During the reign of the late and largely unlamented Ferdinand Marcos, the moneyed classes prospered while the ordinary people languished in poverty. Even though "people power" brought about a change of government in 1986, many people complain that little has changed. The new airport terminal is named after the opposition leader who was assasinated on this very tarmac by Marcos' hitmen, but many people say that the new airport itself is an excellent example of the sort of nepotism and corruption that plagues the country.
Thankfully tourists in the Philippines are unlikely to be affected by this corruption, something which isn't true of every country.
Indeed, ordinary Filipinos have a touching and somewhat naive notion of how close the world might be to a massive outpouring of love and forgiveness at all levels, as illustrated by this mural of George Bush and Saddam Hussein.
Recent history, in particular the demise of Mr Hussein, dictates the need for updates to the mural, but the thought is certainly nice, and most people will find the locals friendly.
he biggest downside of learning to scuba dive, apart from the money it costs, is the time that it takes. Normally I like to split my time in a country between underwater and above water pursuits, but I ended up spending almost all my time doing classwork, pool exercises and actual dives. This is the first trip I've made in several years where I didn't photograph a single butterfly, so you'll just have to get your lepidopteral fix from the butterflies of Vietnam page.
As you've seen, I did make time to visit the Chocolate Hills, and on the same day I visited the Tarsier Visitors' Center near the town of Corella, which is vaguely on the way to the Chocolate Hills anyway, though when I came to cross the Loboc River I discovered that the one and only bridge at Loboc itself was out of commission, which meant that I had to make a 10 or 15 kilometer long detour down to the coast road and then back inland.
It's possible to see tarsiers by taking a boat trip from Loboc, but these are illegally captured animals which are just used to extract tourist dollars without any concern for conservation. In contrast, the Tarsier Visitors' Center keeps these extraordinary little critters in a natural jungle habitat and has a breeding program to try to keep them on the right side of extinction. There are only around 1000 left on Bohol, which is a shame, since they've been around for approximately 45 million years.
Philippine tarsiers are certainly extraordinary animals and very photogenic, as you can see. They're one of the world's smallest primates, adults can easily fit on a person's hand, but they're able to jump a distance of three or four meters while moving from tree to tree. The strange pads you can see on their feet help them to hold on to branches, and some of their toes have sharp claws which are used for grooming. They're nocturnal and have the largest eyes of any mammal relative to their body size, but their eyes are so far forward that they must turn their heads to look around, something they've become very good at - their necks have developed in such a way that they can turn their heads a full 180 degrees!
It was cloudy so I wasn't very hopeful that I'd get much of a sunset, and so I made the mistake of ordering dinner at the restaurant on top of the viewing area. Sure enough, within a few minutes beautiful orange light fell on the hills and the sky turned all sorts of lurid colors and I was only halfway through eating. I finished up as quickly as I could, the sunlight was gone from the hills by that time but I was still able to get some shots of the colorful clouds. 
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