Philippines Mini Guide
The Philippines are a huge archipelago of over 7,000 islands in south east Asia which have more than one hundred different ethnic groups living there.
Filipinos are very hospitable people and they will make you feel like royalty when you visit. This is especially the case at festival times when the custom is that they bring strangers into their home.
Being a mainly Catholic country there are major holidays at Christmas and Easter, though the Muslim festival of Eid-Al-Fitr (known in the Philippines as Hari Raya Puasa) is also celebrated as a national holiday.
There are many airports in the Philippines including Cebu, Davao, Clark, Kalibu, Laoag, Subic and Zamboanga. Rhino car hire offers to set you up with a vehicle at any of these airports. There are also car rental companies such as Avis, Hertz and Budget which have offices in Metro Manila at the airport and can be booked through Rhino car hire. You can even choose to have a chauffeur driven rental car at a reasonable price. Getting around the Philippines is not difficult however as the Strong Republic Nautical Highway has made travel by car across the various islands possible.
If you plan to travel around the various islands, it is best to get an open jaw ticket and then you can see Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao and all the islands within them at your leisure. Most foreigners who come to the Philippines are granted a three week tourist visa.
There is a traffic restriction method operating in Manila whereby people can only drive on certain days according to the numbers on their licence plates.
Cars with license plates ending in 1 or 2 cannot drive between the hours of 7am and 7pm on Mondays on most main roads. On arrival be sure to check with Rhino car hire representatives whether these rules will apply to your vehicle as foreigners can be targeted by unscrupulous traffic wardens.
Head off on the North or South Expressways if you want to go from Metro Manila to the various provinces of Luzon. These roads are of a good quality and operate as toll ways at a minimal cost. From the expressways, national highways and provincial roads connect to the major cities and provinces.
There are also bridges and ferries connect the major islands together. Roads vary greatly in quality from the paved multi-lane highways to narrow dirt roads and it is essential to plan your route well by having a map as getting lost is not difficult.
