Philippines Country Info - Asia

Description and Basic Information

Philippines with its capital Manila is located in Asia (Southeastern Asia, archipelago between the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea). It covers some 300,001 square kilometres (slightly larger than Arizona) with 92,681,000 citizens. Tagalog, English and are languages spoken by the majority in Philippines (consider regional differences).

Philippines is an archipelago in South-East Asia. Combine all its beaches it forms one of the world's longest coastlines and it takes about 2 to 3 decades to visit and experience every island. Also, it may seem peculiar for tourists to notice the Latin flair in Filipino culture. Mainstream Philippine culture compared to the rest of Asia is quite Hispanic and westernized at the surface level. But still, Filipinos are essentially Austronesian and many indigenous and pre-Hispanic attitudes and ways of thinking are still noticeable underneath a seemingly westernized veneer. The climate is tropical, with March to May (summer) being the hottest months. The rainy season starts in June and extends through October with strong typhoons possible.

Pictures from Capital (Manila)

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About Philippines

The terrain offers mostly mountains with narrow to extensive coastal lowlands. The average density of population is about 308 per km². The climate in Philippines can be described as tropical marine with northeast monsoon (November to April), southwest monsoon (May to October). Possible natural disasters include astride typhoon belt, usually affected by 15 and struck by five to six cyclonic storms per year or landslides, active volcanoes, destructive earthquakes or tsunamis.

To reach someone in Philippines dial +63 prior to a number. There are 6,783,000 installed telephones. And there are 92,227,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".ph". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 60Hz. The following list are the 17 regions/states in Philippines we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Philippine population grew at a rate of 1.93% (or by 1,929,072 citizens). With 505,495 deaths and 2,565,437 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 2.06%. -130,869 persons more in total emmigrated from the country than immigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Philippines: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.