Cebu among world’s top tourist destinations

By Cebu Network
Published May 26th, 2006

Cebu has been picked as one of the world’s 10 best island-resort destinations by the 2005 edition of the Conde Nast Traveler Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards.

Cebu was picked eighth with 69.5 points in the Asian/Indian Ocean region this year, one notch lower than its seventh place finish with 72.8 points the previous year, the Cebu Daily News reported.

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Fort San Pedro

By Cebu Network
Published May 15th, 2006

A monument to Cebu’s turbulent past, the Fort San Pedro in Cebu City served different purposes at various times in the island’s history.

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Call of the surf

By Cebu Network
Published May 12th, 2006

Travel by boat and van from Cebu to Calicoan in Eastern Samar is one long and rough ride but the wonders of the island are worth every minute of ache and discomfort.

Calicoan is among the numerous islands and islets that ring Guiuan, a town at the southernmost tip of Samar, the third largest island in the Philippine archipelago.

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Battle of Mactan: history and myth

By Cebu Network
Published May 8th, 2006

There is a spot in Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan island that’s revered by islanders more than any other place. A marker says it was on that site that a man who had sought dominion over the island in the name of the Spanish king had died in the hands of the brave warrior chieftain Lapu-Lapu 485 years ago. (Click on photos to view larger images)

Lapu-Lapu’s deed is fact but it spawned legends about the man–how he defeated the Spanish forces with their powerful artillery (guns, swords, cannons, cross-bows, body armor) and killed their leader Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan–and what became of him.

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FHM Skin Summer Escapade: a night spent waiting

By Cebu Network
Published May 8th, 2006

Cebu’s hot summer is made even hotter with the annual staging of bikini contests and shows in resorts in Mactan Island. The most popular event is Jamaican Nights, with FHM bikini shows coming next.

Having missed this year’s staging of Jamaican Nights, the Cebu Network writers went to the FHM (For Him Magazine) Skin Summer Escapade last Saturday in Portofino, a beach resort in Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan Island. (Click on photos to view larger images)

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Sutukil: Dining on fresh seafood by the seas of Mactan island

By Cebu Network
Published May 6th, 2006

When you’re in or anywhere near Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan Island, you have to try sutukil. Sutukil is a portmanteau of the three ways fish are cooked in eateries near the Mactan Shrine: Su is for sugba or grilled, tu is for tula or prepared into a soup and kil is for kilaw or turned into a raw fish salad.

Sutukil restaurants let you choose whatever you want cooked from stalls of fresh fish, prawns, crabs, seaweeds, shells, clams and even lobsters (click on photos to view larger images). These seafood are as fresh as seafood can be and the crabs and lobsters on display are still alive as you pick which ones you want cooked. Sutukil eateries get their daily supply of fresh seafood from fishers in nearby islets.

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Karancho beach resort in Mactan

By Cebu Network
Published May 5th, 2006

The Karancho beach resort in Maribago in Mactan is private and affordable and can be a jump-off point to any of the smaller islets that ring the island city of Lapu-Lapu and municipality of Cordova.

Entrance fee to Karancho is only 20 pesos for adults and 10 pesos for kids. Cottages cost from 500 pesos (about $10) to 1,500 pesos.

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Magellan’s Cross

By Cebu Network
Published May 4th, 2006

Close to 500 years ago, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan planted a huge Christian cross in Sugbu (now Cebu) to celebrate the baptism into the Roman Catholic religion of island chief Rajah Humabon, his wife, and some 500 of their followers on April 21, 1521.

The 485-year-old cross, called Magellan’s Cross (click on photos to enlarge), now stands at a small chapel located across Cebu City Hall and along Magallanes Street. The street is named after Magellan, Magallanes being the Spanish translation of the Portuguese explorer’s name.

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Cebu Business Month 2006 opens this week

By Cebu Network
Published May 3rd, 2006

Cebu Business Month (CBM) 2006 officially kicks off this Friday, May 5, at the Ayala Center Cebu. The summer events open the annual celebration organized by Cebu’s business community and government to highlight emerging opportunities for trade and industry in Cebu.

Organizers of CBM 2006 have prepared a series of sports-driven and fun-filled activities for the celebration, officials said in a press release.

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The beautiful island

By Cebu Network
Published May 2nd, 2006

Cebu is an island province in the central Philippines composed of six cities and 46 municipalities. It is ringed by over a hundred smaller islands that include popular tourist destinations Mactan, Olango, Bantayan, Camotes, Daanbantayan, and Malapascua.

The province, a narrow strip of land that is 200 kilometers long and 41 kilometers wide, is 588 kilometers away or an hour’s flight from the Philippine capital Manila. Click here for a map of Cebu province.

The capital city–also named Cebu and dubbed the “Queen City of the South”–is the oldest city in the country. In Cebu City is Colon, the oldest street in the country built by the Spaniards during the time of Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez de Legaspi.

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