ABSTRACT
The Philippines is one of nature's glories, and the archipelago has a splendor that catches a new visitor by surprise. The fabled sunsets across Manila Bay are so dramatic that the garish color photos used for postcards pale against nature. The rich green of the tropical rain forest, the dance of sunlight on the South China Sea, the fragile promise of newly planted wet rice, and the majesty of cumulus clouds piled tens of thousands of feet into the sky are only a few of the many facets of natural beauty on display in the Philippine Islands. Urbanization is stretching around the shoreline of Manila Bay and into the interior, and rice fields and swampland are being converted into squatter settlements and urban compounds. Rice is the symbol of life. It is the food staple that provides most Filipinos with the majority of their daily calories.
