To Let a Hundred Cebu Blogs Bloom

Liloan Trippers is officially part of the blogging contest sponsored by the city of Mandaue in annual celebration of Mandaue Business Month (MBM). The MBM comes as a celebration every August by the business sector, local government of Mandaue City and the Province of Cebu to highlight the strong partnerships for development of a bustling industrial metropolis utilizing resources from a vibrant countryside.

Mandaue, a perennially booming city, is a very important neighbor of Liloan because you can never get to Liloan without passing through Mandaue highway. Mandaue City is the “bridge” to Liloan. (Unless, you go to Liloan through Camotes Sea or you are from Danao City.) More important than that, the people of Mandaue and Liloan interact so much economically (and otherwise) and share fond history together. Liloan, in fact, was part of Mandaue until 1845. It was that same year when Liloan created its own parish and separated from then municipality of Mandaue to become its own “Pueblo de Lilo-an”.

According to the contest rules, the participating blogger has to create a new blog about Cebu. Existing blogs with already entries or traffic are not allowed. The blog contest will start on July 16, and will end on August 31, 2008. However, the writers of Liloan Trippers only knew of the blogging contest at a much later date so we are practically the youngest participant. The contest rules in full here.

The writers decided to focus on one town, instead of the whole Cebu, because:

a) Liloan is still part of Cebu Province. Hence, a good advertising campaign for Liloan is good for all of Cebu Province.

b) We feel that Liloan is one of the most underrated towns in Cebu. Given enough exposure, Liloan will provide a significant option for potential Cebu tourists.

c) Liloan is in the countryside. Thus, promoting the town's tourism will further the goal of highlighting the strong partnerships for development of a bustling industrial metropolis utilizing resources from a vibrant countryside.

d) While we focus on Liloan, inevitably, other places of Cebu also get to be linked and featured on the side. You can never separate One Cebu.

Now after just around 10 days of formally introducing Liloan Trippers, we have received overwhelming responses from people all over. Thanks to all of you! Keep eating halo-halo! ;-) The writers mainly use their Multiply and Friendster sites as launch pads to what this site is now. We are also grateful to various bloggers who linked, or at least pimped, this site. And, look now, we have pure foreigners (hi there: Sara, Toby, Frank and Robert to name few) who frequent this site and some of them even confess interest to “pack bags for Liloan”.

Win or lose, we are overjoyed enough already that we are helping a little to put Cebu on the map. We won’t stop our efforts even after the contest. We are just starting with Liloan…

(picture of Mandaue City, taken from here)