Image courtesy Martyn Willes

The Paniki Festival (Bat Festival) celebrates the World's largest colony of fruit bats that inhabit the Monfort Bat Cave on Samal Island, Davao del Norte. Guinness World Records have this year recognised the uniqueness of Samal Island's Monfort Bat Cave and have accorded it due certification (see previous Samal Island Fruit Bats Into Guinness World Records story)

As many as 1.8 million Geoffroy’s Rousette fruit bats (Rousettus amplexicaudatus) occupy the Monfort Bat Cave (to a density of 645 bats per square meter!) and leave their bat cave on Samal Island every evening in a veritable cacophony of skin flapping, to forage for wild fruits across the expanse of the provinces adjoining the Davao Gulf.

Image courtesy Martyn Willes

The Biniray Festival in Bulalacao, Or. Mindoro, is probably the most colourful festival in Mindoro Island. The two-day Biniray Festival celebrates the bounty of the sea, rivers & land, and indigenous culture with parades, dancing, feasts and displays.

Starting with the parade of boats, the Biniray Festival, takes visitors on a tour of the history and culture of southeast Mindoro, without ever leaving Bulalacao town. The boats are decorated each year according to a theme proposed by the fishermans' association and almost every fishing boat in the community participates in a parade around Bulalacao Bay; upon returning to the town pier a feast of freshly caught seafood is offered along with dancing and merriment.

Image courtesy SM Prime

Al Gore is live in Manila to help everyone face the inconvenient truth that will apparently get us all very wet in the wrong way if we do not wake up to the facts of climate-change, and take action.

Anyone who saw the original, award winning, theater presentation of An Inconvenient Truth (circa 2006) will want to attend this seminar to bring themselves and their peers up to date. Anyone who has not yet seen An Inconvenient Truth should absolutely attend this event in order to better understand the World as it changes around them.