{"id":49301,"date":"2015-05-13T23:43:45","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T15:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=49301"},"modified":"2015-05-14T08:49:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T00:49:37","slug":"afp-allows-tourists-in-kalayaan-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/13\/afp-allows-tourists-in-kalayaan-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"AFP allows tourists in Kalayaan islands"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_49316\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-49316\" style=\"width: 558px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Picture-1-Kalayaan-islands.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-49316\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Picture-1-Kalayaan-islands.png\" alt=\"Kalayaan island (Photo courtesy of the Municipal Government of Kalayaan) \" width=\"558\" height=\"418\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Picture-1-Kalayaan-islands.png 558w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Picture-1-Kalayaan-islands-300x225.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 558px) 100vw, 558px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-49316\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kalayaan island (Photo courtesy of the Municipal Government of Kalayaan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>MANILA \u2013The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) gave a go signal to the Kalayaan municipal government to allow tourists to travel to the Kalayaan island group, which included islands situated in the disputed Spratly archipelago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe municipality has the plans (to develop tourism). This will need an interagency effort,\u201d AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr. said during his first visit to Pag-asa island.<\/p>\n<p>Catapang inspected the facilities of the island and also took the time to preside over a flag-raising ceremony. He was accompanied by other AFP officials.<\/p>\n<p>The Kalayaan government aimed to materialize its tourism plans by next year. Showing its full support, the AFP demilitarized its air strip in the island, allowing commercial planes to bring tourists in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to have the airstrip to be a rated aerodome to allow civilian aircraft that will bring in tourists and provide support,\u201d Kalayaan Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr. said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really don\u2019t have a budget set aside for this, but we can accommodate 30 persons at a time on the island. Many tourists actually already expressed interest to visit and everything is still in the planning stage but we plan to start next year,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the air strip, ports were also opened for civilian use. Thus, tourists can travel to the island by choice of a plane or a ferry. They will then be toured in the Kalayaan&#8217;s Lawak, Likas, Pag-asa, Panata, Patag islands and Ayungin shoal.<\/p>\n<p>The Kalayaan government believed that the tourism plan will be a \u2018backyard business,\u2019 starting small and then attracting more investors later on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MANILA \u2013The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) gave a go signal to the Kalayaan municipal government to allow tourists &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":49316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,95,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ph","category-travel","mauthors-jane-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}