WE WANT TO EMBRACE THE WORLD FROM THE PHILIPPINES !
WELCOME TO THE PHILIPPINES OPENARMS!
Tati from Brasil! Kayangan Lake, Coron – Palawan Openarms
Capital City: Manila (Metro Manila is the National Capital Region or NCR)
The National Capital Region comprises the cities and municipalities of: the City of Manila, Caloocan City, Las Piñas, Makati, Malabon, Mandaluyong, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Navotas, Parañaque City, Pasay City, Patros, Pasig, San Juan, Taguig, Quezon City and Valenzuela.
Joey from Canada. El Nido Openarms!
Land area: 115,830 square miles or 300,000 square kilometers. The total land area of the Philippines is comparable in size to Italy.
Jorge from Spain. White Beach Puerto Galera Openarms!
Highest peak: Mt. Apo in the island of Mindanao is 2,954 meters or 9,691 feet above sea level.
Tati from Brasil. Bocaray Openarms!
Population: 88.5 million as of August 2007 (Estimated to have reached 94 million in 2010)
Tati from Brasil. Bohol Openarms!
It iis an archipelago located in Southeast Asia (longitude: 122° 00 E and latitude: 13° 00 N ). It is surrounded by water comprising 7,107 islands and islets. On the east is the Pacific Ocean, on the west is South China Sea. The northernmost group of islands in the Philippines is Batanes which is only 190 kilometers from Taiwan, while the southernmost island of Tawi-Tawi, is a mere 60 kilometers away from Borneo.
Jorge from Spain. Philippines Openarms!
Official Name: Republica ng Pilipinas | Republic of the Philippines
Climate: Tropical with 2 distinct seasons: wet and dry.
Dry season: from November to May
Wet season: from June to October
Average year round temperature: 27° Celsius / 81° Fahrenheit
Currency: Peso (PHP) Philippine Peso Currency Converter for the latest exchange rates.
Peso Denominations: 1,000; 500; 100; 50; 20; 10; 5; 2; 1; 0.50; 0.25; 0.10; 0.05; 0.01
Official Languages: Pilipino (Filipino) and English
Form of Government: Republic with three (3) equal branches of government namely: the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.
Chief Executive & Head of Government: The President. The Executive branch include the Cabinet comprising of Secretaries of each Department.
Legislative: Congress of the Philippines comprising of the Senate (upper house) presided by the President of the Senate and the House of Representatives (lower house) presided by the Speaker of the House of representatives.
Judiciary: Supreme Court of the Philippines comprising the Chief Justice and 14 Associate Justices, the Court of Appeals, Sandiganbayan, and the lower courts.
More Facts & Trivia About the Philippines
There are more than 10 million Filipinos living overseas, of this, about 8 million are OFWs or Overseas Filipino Workers of which around 1.5 million are contractual workers. According to the Central Bank of the Philippines, overseas Filipinos remitted a record high of US$ 18.76 billion to the Philippines in 2010, a 8.2% increase compared to 2009. The bulk of the remittances comes from the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia, U.K., Japan, U.A.E., Italy, Singapore and Germany. These OFW remittances account for roughly 10% of the country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
Poverty Incidence: According to the Statistical Coordination Board, Filipinos living at or below the poverty line as of 2009 is about 26.5% of the population or about 23.1 million.
Dr. Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines can read and write at the age of 2. He grew up speaking 20 foreign languages including French, Greek, Chinese, Latin and German.
The karaoke is a Filipino invention, not Japanese. Karaoke meaning “singing without accompaniment” in Japanese was invented by Roberto del Rosario. He called his invention “Sing-Along-System”, which was later called karaoke.
The Philippine flag is the only flag in the world that is displayed upside-down when the country is in war (red on top and blue at the bottom when in war).
It is considered the “text capital of the world”. In 2006, there were an estimated 35 million cell phone subscribers in the Philippines and about 350 to 400 million SMS (Short Message Service) or text messages are sent daily. This figure was more than the total daily text messages sent in the U.S. and Europe combined. However, China has overtaken the Philippines by sheer volume of users. It is estimated that in 2007, the Chinese sent an average of 1.6 billion text messages daily with more than 500 million cell phone users. While Filipinos sent an average of a billion text messages daily with about 50 million cell phone users. Even though the Chinese sent more text messages in total, they send an average of only 3 text messages per cell phone per day, while Filipinos sends on average 20 text messages per cell phone user per day.
Although the land area of the Philippines is roughly 1/30th of the United States, The Philippines has a total coastline of 36,289 kilometers while the total U.S. coastline is a modest 19,924 kilometers.
The world’s rarest and most expensive seashell, the “Conus Gloriamaris” is among the 12,000 species of seashells found in the Philippines. And 488 coral species out of the known 500 coral species worldwide are found in the country.
WELCOME TO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC OPENARMS!
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