Luzon Islands
Luzon Islands
Nobody just has provinces or states it seems. That theme carries over to the Philippines. The major divisions under the federal level are the Regions. There is one autonomous region, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindinao, which has autonomy over its culture and governmental affairs within the federal framework. Think Quebec. There is also one more planned autonomous region.
In addition to the autonomous region(s) there are 16 current Aministrative Regions and 3 planned. These regions are merely groupings of adjacent LGUs - Local Governmental Units. These units are the Provinces (81) and the Independent Cities (146). Provinces are further subdivided into Component Cities and Municipalities. Ultimately, all divisions break down to Barangays, sometimes called Barios. The name might be translated as "Village" or perhaps "Neighbourhood".
I think for our purposes, though, we'll break the place down by its major island groupings. With over seven thousand islands making up the Philippines they've had to group them together to make any sense of it. The first island group is Luzon, which is the group of islands in proximity to the big island of the same name.
So this will be our first couple of flights in the Philippines - the Luzon Islands.