Van’s footwear  streamers hanging  all over the coconut trees along Boracay’s Main Road .Ugly or nice , you decide. 

Where’s the beach ?Marlboro and Bacardi umbrella’s blocking the view.Tattoo’s anyone?

Giant billboards on the cliffs of Boracay advertising the loudest event of summer .

Globe telecom’s booth along the beach trail of Boracay where holy week is about sell ,sell, sell, and not about relax, relax, relax.

This was a common sight along White Beach .Havaianas gave away hundreds of flip flop air mattresses.

Not even the sail boats are spared from advertising . Tanduay rum leaving their mark on holy week 2010.

Giant Nivea billboard right on White Beach .Not a pleasant sight.

Smart telecoms advertising on a sandcastle . Every inch of Boracay was an advert trying to sell you something during holy week 2010.

Commercialism rocked Boracay this holy week . The floating car is an Austin Mini Cooper . A floating car !! .

This one took the cake , walking billboards on White Beach . When I first saw them I was like thinking to myself , I think it’s time to find another island .

Holy Week on Boracay means big business . With thousands and thousands of tourists arriving for the extended 4 day holiday , it seemed everybody  was trying to sell something to somebody . The island was bombarded with marketing ploy’s from the bigger businesses of the Philippines to  some international brands like Lee Jeans,Austin Mini cars,and Vans footwear . I’ve seen it all this past week from floating cars to walking billboards . Big business tried to out market each other by hanging hundreds of streamers along the Main Road , by setting up their respective booths along White Beach , to giant inflatable bottles  with company logo’s, to sandcastles bearing their logo’s .Boracay  looked more like a circus than paradise .

Marlboro had a huge marketing blitz of Boracay. Since they are banned from advertising cigarettes on local television and print add’s  , they have a huge surplus in their advertising coiffeurs and spent it big in Boracay. They  decided to place a couple of hundred massive deluxe beach umbrella’s up and down White Beach  .Each umbrella is valued at $500.00 dollars ,  times 200 pc equals an astounding $100,000.00 investment .In some parts of White Beach i could not see the beautiful white sand that made this paradise island famous , i could only see Marlboro logo’s and umbrella’s. Sad .

Boracay  was an endless sea of the wrong colors . The colors of  different companies marketing there colorful  logo’s  . Logo’s that belong in the city and not on  Boracay’s White Beach . I feel the real loser here is   Boracay itself  , for being exploited by big business trying to  sell everything under the sun making White Beach look like a circus  , and the other loser is  all the tourists that were trying to escape the city life,  which could not relax and enjoy Boracay as a paradise island.I’m glad Holy Week only comes once a year  .

Yours truly,

 John Munro