The Campuestohan Highland Resort in the Philippines’ Negros Occidental province was recently awarded the Guinness record for the highest rooster-shaped building.

Standing 114 feet, 7 inches tall, the Rooster Hotel at Campuestohan Highland Resort is quite a sight. It’s not only shaped like the domestic bird, but actually looks like a giant realistic rooster dominating the entire area with its imposing stance. Ricardo Cano Gwapo Tan, the director of the resort, told journalists that he wanted to create something eye-catching that also paid homage to the local culture, of which gamefowl is a huge part. Negros Occidental has a gamefowl breeding industry that employs millions of Filipinos, so he hopes some of them will want to spend a night in one of the 15 air-conditioned rooms of the new hotel.

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Filipino online influencer Abby Domer Salle has come under fire for alleged animal cruelty after being spotted wearing a live chick in a small metal cage on her head on the streets of Manila.

Inspired by Japanese Kawaii culture, the so-called ‘duckling fashion’ has become very popular in Southeast Asia in the last few years. The exact origins of this fashion trend are unclear, but it has been linked to anime series or characters. There are multiple variations of this trend all over the world, but in its simplest form it involves wearing decorative plastic or plush ducklings on one’s head. However, one Filipino influencer recently took this already unusual fashion trend and took it to an all-new level of weirdness by caging a live chick and wearing it in public as a bizarre hat.

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A single dad in the Philippines recently made international news headlines after it was revealed that he named his only son after popular anime protagonist Naruto and his parents.

Jamesey Bolivar Maribojo, a 29-year-old anime buff from Davao City in the Philippines, is a big fan of Naruto, the mischievous teen ninja whose adventures have fascinated several generations of anime enthusiasts. He loves Naruto so much that when his girlfriend became pregnant he worked hard to convince her to name their son after the popular character. She agreed, but Jamesey did not stop there. Once he got his foot through the proverbial door, he pushed hard to have the surnames of Naruto’s parents written on the boy’s birth certificate. His son’s full name is Naruto Uzumaki Namikaze Maribojo.

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In what can be described as one of the weirdest accidents of the year, a Filipino man was seriously hurt by a crocodile after climbing down into a pool to take a selfie with it, thinking it was just a realistic plastic model.

68-year-old Nehemias Chipada was visiting the Amaya View amusement park in Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippines, on November 10 when he spotted what he thought was a life-like model of a crocodile. It looked eerily realistic, so the Filipino man, who was celebrating his birthday with his family at the amusement park, climbed down to take a selfie with the cold-blooded reptile and even tapped it on the head. The thought that the 12-meter “model” could actually be a real crocodile never crossed his mind, at least until he got dangerously close to it and the reptile sank its teeth into his left arm…

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A group of gamers in the Philippines recently made international news headlines for continuing to play their favorite video game despite being waist-deep in floods from a typhoon.

Surreal footage showing the young video game enthusiasts simply ignoring the rising water level was captured last Thursday, at an internet cafe in the town of Cainta in Rizal, which had been heavily battered by typhoon Ying-fa. Despite being half-submerged in muddy flood water and a very real risk of being electrocuted, the kids appear glued to their monitors, ready to engage in multiplayer matches. It was only when the owner of the cafe realized the danger they were in that the computers were shut down and the gamers finally left.

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Percival Lugue, a graphic artist from the Philippines, has been collecting toys from various fast food chains since he was just 5-year-old. Now, at age 50, he holds the Guinness Record for the most fast food toys in the world, over 20,000 of them.

Lugue has held the record for the largest collection of fast food toys since 2014, when his tally stood at around 10,000 unique items, but he has been busy consolidating his record ever since, and now he has more than 20,000 toys. Like any child, he always liked playing with the toys he got with his fast food meals, but he always took care of them, so he was able to start his epic collection pretty early. Over the years, he has collected new items from various fast food chains, like McDonald’s, Burger King and even the Philippines’ favorite brand, Jollibee, and compares the excitement of adding a new toy to his collection to experiencing Christmas morning as a kid.

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Four years ago, Rita Gaviola was a 13-year-old street beggar in the Filipino town of Lucban. Since then she has worked with some of the world’s hottest brands as a fashion model, starred on hit reality TV shows and gained over 100,000 Instagram followers. And it was all thanks to a random photo…

Rita Gaviola’s incredible ‘rags to riches’ story began in 2016. Back then, she was asking for alms on the streets of Lucban, to help her family make ends meet. Her father worked as a garbage collector and her mother stayed home to look after her and her five siblings. None of the children attended school at the time and the family barely managed to put food on the table, so Rita often went out to beg for change or food donations. That’s how she was spotted by Filipino photographer Topher Quinto Burgos, who happened to be attending the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, in May 2016. He was attracted by her natural beauty and posted the photos of her on the internet, changing the girl’s life completely with a single click of the ‘upload’ button.

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A Filipino father came up with an ingenious way of keeping his young boy in the house during the recently issued lockdown due to the rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic.

The novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, and the Philippines is no exception. As in most other places, the Government has enforced a social distancing program that requires citizens to isolate themselves in their own homes and go out as little as possible. However, enforcing this type of lockdown isn’t as simple as you might think, especially when dealing with young children used to spending most if their time playing outside with their friends. But, to their credit, some parents are coming up with some creative solutions…

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Rhea Ballos, an 11-year-old student of Salvacion Elementary School in Balasan, the Philippines, has become an overnight sensation after winning three gold medals in a provincial sports event, despite not having proper running shoes.

The young athlete managed to win the 400-meter dash, the 800-meter run and the 1,500-meter run in the girls’ categories while wearing strips of bandage over her feet instead of proper running shoes. Rhea basically ran barefoot, with the thin bandage offering minimal protection against the running track, but that didn’t stop her from beating all the other girls, all of whom were wearing running shoes, and taking home the gold at the inter-school sporting event held in Iloilo, central Philippines. Photos of the girl’s makeshift shoes, complete with a hand drawn swoosh logo, and the “Nike” brand scribbled on the side quickly went viral, wining her praises from all around the world.

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Looking at 22-year-old Ian Francis Manga’s face it’s easy to see why some people have a hard time believing he is a kindergarten teacher, and not a student himself. Luckily, he towers over the children, but his face still looks uncanny.

A teacher in San Jose Del Monte, the Philippines’ Bulacan province, Ian Francis Manga has always looked younger than his years, and that became even more apparent in middle-school, when all the other boys started growing mustaches and armpit hair, but he did not experience any of the changes of puberty. In fact, his facial features remain those of a very young boy, but because he never suffered bullying from his schoolmates, he never felt the need to see a doctor and learn if there was anything wrong with him.

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Authorities in Binalonan, a small Filipino town about 200 kilometres north of Manila, have made gossiping illegal under a new local law aimed at preventing rumors from spreading within the community.

Trash talking someone in Binalonan could see offenders literally picking up trash under a new local law designed to make people take responsibility for the things they say. First-time gossipers risk a fine of 200 pesos ($3.8) and three hours of collecting garbage in the streets, while repeat offenders would have to pay up to $20 and put in eight hours of community service. The law isn’t very clear on what qualifies as gossip, but mayor Ramon Guico cited peddling rumours of residents’ relationships or financial situations as examples of punishable offences.

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A Filipino Catholic man playing the role of Jesus Christ in a yearly Good Friday reenactment of his crucifixion has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 33rd consecutive time last week.

58-year-old Ruben Enaje, from the barangay of San Pedro Cutud, in San Fernando City, has been volunteering to get nailed to a cross on Good Friday since the 80s, but recently announced that next year will be his last impersonating Jesus Christ. He is currently looking for a successor willing to have four-inch nails driven into his hands and feet and get lifted on a large wooden cross for about five minutes, every Good Friday. He also wants that person to be humble and not brag about their special role.

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A viral video of a Filipino mother who goes to an internet cafe and hand-feeds her 13-year old son because he refuses to end his 48-hour gaming binge to eat has once again reignited the debate on youth video game addiction.

37-year-old Lilybeth Marvel first noticed there was something wrong with her son Carlito about two years ago, when he began staying up late at an internet cafe near the family home in Nueva Ecija, the Philippines. Things got progressively worse as time went by, to the point where the 13-year-old now spends days on end with his eyes glued to a monitor playing his favorite “battle royale” video game, Rules of Survival. Last week, Mrs. Marvel was filmed delivering her son’s breakfast to the internet cafe and hand feeding him while he continued to play, because he had been there for over 48 hours.

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I can think of a few good reasons to fake your own death, some of which I actually wrote about in the past, but for some reason, romantic marriage proposal just isn’t one of them. But it worked for one young man, who staged tragic motorcycle accident with him as the victim in order to ask his girlfriend to marry him.

The man, identified by the media as one Jeffrey Delrio, put a lot of thought into his bizarre marriage proposal, even getting local police officers involved to make his apparent demise even more believable. In a clip that went viral last week, Delrio can be seen lying face down on a street in South Cotobato, Philippines, with police redirecting traffic around the scene of the apparently fatal motorcycle accident, as his girlfriend arrives on a moped. She immediately starts screaming in pain after seeing her beloved laying lifeless on the pavement next to his motorcycle, and police rush to restrain her. Little does she know that this is about to become one of the happiest experiences of her life.

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Samelyn Lafuente, a young primary school teacher from Masbate City, in the Philippines, spent the last three years turning a bland classroom into a little girl’s real-life fantasy, decked in pink and full of Hello Kitty-themed decorations.

Walking into Samelyn Lafuente’s classroom, you would be tempted to think that it’s an obsessed Hello Kitty fan’s shrine to the popular Japanese character. The floor is covered with a Hello Kitty-themed carpet, the walls are all pink, as are the school desks, and there are Hello Kitty decorations everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, plastered on the walls and even in the windows. It would be fair to assume that parents of little girls in Ms. Lafuente’s class must be struggling to pull them away from this real-life fantasy in pink every day, which is just what the teacher planned all along – to create a place where her students would be happy and enjoy their time at school.

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