Duterte slams Boracay as ‘cesspool,’ threatens to shut down island

even worse here--no loose dogs--just on a lead with ignorant selfish owners who cant be bothered to clean up their dogs mess. its a major issue here.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/980185/boracay-closure-rodrigo-duterte.

Didnt think he would do it but there you go what do i know

Been twice enjoyed it both times but the second time in 2017 it did seem to be almost bursting with people.

Think the bigger Catalan airport has just made it too easy as will the new road bridge.

Many tourists are lazy so opening something up to ease of transport sometimes kills the goose that lays the golden egg.

They should close the LGU`s and sack the local DENR staff that issued operating permits to investors..They can clean up as much as they like but that bunch of crooks will screw it up again eventually..

must admit I'm surprised they went through with it all the way too. I thought they would pull back, or perhaps just shut it down for a few weeks.

some foreigners will cancel their vacations, or be less likely to consider going to the Philippines in the first place, because of these negative headlines. This is running all over the world, this. It is not very often, if at all, that a country ever shuts down its #1 tourist destination to clear all the crap up.

It will affect tourism but but most tourists in the Philippines are of course not foreigners. They are Filipinos. So the vendors at Puerto Galera, Panglao, etc must be laughing their sandals off. They will surely be expecting a sharp spike in business and making preparations to increase capacity.

Koh Phi Phi Leh, will be closed for four months from June. According to officials, the closure is a bid to halt environmental damage caused by tourists.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43582169

Panglao doesn't need any of Boracay`s business... Already flooded with Chinese and Koreans.. New international standard Airport due to open in August..Place is a full house and soon to be over loaded.. No water treatment plant,accept at new airport.

GOOD!!!!

If he has time to implement many changes, I think that Duterte will be the Philippines version of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew.
When I first went to Singapore in 1978 it was old-fashioned and had rats in the streets.
LKY changed many things and Singapore is very modern now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew

Phi Phi is not head and shoulders above all the other tourist destinations in Thailand like Boracay is #1 in the Philippines. It is only one, of many. Also Panglao is not all that heaving at all. I was there about 10 days before Christmas which is not exactly all that slack a time of year, and it wasn't very busy. Their numbers will increase also there is plenty of other resorts that are not on Panglao but dotted around Bohol's west and south coast that are surely going to get much busier . Weekenders or short-leave vacationers from Manila, and that is a hell of a lot of people, can no longer go to Boracay, and there are not all that many other places for them to go, that have very quick airlinks. There is nowhere in Cebu, for example, as in an island-type beach destination, that you can reach in less than minimum about 4 hours after you get off the plane.

If you bother to read the BBC news piece linked in the post after yours, you will discover that Thailand does exactly that: all its resorts are closed between May to October.

Let's see some statistics to back-up your theory.

Oh really? What about all the resorts along the east coast of Mactan?

We have to turn down around 7/8 bookings per day..Chinese divers are consuming 400 tanks a day on our small part of the island alone (a single Chinese dive shop) and that does not include all the free divers..
We don`t need any more tourists in our area.
Admittedly though..You probably have a better understanding of things locally because you were here for 10 days before Xmas.

He said he was there ten days before Christmas. Given his form, this was likely a single overnight stay for a quickie with a DIA innocent after a carinderia meal, he would not have noticed many tourists.

what about them? They're just as bad, or worse than Boracay is. The water is foul.

around metro Cebu, there is basically an exclusion zone where it is not advisable at the least, and hazardous to health at the most, to go in the water for at least 40km north of the Capitol up to about Carmen, and a further distance in the southerly direction of about 70km until past Argao towards Dalaguete. In Argao it is not too bad, and I do swim there actually, but it is still not really clean. It is about as clean in Argao as it is in Danao to the north where I also do sometimes swim.

On the west side of Cebu though, a town of Argao's size like Balamban, the water is fine even right in the centre of town. Because there isn't a metropolitan area with 3 million people just up the road on the west side of the island.

Mactan's resorts, even on the east coast, the water is too foul. Mactan island itself probably has about 600,000 people on it. You can't swim in the sea. And if you are just going to sit around at some hotel pool, what's the point in doing that. You could do that in Manila.

complete twaddle. The article doesn't say that at all. It just says that marine parks close, not resorts. Although a lot of resort owners do voluntarily shut down in Thailand's much more compact wet season, especially on the smaller islands like Ko Wai or the little Ko Chang, it is by no means all of them and whole islands don't shut down. In December there is 5 resorts open on Ko Wai. In August, it is 2. The owners have gone back to their province, or possibly overseas (they are rich enough) with their proceeds from the peak season for their own holidays. Some people actually prefer going to islands in Thailand's wet season, it is not like it rains every day like a monsoon. There is fewer tourists, and often lower prices.

You speak with absolute authority about something you clearly know little about. There are a number of four and five star hotels and resorts on Mactan and more on the east coast of Cebu north and south of Mactan island - all these resorts were full over Easter, according to friends and family who actually live and work there. But then you wouldn't know: you're too cheap to stay in one!

Your claim that Mactan has 600,000 inhabitants is wildly inaccurate; its population is closer to 467,000. And as for your claim that one cannot swim in the sea, that is just plain wrong. I and members of my family did so regularly when we lived on Cebu, as did - and do - many Cebuanos and visitors. If anything, the waters there are cleaner now than they were ten years ago.

You repeatedly unfavourably compare the Philippines with Thailand and yet you return to the archipelago year after year after year. Just how much is the Thai Tourist Authority paying you to spread disinformation about one of their competitor destinations?

Mactan island has got way more people on it than that. Philippines population figures are always more than the last figure you can find on google, especially highly urbanised areas like Mactan which is one of the most densely populated parts of the entire metro area. Not only is natural population growth higher than the Philippines in highly urbanised areas like Lapu-Lapu and Cordova, but there is an annual surfeit of migrants coming from the province too looking for jobs who may very well not register to vote and who did come up on the last census. The actual Mactan population figure is going to be closer to 600,000 than 500,000.

the water all around metro Cebu is a cesspool. Anybody who has ever even been near it, knows it. It probably gets a bit better on Olango, but around the main Mactan island it is totally unswimmable.

Thailand a Philippines 'competitor destination' ???

Are you kidding? The Thais got 35 million visitors last year. The Philippines only got five. That's no competition at all.

I think a lot of these single guys who travel around Thailand and the Phils are what are known as 'sex tourists' Mr.Markham... so not sure what kind of 'facilities' they are in need of .

In my not so humble opinion, the term "sex tourist" perfectly encapsulates our interlocutor's behaviour. It is the abundant supply of naturally subservient and eager-to-please young women upon whom he preys that is the only reason he returns year after year; it certainly isn't the country's geological, historical or tourist attractions. Quite why he's a member here is mystery to me; this forum does not cater for his lifestyle unlike a certain Cebu-centric alternative and I am frankly sick and tired of reading his sneering critiques of our partners' homeland.

As for "facilities", he simply needs a cheap fan room for the night with a nearby carinderia and/or Sari-Sari.

In case you haven't gathered by now, I hate sex tourists with a passion.

you just have no clue. I have just returned from six months working in a Cebu city call center in IT Park and I intend to take up the the job again in a few months. They've said that I can return any time.

I had an employment visa which they paid for, full medical cover they also paid for, and I paid taxes on my salary which is a lot more than either of you two have ever done. Neither of you two have ever had paid employment in the Philippines, and worked alongside dozens of Filipinos on exactly the same wages as them, like I have.

people that log on to some dating website, spend hours every day for months chatting to some internet phantom on Skype or whatever, and then go out to the Philippines for a 3 week vacation, a country that never in a million years would they dream of visiting otherwise, with the specific and primary purpose of meeting some woman or women there, are sex tourists. That should be obvious to anyone.

Not that there is anything wrong with going to the Philippines to meet some woman from a dating website - there isn't anything wrong with it at all and I would never say that there is anything wrong with it. There isn't anything wrong with it. But they are sex tourists though. Whether they end up marrying the woman or not, is totally irrelevant. They're sex tourists all the same.

... the above may not be immediately obvious to our newer dear Filipino friends...

"The pot calling the kettle black" is a proverbial idiom that seems to be of Spanish origin, versions of which began to appear in English in the first half of the 17th century. It is glossed in the original sources as being used of a person who is guilty of the very thing of which they accuse another and is thus an example of psychological projection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black

Of course they want you back: you're a native English speaker who's prepared to work for Filipino wages, you are their ideal employee. What's sickening is that you indirectly boast about taking the place of a Filipino who needs the work and its wages to support his family. Not something you should be proud of.

How dare you, you miserable wretch of humankind. The overwhelming majority of this forum's male membership - and one or two of its female members too - travelled to the Philippines, not to go whoring as you do, but to meet those who would become their spouses. To call us "sex tourists" is beyond the pale and I do remember you being banned from LinC when you posted an identical assertion. That you were pardoned by that forum's owner is because he not-so-secretly admired your lifestyle - though he preferred under-aged girls.

Would you call a Londoner who travels to Birmingham to meet a young lady he's interested in a "sex tourist" also?

Go away you bigoted hypocrite.