Before inviting tourists, clean up the country

In the last 100 days, I have visited 19 countries in North, Central, and South America, 17 countries in Europe, and 15 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. I can say that our country is beautiful but not too clean, compared to the 51 countries I visited. Many of our hotel, restaurant, transport, and airport personnel need intensive training on how to make tourists feel our country is clean physically and in other aspects of hospitality. Our LGUs need to clean up the cities and discipline our people.

We have no face to show our visitors if streets are littered with garbage, street urchins roam main thoroughfares, and floods keep inundating highways. Clean up our cities and tourisms sites and people will come. Cleaning up means many things. It means that no one should charge tourists outrageously overpriced food and no pickpockets would steal from them. Thus, tourism is not only the responsibility of DOT Secretary Cristina Frasco. It takes the whole nation to join hands to shape up the country, clean up all the nooks and crannies of our metropolitan areas, and beautify our airports and highways. We need to remove, beggars and street urchins from streets and put flowering plants and green vines in all our places.

Our country cannot compete in rustic beauty and sanitation when compared to the gorgeous landscapes of Bolivia, the forests of Peru, and the seascapes of Costa Rica. We need to take care of our rivers for I was awed by the beauty of the waterways in Rio de Janeiro. I am sure we have better tourist sites in Moalboal, Boljoon, and Badian but we need to clean the surroundings because I saw with my own eyes how people scatter garbage as if there is no tomorrow. I climbed the mountains of Washington State, Oregon, and Montana, and I am saddened when I compare these to our own. I marveled at the sights in Tierra del Fuego and dream that someday, Bohol, Siquijor, and Bantayan can learn from the tourism experts in South, Central, and North America.

I stayed in Innsbruck in Austria, where all you can see is green and flowers and the smell is always fresh that you would not need any mask. You can drink directly from the rivers while you savor the seductive valleys, hills, and mountains not very far from Maria's abbey in that famous Broadway musical “The Sound of Music”. I travelled along the Rhine River from Amsterdam up to the hills of Germany, where I enjoyed looking at the grape plantations decorating the mountains, the whole rolling landscapes dotted with ancient castled and surrounded by virgin forests. My God, I saw paradise on earth. And the overall character of them all was immaculate cleanliness.

The Middle East isn’t very clean, with all due respect, but Israel is a well-disciplined country, better than Jordan and Egypt. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the better ones and there are spots of beauty even in Kuwait. I lived there working in the Philippine Embassy. I used to lead the Filipino community in cleaning up the shores as our tribute to the king for his birthday. In Asia, you will be amazed at the natural beauty of Malaysia, especially if you visit Putra Jaya, the Genting Highlands, Batu Ferringi, and Terengganu. Most of Indonesia's 17,000 islands are green and virgin, especially in the island of Borneo, bordering both Malaysia and Brunei. Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia Vietnam, and Laos are beautiful and clean. But the cleanest of them all is Singapore.

I can help the DOT in many ways but I think they would not like me there. I will call any spade a spade and I will not mince words. The Philippines is beautiful, no question about it. But many Filipinos lack discipline. Some people do not respect nature and are always hurting the environment. Hotel, restaurant, airport, and transport people need to change their paradigm and embrace a new culture of more grace, more refinement, more courtesy and more cleanliness. If we cannot do the most basic things, even if we give more billions to the DOT budget, we shall continue to lose to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand in the tourism market. People do not come to visit if our house is dirty and the visitors do not feel safe and secure. We have a thousand and one fixes to do. And we should start with our outlook and our manners. Plain and simple as that.