34 Fun Facts About Palawan

What is the capital and largest city of Palawan?

Puerto Princesa is the capital, yet it governs itself as a highly urbanised city, so provincial figures usually leave it out.

Palawan belongs to which administrative region of the Philippines?

Mimaropa is named for Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan, and a 2005 order moving Palawan to Western Visayas was shelved after protests.

Palawan is nicknamed the Philippines' Last what?

Frontier: the name reflects how wild Palawan remains, with more than half of its original forest cover still standing.

Palawan lies between the Sulu Sea and which larger sea to its west?

South China Sea: in 2016 a tribunal in The Hague sided with the Philippines, ruling that China had no legal basis for historic rights inside its 'nine-dash line'.

Palawan's islands stretch from Mindoro in the northeast to which island in the southwest?

Borneo: unlike most of the Philippines, Palawan belongs with Borneo to the Sundaland wildlife region, so many of their animals are related.

What did Palawan voters reject in a March 2021 plebiscite?

Splitting it into three provinces lost, after opponents such as the Save Palawan Movement said the law had been railroaded without public consultation.

The lid of the Manunggul Jar, a burial jar from Palawan's Tabon Caves, shows two figures seated in what?

A boat: it carries two souls on their voyage to the afterlife, the boatman seated behind a figure whose arms are crossed like a corpse's.

Evidence from the Tabon Caves shows people have lived on Palawan for more than roughly how many years?

50,000: much later, people also used the caves as a burial ground, laying their dead to rest in clay jars.

Coron Bay's famous World War II wreck dives are ships that belonged to which country?

Japan: US Navy dive bombers caught its supply fleet hiding among the islands on 24 September 1944 and sank ship after ship.

Palawan was a hub of the prehistoric Maritime Jade Road, whose raw jade came mostly from which island?

Taiwan: lab tests traced jade ear pendants found as far away as Vietnam and Thailand back to a single deposit in eastern Taiwan.

Pigafetta's 1521 expedition called Palawan 'la terra de missione', meaning what?

The land of promise: Pigafetta said they named it so because they had been starving, until islanders fed them rice cooked in bamboo, pigs and goats.

Pigafetta recorded that the people of Palawan carried which weapons?

Blowguns: an iron point on the end meant they could fight on, using the blowgun as a spear, once their poisoned darts ran out.

Which Palawan reef did the US Navy minesweeper USS Guardian run aground on in 2013?

Tubbataha Reef: unable to tow the minesweeper off, the Navy cut it into pieces to free it without further damaging the reef.

Under what name did the 1818 Spanish census record Palawan?

Isla de Paragua was Spain's name for Palawan, and it lived on when the Americans first organised the province as Paragua.

For much of the 20th century, Palawan's Culion Island was home to what kind of colony?

A leper colony: in 1992 a law turned the old patients' reservation into a municipality of its own.

In 1992, UNESCO declared all of Palawan province what kind of protected area?

A Man and Biosphere Reserve: yet pristine Ulugan Bay, a UNESCO pilot site within it, has also been eyed for a bigger naval base.

A 1910 scheme by America's envoy to a Scandinavian kingdom would have traded Palawan and Mindanao to which country?

Denmark would have given the US Greenland and passed the islands on to Germany for Northern Schleswig, but in the end the US simply bought the Danish West Indies in 1917.

Survivors of the December 1944 Palawan Massacre, in which 139 American POWs died, escaped with help from whom?

Filipino guerrillas hid the survivors and relayed the news to MacArthur's headquarters, and a US Navy seaplane later flew them to safety.

Off Palawan in October 1944, the US submarine Darter sank Admiral Kurita's flagship, named what?

Atago went down, yet Kurita survived; Darter later ran aground on Bombay Shoal while trailing a damaged cruiser and had to be abandoned.

Calauit Island's 1976 game reserve was stocked with animals imported from which continent?

Africa: of the imported herds only giraffes and zebras still survive, and Tagbanwa families were evicted to make room for the park.

Palawan's Rasa Island is the stronghold of which rare bird?

Philippine cockatoo: the pet trade and forest clearing wiped it out across most of the Philippines, so in 2006 Rasa was made a wildlife sanctuary.

What is the highest peak in Palawan, at 2,086 metres?

The province's mountain ranges average about 1,100 metres and are carpeted in virgin forest.

The Philippines counts the disputed Spratly Islands as part of Palawan under what local name?

Kalayaan Group covers islands that businessman Tomás Cloma claimed in the 1950s, issuing a proclamation that he occupied and owned them.

Busuanga, Coron and Culion form the Calamianes group together with which island?

Linapacan completes the Calamianes, the first part of Palawan under Spanish influence; friars sent farther south met stiff resistance from Moro communities.

Which native language, once Palawan's lingua franca, is still spoken by about 26% of residents?

Tagalog, now spoken by over half the province, overtook it in the 1990s.

The 14-pound 'Pearl of Lao Tzu', found off Palawan in 1934, grew inside which creature?

A giant clam: legend says it trapped and drowned the diver, and the pearl's ancient 'Lao Tzu' back-story was later exposed as a hoax.

Palawan's endemic pheasant is named after which showy bird?

Peacock: like one, the male fans out his tail to show off its shimmering eye-spots when he courts a female.

The endemic Palawan birdwing is what kind of creature?

A butterfly: birdwings are prized by collectors, and ranches rear them to supply that trade under CITES rules.

Palawan has the Philippines' largest remaining population of which marine mammal?

Dugong herds once lived around all the Philippine islands, but drownings in fishing gear and lost seagrass left only isolated groups.

DNA studies showed the Palawan stink badger belongs not with true badgers but in which animal's family?

Skunk: like a skunk, it squirts a foul-smelling fluid from glands under its tail to drive off predators.

Palawan's Underground River was confirmed as one of the New7Wonders of Nature in 2012 after what?

A worldwide public vote: Filipinos answered a national call to vote in record numbers, and the win was confirmed on 28 January 2012.

What does the town name El Nido mean in Spanish?

The nest: El Nido is named for the swiftlets' edible nests in its limestone cliffs, which are prized for soup and guarded by lookouts in cliffside huts.

The Tabon Caves are named after which animal?

A scrubfowl: megapodes like the Tabon scrubfowl don't sit on their eggs but bury them, leaving warm sand or rotting plants to hatch them.

One account says Palawan's capital was named for Infanta Eulalia; who was her mother?

Isabella II was Eulalia's mother, though a rival account ties the name to another daughter, one the queen probably never had.