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Bang Sue, Bangkok, Thailand Country in Asia
The Golden Buddha, officially titled Phra Phuttha Maha Suwanna Patimakon (Thai: พระพุทธมหาสุวรรณปฏิมากร; Sanskrit: Buddhamahāsuvarṇapaṭimākara), commonly known in Thai as Phra Sukhothai Traimit (Thai: พระสุโขทัยไตรมิตร), is a gold Maravijaya Attitude seated Buddharupa statue, with a weight of 5.5 tonnes (5,500 kilograms). It is located in the temple of Wat Traimit, Bangkok, Thailand. At one point in its history the statue was covered with a layer of stucco and coloured glass to conceal its true value, and it remained in this condition for almost 200 years, ending up as what was then a pagoda of minor significance. During relocation of the statue in 1955, the plaster was chipped off and the gold revealed.
Jeepneys are the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines. They were originally made from US military jeeps left over from World War II and are well known for their flamboyant decoration and crowded seating. They have also become a symbol of Philippine culture.
The word Jeepney is a portmanteau of "jeep" and "Jitney"
My first real wakeup call about trash in the modern world came when I visited the dump community, Payatas, in the Philippines.. I was, by that time, no longer a stranger to the breath-taking frankness of the hard knocks life in the so-called third world. But my visit to Payatas shocked me to the core. Metro Manila has several large (and I mean gigantic) municipal dumpsites, the largest of which is Payatas. It is not simply a landfill – a large hole in the ground where trash is deposited until its filled and which is then sealed over and planted with grass and forgotten. Payatas is the site of a large informal recycling community. Hundreds of families live around and on the dump and earn their living by waiting on top of the pile as the trucks come in and then sorting through the waste in search of valuable items.
Some basic facts: 150,000 people work on the dump, picking through their share of the 6,700 tons of garbage that Metro Manila produces daily. The city has ten such dumps, all over flowing, of which Payatas is the most widely known, due to a collapse in 2000 that killed 200 people. More than 400 trucks come to the 100 foot high mountain of trash every day bringing in 1.800 tons of trash in a 16 hour work day.
Payatas is the successor to Smokey Mountain, a still larger dump on the island of Luzon, which was home to the largest slum in Asia until it was forcibly cleared and the landfill closed by the Filipino government in November 1995. After the landslide at Payatas, the government attempted to close it too, but it was reopened at the demand of its workers, who are dependent on trash picking for their livelihood.
What happens to all that trash? “The bounty of the trucks is sifted and sorted by the scavengers, who pass it on to scrap shops specializing in copper wire, old newspapers, aluminum cans, plastic, cardboard bits of machinery, box springs, raffle tickets, tires, broken toys – virtually all the infinite components of civilized life.?
The people of Payatas were able to find a use for nearly everything that came off the trucks – all of it going off to be reused, melted down, composted, or who knew what – except the plastic bags.So in the end as you step across the ‘ground’ on the dump mountain looking down stories and across blocks to see the edges, what you’re standing on is mostly plastic bags. Bear in mind Manila is home to a society almost pathologically obsessed with plastic bags. If you buy something in a store, all other things being equal, you will walk out with at least three bags. In a grocery store all produce comes plastic wrapped, then is double bagged for you by a smiling attendant – who’s happy demeanor will turned to semi-horrified puzzlement should you attempt to refuse a bag. It seems to represent the pinnacle of modern, sanitary, western style living. So consequently they figure largely in the city’s trash. The man-made mountain of bags covers 22 hectares of land. It is awe inspiring. It is awesome. It is awful.
Visiting that dump community certainly made a big impression on me.
The trash community at Payatas in the Philippines is not an isolated incident. Similar “recycling? systems are in place all around the globe – anywhere the daily average wage is low enough to make garbage picking a viable livlihood. In Mexico City, these pickers are known as pependadores. In Cairo they are called Zabaline. The zabaline collect around a third of their city’s trash, of which they are able to redirect around 80%
Asia's Got Talent held a fan meet at the Skating Rink in Marina Bay Sands on 8 May 2015. The nine finalists were presented to fans together with the judges. Games were played and some lucky people got to sing on stage while David Foster provided piano music.
Cebu City (vroeger ook wel Sugbu genoemd) was al een welvarende nederzetting voordat de Spanjaarden er arriveerden in 1521. De inwoners handelden met de volkeren uit de regio. De eerste Europeanen die hier aankwamen waren de opvarenden van de Spaanse vloot onder leiding van de Portugees Fernão de Magalhães. Op zondag 7 april 1521 voeren ze de haven van Cebu City binnen met de overgebleven drie schepen (de Trinidad, de Victoria en de Concepcíon), waar ze een ontwikkelde beschaving aantroffen. Op 14 april 1521 werd de koning (Rajah) Hamabon van Cebu samen met zijn vrouw en 800 van zijn onderdanen gedoopt en bekeerd tot het christendom. Met Magalhães liep het slecht af, toen hij een paar weken later in een gevecht met een koning van het naburige Mactan, genaamd Lapu-Lapu, stierf aan zijn opgelopen verwondingen.
Tientallen jaren na Fernão de Magalhães kwam op 27 april 1565 Miguel López de Legazpi met een 400 man grote expeditie in Cebu aan. De stad werd met de grond gelijk gemaakt en later weer opnieuw opgebouwd door de Spanjaarden. Ze noemden deze eerste Spaanse nederzetting in de Filipijnen: Villa del Santisimo Nombre de Jesús.
Zes jaar lang, terwijl de Spanjaarden bezig waren om de controle over de hele archipel te krijgen, was Cebu de hoofdstad van de nieuwe Spaanse kolonie. Toen Legazpi in 1571 Cebu verliet en vertrok naar de nieuwe hoofdstad Manilla, bleven ongeveer de helft van zijn soldaten in Cebu achter onder leiding van een provinciale gouverneur.
Pas drie eeuwen later kwam er, net als in de rest van de Filipijnen, een einde aan de Spaanse overheersing middels het uitroepen van de onafhankelijkheid op 12 juni 1898 door Emilio Aguinaldo. Kort daarna in 1901 werd Cebu een gemeente. Op 24 februari 1937 werd Cebu een stad.