Coing To Tokyo?

[?]Hen Try Manila, Too

With the Olympic Games coming up in Tokyo i October, now is a good time to have a look at he possibilities of other tourist spots in that vicinity hat are within the reach of those heading for the james. Manila, capital of the Philippines, is one uch spot.

SMOULDERING ruin at the end of the war, Manila has >me a sprawling metropolis of tial villas, luxury hotels and itclubs. The city is, in fact, often ;ribed as a bubbling social [dron with its bright lights attract a steady flow of Filipinos from farm and travellers from abroad, he spacious boulevards are filled ill hours with vehicles of every age from air-cooled Cadillacs to ie-drawn rigs. The runways at lila Airport with its new terminal s become a strategic hub for jet el in the Orient. lanila is now making a big bid travellers. The aim is to attract tourists now pouring into pro rous Hong Kong across the South na Sea, and to draw spectators at October Olympics from Tokyo.

Famous Hotels Tie famous old hotels, temples of lition overlooking the bay from vey Boulevard, are more than ibling their capacity. The Manila tel is not only adding 500 au ditioned rooms but a convention t and arcade, while the Pilipinas mtting up an annexe and the Bay w has plans for another 150 rooms, at is more, seven new hotels, ably the Sunset with 500 rooms I the 12-storey President are being It. With the peso currently worth und 3.80 to the American dollar, ts for a single with bath average 3/7/-.

Several new restaurants have ;ned in recent months. Heading list is the Sulo, serving Filipino I European dishes in the Rajah om, American steaks in the Vinta ille and Chinese cuisine in the ;i-Ling Room.

Fwo of the great dishes of the d are roast pork with a thick liver ice (the feast at every fiesta), and cken-pork “adobo”, a spicy stew h black pepper, onions and garlic, ere are restaurants to suit every

palate and passport from the Spanish Casa Marcos to the Cafe Indonesia.

The tours now available to travel lers in and around Manila take in many of the leading attractions in the Philippines. You can make a sen timental journey to Corregidor, the famous “rock” in Manila Bay, where General MacArthur made his valiant stand.

Today, this national shrine with its rusty cannons and dark tunnels is a 45-minute trip by hydrofoil across the harbour. Visible across the way is the peninsula of Bataan with jungle fringing its white sands, the scene of another historic and hopeless battle in 1942.

A new package which takes a full day combines city sightseeing with a drive up to Tagaytay, a town perched on a ridge some 2,250 feet above sea level. The road climbs past coconut plantations, papaw orchards, rice paddies and fields of sugar cane.

There is a stop at the church of Las Pinas with its famous pipe organ made entirely of bamboo. Lunch is served at Taal Vista Lodge over looking the lake with the crater of Taal Volcano in the centre, and fishing villages along the shore.

Week-end Excursions Weekend excursions draw many visitors from Manila to Baguio, the summer capital in the hills with its trout streams, pine forests and Alpine chalets. Everyone flocks to the Sun day morning market, where Igorot tribesmen sell pots, pans, fruit, straw, silver jewellery, fabrics and wood carvings. Cigar-smoking women actually do the selling, while the men in loin cloths and straw hats sit in the shade eating peanuts and corn-on the-cob.

Anyone with a day to spare can drive from Baguio to the Banaue Rice Terraces, one of the most spectacular irrigation systems on earth. The terraces, carved by primit ive engineers 3,000 years ago, stretch some 12,000 miles up and down the slopes. Natives who paddle about to do the planting live in grass huts built on stilts.

Thanks to jet runways and new hotels, the southern regions of the Philippines are now ready for tourists, too. An hour’s flight down from Manila is Cebu City, founded in 1565, the oldest in the land. Here, in 1521 Magellan planted a cross to

"Pacific Islands Monthly" is a member of the Australian National Travel Association and the Pacific Area Travel Association.

mark the coming of Christianity to the Far East.

While most of the country is Catholic, the deep south around Zamboanga is Moslem despite Spanish efforts to subdue the followers of Mohammed. The most delightful people of the south are the water gipsies who live in houseboats and fishing villages on the sea. The children who learn to swim before they walk are trained to dive for pearls, abundant in the tropical waters.

The only airline running a service from Sydney to Manila at present is Qantas. Pan American Airways has connections with Manila and the United States Trust Territory through Guam.

Qantas fares from Sydney are; First class—single, £200; return, £380; Economy class—single, £146/5/-; return, £277/18/-.

From Manila, the Qantas plane goes on to Hong Kong, and from there to London, providing the fastest service ever offered between Hong Kong and London.

Elapsed time westbound is only 18 hours 50 minutes, or two hours faster than any previous flights. The east bound time is 18 hours 30 minutes,

more than U hours faster than pre viously.

There are two services a week in each direction.

New Bus Link Across Fiji's Main island OACIFIC Transport Limited, which -*• operates buses daily between Suva and Lautoka, has introduced a new mid-day service to cater particularly for visitors to Fiji. It will be a welcome one, as anybody knows who has tried to make the long journey between the airport and Suva and keep within the budget. Taxis are expensive.

In addition to the normal time table a bus now leaves Suva daily at 1.30, stopping at the Beachcomber Hotel, Korolevu Beach Hotel, Reef Lodge, Sigatoka, Nadi and Lautoka.

In the other direction and making the same stops the departure time is 12.50.

Bus travel in Fiji is economical and the Suva/Lautoka fare on this bus is 18/6 Fijian currency. We can re commend this form of travel to the budget tourist and already the bus company reports a steady increase in the number of visitors travelling by bus.

Museum In Tahiti Will Honour Gauguin A MUSEUM in honour of th( once-despised French painte Paul Gauguin, who lived in Tahit between 1891 and 1901, is being bail at Papeari, an attractive district abou 30 miles from Papeete.

The museum, which the promoter! hope will be a tourist attraction, wai well under way in April. It will com prise four buildings connected h\ roofed, but open-sided passageways.

One building will be a replica o: Gauguin’s long-since-demolished hous( at Punaauia; another will be thf museum proper; the third, which ii pyramidal in shape, will be a library and the fourth will be what the architect calls a sanctuary.

The museum is being built on front land owned by Mr. Cornelius Crane, proprietor of the botanical garden founded years ago by Harrisoi Smith.

The Singer-Polignac Foundation, al the suggestion of Mr. Andre Siegfried, is putting up the money; and the architect is Mr, Claude Bach.

A somewhat ironical aspect of the museum is that, although Gauguin did many of his best known paintings in Tahiti, none of them will be on

/ at the museum as none are a be found on that island, and in Europe and America are . so highly that they are virtually i price. vever, there will be plenty of lin reproductions, books, photo ;, manuscripts, etc., etc., which omotors expect will satisfy the lers.

)on't Have To Be ilomat In Geneva ■ONE has to be a diplomat to njoy life in Geneva, according ecent tourist bulletin from there, tside the conference halls, the in says, there are diverse dis ans, and, beneath the inter lal facade, there is a provincial i evident in many local customs. ien Geneva celebrates its inde mce, for example, there are les and masked balls, but the e mark” of the event is a caul made of chocolate with three like old iron cooking pots. ese chocolate pots are smashed ;aten to commemorate an event lay in 1602 when the Duke of y, aided by Henry IV, sought to Geneva to his domain. ic night, while the city slept, Savoyards propped a ladder ist the high stone ramparts, and v men, planning to open the city to the Duke’s army, stealthily n to scale the walls. jwever, a Geneva housewife,

suffering from insomnia, happened to be looking out the window, and she grabbed a pot of hot soup from the coals and doused the invaders.

She then bounced the pot off the head of the leader, and the ladder collapsed as did the Duke’s scheme to take Geneva.

Today, the walls still partly en circle the old city, and narrow lanes wind up to St. Peter’s Cathedral, where the Romans built a citadel in 58 BC.

But the city has many modern buildings, too. One of the newest is the 400-room Geneva Inter continental Hotel, a 9 million dollar structure rising 18 storeys from Olympic pool to rooftop supper club.

This hostelry, under the manage ment of Intercontinental Hotels Cor poration, a subsidiary of Pan American World Airways, is the largest in Switzerland.

Like the city of Geneva itself, the decor of the hotel is both inter national and Swiss. The cuisine too, will feature the dishes of many lands as well as such Swiss specialties as fondue, raclette and rarebit.

Pan American says the opening of the Geneva Intercontinental is wel come news for tourists to that city as many a traveller in the past has been forced to bypass Geneva during the major conferences which seem to follow one on the heels of another.

Although the town is frequently linked with such names as Voltaire and Rousseau, Byron and Shelley, no man left a more lasting legacy than John Calvin. Everywhere are reminders of the great reformer who settled here in 1536, Lying at the south end of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman), Geneva is a flourishing resort both summer and winter. The lake is ideal for swim ming, sailing, and water skiing. Ex

cursion boats ply back and forth from one small wharf to another.

Along the shores are palatial chateaux, and many historic shrines, now occupied by diplomatic and oil rich princelings from the Middle East.

A full day’s cruise across the lake to Monetreux takes in the Castle of Chillon, immortalised by Byron. A major attraction for tourists on Lake Geneva is the 1964 Swiss National Exposition in Lausanne. A £l/15/9 ticket buys a trip on the monorail and a one-day tour of the Exposition, a showcase of Swiss culture and in dustry.