About the country

Islands

The Philippines officially consists of 7107 islands of which only 2000 are inhabited. Only about 500 of the islands are larger than one sq km and 2500 aren't even named.
In descending order of size the biggest islands are Luzon, Mindanao, Samar, Negros, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro und Cebu. The island of the Philippines can be divided conveniently into four groups. First there is Luzon, the largest and northernmost islands and the site of the capital. The nearby islands Batanes, Marinduque, Masbate and Mindoro are generally included with Luzon.
At the other end of the archipelago isthe second largest island, Mindanao. From Mindanao's south-western tip, the islands of the Sulu archipelago from stepping stones south to Borneo.
Third is the tightly packed island group known as the Visayas.
Finally, off to the west, there is the province of Palawan with more than 1700 islands.
The main island is Palawan, which is long and narrow and forms another bridge from the Philippines to Borneo.
 

Population

In 2008 the population stood at 96 million. The trend is for the number of inhabitants of the Philippines to grow at the rate of 2% a year. The Philippines family planning programmes are hampered not only by strong Catholicism of the Filipinos but also by the usual Asian wish for the insurance of a large family in old age.
Filipinos are inclined to be very fond of children and have on average six children to a family. Consequently, you will hear of 'family planting' rather than 'family planning',although the gouvernment is putting a great deal of effort into popularising the concept od birth control.
Nearly 40% of the population of the Philippines live in the city.
Thirty-six percent of Filipinos are under 15 years of age, while those who are 64 or over account for only 4 percent of the population.

Language

Historically, the waves of immigrations of alien peoples (Indonesians, Chinese, Malays etc)
and the structure of the country (a series of islands)
have brought about a multiplicity of language groups.
Today there are about 80 significantly different dialects spoken.
1937 President Manuel Quezon declared Tagalog the national language.
The constitution of 1973 confirms Filipino as the national language.
It is based on Tagalog but contains certain linguistic
elements from the other Philippine languages.

Religion

The Philippines is the only predominantly Christian country in Asia - almost 90% of the population claimsto be Christian. Over 80% of Filipinos are Roman Catholic. The largest religious minority is Muslim (5%), although Islam is actually an older presence than Christianity. Filipino Muslims live chieflyin the AutonomousRegion in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and belong to the mainstream Sunni sect.

Money

The Philippine currency is the peso (P) - corectly spelt piso but always referred to as the peso. It's divided up into 100 centavos (c). Banknotes are available in denominations of 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 20 and 10 pesos. There are coins of 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 centavos and 1, 5 and 10 pesos.