Image courtesy Martyn Willes

Living Asia, one of Asia’s premier travel & tourism promoters, spent a week during May discovering the travel & tourism investment opportunities and activities in the province of Davao Del Norte. Their production will premiere in the Philippines and Asia-wide on cable and television channels during August, 2010.

The Living Asia crew traveled throughout Davao Del Norte and: experienced, the beautiful rivers, beaches and waterways; learned the myriad of ways to use bananas (ripe and ruined), grasses and other fruits; explored plantations, factories and ports; and, they discovered the sometimes surprising history of this vibrant and culture-rich corner of the Philippines.

Image/Video courtesy Martyn Willes

Every day at sundown, when all God fearing citizens of the World are contemplating retirement to the safety of varietous shelters, the 1.8 million inhabitants of the Monfort Bat Cave are just waking to the opportunity of emergence into a night-long feast on their favourite prey: nectar and fruit . . . lots of nectar and fruit. The Monfort Bat Cave on Samal Island is home to the largest colony of fruit bats in the world (see previous World record article).

On one not-so-moonlit evening in June the GetWet camera crew braved torrential rain to bring you this 2-minute video-segment of the “bat emergence” – an event that actually spans approximately three hours, starting with one or two fruit bats gingerly inspecting the fresh air outside the cave entrance and then calling back to their friends and colleagues with a semi-audible “all-clear”.

Directions: How to Feed A Sea Turtle. Following the success of the How To Jump Off A Boat video in the last issue, this video introduces a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), munching its way through a sparse field of sea grass near Club Paradise island resort, northern Palawan. In this How To Feed a Green Sea Turtle video, those scuba diving nearby introduce themselves to the green sea turtle and offer some sea grass from their hands; watch as the green sea turtle politely accepts the offering, thanks the scuba divers by waving at the camera and then swims off, with its passenger load of remoras, to regain some privacy. A thoroughly civilised sea turtle.

How to Jump Off A Boat: I am frequently asked whether it is important to be able to swim before you choose to go sailing, my reply is always the same, "it’s not so important, the idea is to stay on the boat . . . boating is a safe sport". However, there are alternate philosophies.

And so, when I received this video from a game fishing friend of mine I was not surprised to learn that one of his shipmates had formulated such an alternate philosophy, and wanted to demonstrate it to the World. The alternate philosophy is: to jump off a boat is fun, so long as the skipper is a friend.