before my scheduled flight to Singapore, on our way to Bangalore, a freaky rain shower kept planes scheduled to land in Ninoy Aquino International Airport hovering over Manila. Our plane got delayed by almost two hours. By the time we took off, I was tense. I was constantly looking at my watch to find out if we still had time to catch our connecting flight to Bangalore, India’s version of Silicon Valley.

But just a quick rewind. It was unusual for Singapore Airlines to be late. But our plane was just that — very, very late. Some passengers started crowding the table near our gate, asking if they could still make it on time for their connecting flights. The airline announced the flight had been redirected to Clark airport (huh?) so it was expected to arrive an hour late. I made a quick calculation. Since we had a three-hour window to catch our connecting flight, I didn’t panic.

I was wrong.

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By Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–As the 21-day visa-free travel from Russia to the Philippines begins to take effect, expect more Russians to come to the country. Such news would have caused massive hysteria during the Cold War.

Rather than be paralyzed with fear, the country’s major players in tourism, led by Tourism Secretary Joseph “Ace” Durano, welcomed the development (which began Oct. 1) and even went as far as flying to Russia recently to join Leisure Moscow, dubbed as the biggest annual travel fair in the former Soviet Union.

To give the event its due importance, the Philippine team built one of the country’s biggest and most colorful tourism pavilions to date.

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By Alex Vergara
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–Of all the exotic locales Denis Brogniart and his collaborators have shot in, the host of the top-rated French reality TV show “Koh Lanta,” a Survivor-like hit show, cited Palawan and New Caledonia as “two of the best.”

Brogniart went on to heap praises on Palawan, particularly El Nido resort, where he stayed, as the most beautiful location they’ve come across in seven years.

“It’s incredible to see a place like this where you can be totally lost,” he said. “It has everything, from lush forest to transparent waters full of fish and corals of various shapes and colors.”

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By Inquirer Southern Luzon Bureau

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Philippines–Tour operators here are offering a splashy treat in time for the holiday season–a close encounter with wild, frolicking dolphins in the open sea.

Expecting a sharp increase in tourist arrivals toward Christmas the city is turning to the playful creatures to add more fun to its already rich fare of ecotourism attractions.

Mayor Edward Hagedorn, who on Wednesday led the launching of the new tours, was joined by over a hundred guests on an outrigger boat in the waters off Puerto Princesa. Over a hundred bottle-nosed dolphins made sure they would not be disappointed, bobbing in and out of the water.

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By Delfin Mallari Jr.
Inquirer

SARIAYA, Quezon–With vegetables she herself grows in the cool climate of Mount Banahaw in Quezon for her daily sustenance, Filomena Remojo Relativo is only three years short of hitting the century mark.

Her body is crouched and her face wrinkled from years of hard work, but the old woman still tends her farm planted with vegetables, medicinal herbs and ornamentals.

“I’m not deaf. I can still hear you loud and clear,” Relativo shouts in Filipino in jest during the interview in her house in Barangay Mamala Uno at Banahaw’s base, also known as an abode of divine spirits.

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Ruby de Vera
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–Ever since I was little, I’ve had itchy feet. My mother would go crazy looking for me during mealtimes, finding me in some house several blocks away from ours. I’d reason, “I just wanted to see their place.”

All throughout my student life, I was limited to seeing the world within a five-mile radius. Except when I lied through my teeth that I was working on a project, when actually I would be eating at friends’ houses several towns away. I paid dearly for those lies.

When I started earning my own money, suddenly the possibilities exploded. The thought of being able to go anywhere I wanted, as long as I could afford it, was too much that for the first five years of my working life I was almost always broke.

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HONG KONG is such a busy city (I remember being there on a Sunday, wondering why the heck everyone was running up and down the escalators when it was a weekend) that people almost have no time to greet each other, let alone (gasp!) give each other hugs.

These young people want to change that situation.

Check out this video clip from Reuters.