Butanding sa Oslob

Image Source: http://www.oslobwhalesharks.com/

Hi, I just updated my blog I'm just so busy with work... and here I'm sharing you my experienced in Oslob, Cebu...watching the Butanding or "Tuki".

Just a little informations about it...Butanding is the slow-moving filter feeding shark and is also the largest confirmed whale shark, having the length of more or less 12.65 meters and weight of 21 tonnes.

When I was having my long vacation in Oslob, Cebu, my eagerness to see the shark drives me to be at the place where it situated. Since I'm from there so the fee is just minimal. But if your not from Oslob you need to pay the regular payment for local tourist aside from foreign people.

I was there with my 2 sisters, excited for the said whale watching, we prepared our life jacket, gaggles and our camera for souvenir. The policy was explained to us by one of the official there that we should kept away from the shark for 5-6ft, no flash on camera and we should not produced too much bubbles on the water so the whale sharks won't recognized it as food.

After the policy explanation we went to the sea side to ride the bangka or "sakayan", we're about 4-6 people in one boat and it's a little bit wavy that time. When we're in the area where the butanding is located, I'm surprised of what I saw, a big, huge and harmless shark. There's one boat man who do the feeding so the shark won't go away.. maybe..

Our boat man command us to dive for those who wanted to... my sisters didn't hesitate to dive for they don't know how to swim and it's so wavy. I dived and went not nearer to the shark just exactly to see it's full length under the sea level. Absolutely, it's the biggest whale shark of all the sharks I saw. It has a big mouth with black dot something on his whole body. I was scared because the shark was very near to us..FYI..it can't be stopped to kept away from the shark for 6ft because the shark itself will come to you especially when you produced  more bubbles. So it was prohibited to produced much bubbles so that the shark won't go to you.. (the shark think its a food when you produced bubbles).


After about 30 minutes I really enjoy watching the big shark my entrance fee and other fee is worth it. Til next time if I have another time I would surely spend watching the friendly shark again.


How to get there:


From Cebu City South Terminal, you have to ride a bus like Sunrays and Ceres Bus or any means of transportation. It's about 3 hours minimum of ride to be there in Tan-awan, Oslob, Cebu and the fare is about 130-150 pesos one way ride. They have lots of rooms available for those who want's to check-in. 

A super fun Bohol tour

Bohol: The Island of the Famous Chocolate Hills

I'm so proud of myself that after a long year of dreaming to visit Bohol, the long dream has ended because last December 27 - 29 2010 together with my workmates, we went to Bohol for a tour. From Cebu port to Tagbilaran port were very excited of the beautiful spots that we will be visiting.


On day one that was December 27 we arrived in Tagbilaran port, since we already have a tour guide contacted before the tour it's really easy for us to visit those nice spots there, by the way thanks to Incon Bohol Tours specially to our tour guides, Paul Incon the owner and to Gio our tour guide for the second day and the one who get us in our hotel where we're staying on the third day, I don't know his name. On that day too, from port Paul bring us to Hinagdanan Cave, you can see our photo below.

It's really amazing cave, theirs a water pool inside which is deep and the structures of the stone were very nice. After here, we go straight to our hotel room which was very nice too, I hope I could sleep back there.


On the second day of our tour, it's time for our country side tour, we went to Baclayon Church, Butterfly sanctuary, Bayoyong, blood compact monument, to a mini zoo were two big snakes were there, then to Loboc River for our lunch, after that we take Zip Line passing across the Loboc River, tarsier sanctuary, man-made forest,  ATV ride, then Chocolate Hills. The second day was really fun, I really have a great day seeing those beautiful places in Bohol. Pictures on our second day tour below.

At Baclayon Church the second oldest church in the Philippines. 

Bayoyong, the 65 year old man.

Butterfly on the flower at butterfly sanctuary

Blood Compact Monument 

Big snake. 

Buffet Lunch at Loboc River 

Group ride crossing the Loboc River

Hello Tarsier.

At man made forest. 

Funny ATV ride the best among all.

At the top of the mountain viewing the Chocolate Hills

That's the end of our tiring second day country side tour, and on our third day of tour I think it's more exciting because we rises early to have a dolphin watching, it's my first time in my entire life to see a real dolphin. See photo below.

 Dolphin watching at sea of Panglao, the photo was not that clear or the dolphins image was very small because it's very hard to capture the energetic dolphins. They're many and they're playing as you can see on the photo.

Snorkeling in Balicasag Island. This island was really nice, lots of corals and lots of fish. I'm feeding them with bread so that they will go nearer to me.

 It's me, diving on the sea of Balicasag Island.

 In the photo above, it's me in Virgin Island, it's a beautiful sand bar Island.

At Panglao Beach, we take a swim after arriving from our Island hopping. Very nice beach promise.

After that we went back to our room because it's already time to go back to Cebu. The experienced was really amazing and I'm so thankful that once in my life I fulfill one of my dream, to visit Bohols beautiful spots and that experienced will remain forever in my memories. Bohol was a very nice place to be with, quite, simple but has lots of beautiful places. 

If I were you I will also visit the places where we've been. It would be easier if you will hire a tour agency like Incon Bohol Tours for you to have an unforgettable experienced too. 

For the Incon Bohol Tours, you can reach them through Mr. Paul Bernard Incon at +639297623614, visit their site http://inconboholtours.webs.com or email them boholtour.incon45@gmail.com. Good luck and don't forget to bring your cameras. 

You may read also my friends blog about their thoughts in Bohol:

http://jayseeblabs.blogspot.com/

http://insanescribbles.wordpress.com/

301 redirects

How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect
By Herman Drost

You've just redesigned some pages of your web site. The pages have high search engine rankings that you don't want to lose. How can you safely redirect web site traffic from your old pages to the new pages without losing your rankings? You can do this by using a " 301 redirect "

What is 301 redirect?

301 redirect is the best method to preserve your current search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a website. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name. You implement the 301 redirect by creating a .htaccess file.

What is a .htaccess file?

When a visitor/spider requests a web page, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

How to implement the 301 Redirect

1. To create a .htaccess file, open notepad, name and save the file as .htaccess (there is no extension).

2. If you already have a .htaccess file on your server, download it to your desktop for editing.

3. Place this code in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

4. If the .htaccess file already has lines of code in it, skip a line, then add the above code.

5. Save the .htaccess file

6. Upload this file to the root folder of your server.

7. Test it by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be immediately taken to the new location.

Notes: Don't add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - place the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/old/old.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/new.htm (new path and file name)

When the search engines spider your site again they will follow the rule you have created in your .htaccess file. The search engine spider doesn't actually read the .htaccess file, but recognizes the response from the server as valid.

During the next update, the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, plus some fluctuations in rankings. According to Google it will take 6-8 weeks to see the changes reflected on your pages.

Other ways to implement the 301 redirect:

1. To redirect ALL files on your domain use this in your .htaccess file if you are on a unix web server:

redirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com
redirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com

You can also use one of these in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html
redirect permanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html
redirectpermanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html

This will redirect "index.html" to another domain using a 301-Moved permanently redirect.

2. If you need to redirect http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com and you've got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks 

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

or this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Tip: Use your full URL (ie http://www.domain.com) when obtaining incoming links to your site. Also use your full URL for the internal linking of your site.

3. If you want to redirect your .htm pages to .php pages and you've got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule (.*).htm$ /$1.php

4. If you wish to redirect your .html or .htm pages to .shtml pages because you are using Server Side Includes (SSI) add this code to your .htaccess file:

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml .html .htm
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html
Frequently Asked Question:

What's the difference in using a 301 redirect versus a meta redirect?

Meta Redirect

To send someone to a new page (or site) put this in the head of your document:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://mynewsite.com/">

Content="10; tells the browser to wait 10 seconds before transfer, choose however long you would like, you can even choose 0 to give a smoother transition, but some (really old) browsers aren't capable of using this so I'd suggest putting a link on that page to your new site for them.

With a meta redirect the page with the redirect issues a 200 OK status and some other mechanism moves the browser over to the new URL. With a 200 OK on both pages, the search engine wants to index both the start page and the target page - and that is a known spam method (set up 10,000 domains full of keywords for the search engines to index then meta redirect the "real visitor" after 0 or 1 seconds to the "real site" ) so using it gets you penalized.

The 301 redirect simply issues a Permanently Moved message in the HTTP header which tells the search engine to only index the target URL.

Conclusion: The safest way to redirect old web pages to the new pages or old web site to the new web site and keep the same search engine rankings is to use the 301 redirect. It will also pass on the page rank from your old site to your new site.


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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original
articles at: subscribe@isitebuild.com You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
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or you may use google info.
301 redirects