Everyone starts with a blank canvas. For a first timer with no previous painting or sketching experience, one might easily feel intimidated. The session doesn’t just include painting. Each one sketches their own work as well. It is definitely not a Paint by Numbers kit as some people might think. Not to worry though, painting instructors and in-house artists, who are fine arts graduates from top universities, are there to assist.

When one hears the name of the southern province Negros Oriental, chances are one would immediately think of its capital city, Dumaguete, where the iconic Silliman University can be found. A ‘must see’ for first time visitors, Silliman, built by the Americans in 1901, is the first university outside Manila and the first Protestant school in the Philippines.

You spend a good number of minutes watching a video documentary on a large flat LCD screen showing workers chiseling pieces of marble with electric powered tools. You are seated on a long wooden bench—there are two of them, more like rectangular boxes— facing the two LCD screens positioned side by side. Behind the monitors, you can see some greenery in the pocket garden outside the floor to ceiling glass windows of the gallery in that part of the UP Vargas Museum where Maria Taniguchi’s works are on exhibit.

“You are my third visitor this week. This is a Guinness Book world record for Kapangan,” chuckled Asao Shimura when I visited him at his house in Poking, Kapangan, Benguet Province. Poking is located approximately two and half hours away by jeep from Baguio City.

A group of young girls are sitting on the floor, some stretching, some putting on their toe shoes. One girl says, “Papa, just give us a step, then we’ll do it.” They call him papa as they discuss ideas on how to pose for the photo shoot. “You know, all my dancers, they call me papa,” says Russian ballet master Anatoly Panaskuyov. “It’s nice because they are my children. I love them. I love everybody. If you are working with me, if you dance with me, if you come for my training… For me, everybody is important.”

Hoping to fulfill a personal need, Kage Gozun and Noelle Hilario started Brown Belly clothing back in 2004. Gozun shares, “Noelle and I met through capoeira classes and surfing and started hanging out. There and surfing and started hanging out. There talking about how hard it was for both of us to find affordable beach clothing in Manila. That kind of became the springboard for Brown Belly.”

Galleria Duemila, the country’s longest running private gallery, was born out of a broken heart. But first, Italian-born gallery owner, Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz, fell in love. In 1970, while working as a flight attendant for Alitalia, she came to the Philippines where she met artist Ramon Diaz. In less than a year, they were married. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and New York.

He was the only Filipino editor at Oprah’s magazine. “It was an honor to work for O,” Peterson Jason “PJ” Pascual recalls. As an associate accessories editor, he was given the task to do market research in accessories from high to low-end labels, focusing on the latest trends. “I was the only editor allowed to go to all of Ms. Winfrey’s cover shoots in New York.”

Over 300 meters above sea level, it is cool like Baguio in the highlands in northern Philippines. Rice fields abound and even some rice terraces, which we saw along the way. But unlike the steep Ifugao rice terraces in the Philippine Cordilleras, the rice terraces in Ubud spread out gently on gradual slopes. There is nature and lush greenery all around, which have most likely served as inspiration to many native artists who call this place home. Many villages in Ubud are known for their intricate wood and stone carvings, as well as unique bamboo crafts and furniture.

A young woman carrying her newborn son is hiding in a cave. Accompanied by her husband, there they wait until it is safe to go out again. The Holy Family took shelter on their flight to Egypt to escape the Slaughter of the Innocents ordered by Herod, the King of Judea at the time of Christ’s birth. There’s a plaque at the cave entrance where it’s written that when Mary was nursing the baby Jesus, a drop of milk “fell to the floor of the cave, turning the rock white and giving rise to the chalky stone.” This is the Milk Grotto.