Ang Dabawenyo

Great news for us down South!

Cebu Pacific, the leading domestic airline in the Philippines, has inaugurated its operations hub in Davao City last 8 May 2008, to further serve the island of Mindanao. Hopefully this will mean more air routes to the “missionary” destinations on the island. This is the carrier’s third hub, after Cebu and Manila.

The new hub now services 4 domestic destinations from Davao: Manila, Cebu, Iloilo and Zamboanga; as well as 2 international destinations: Hong Kong and Singapore. Cebu Pacific is currently the only Filipino airline offering flights from Davao to Singapore. The other airline servicing this route is Singapore Airlines’ regional carrier, Silk Air.

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Typically called “zip line”, the Sky Rider is one helluva ride! In Mindanao, there are three of these things: here in Davao at the Eden Nature Park, the one in Cagayan de Oro City, and the longest in the country, at Kapatagan. I’m gonna try all of them as soon as I can!

Here’s a video of me when I tried the Sky Rider. It’s at Eden Fields, right across the road from Eden Nature Park. This was during the Davao Food Appreciation Tour. Thanks to Andrew for taking this video! Read more »

The old PTA Grounds, which was recently renovated and given a major makeover, is now known as “People’s Park.” The winner of the name-the-park contest is Romeo Sardon, 75, of Matina. He won the P50,000 prize money for having his entry chosen to be the park’s name from now on. Sardon is a retired electrician and seaman. Read more »

Tonight I was invited to the Christmas party of two long-standing tourism associations in Davao City: the Davao Travel Agents Association and the Davao Association of Tour Operators. DTAA and DATO did a joint year-end celebration at the Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao, and inducted their individual sets of officers for the following year.

I’d like to congratulate my good friend, Global Wings Davao’s Alex Divinagracia, who has been elected president of DTAA for 2008. Alex is the quintessential travel agent: well-traveled, street-smart, and possessed of a one-of-a-kind sense of humor. He has been in the travel industry for many, many fruitful years, and is considered as one of the pillars of Davao tourism. Read more »

There used to be a post here about a website that offered deals in airfare and similar stuff. And then after about a month, I got an email from their vice-president for marketing asking me to remove the post and all links to their site. The VP said that it wasn’t anything to do with my blog, but stopped at that. No reason whatsoever.

This was originally a sponsored post, an assignment I got from ReviewMe.com. I told the VP that I had to ask ReviewMe first. What was strange was, this person was so insistent. Good thing ReviewMe replied soon enough and informed me that it was OK to remove the post (with no refund of payments).

So that’s why this post has been changed. Truth is, I didn’t want to completely delete it because it would ruin my post count, making my 100th post invalid!