Cock fighting in the Philippines

    On a hill overlooking the small town of Banaue in northern Luzon sits a rickety shack, cobbled together with random timber left-overs and a corrugated iron roof. Improvised wooden seating around two sides of a hard packed, dirt floor arena hold an eager crowd of local men, anticipating today’s action in the cockpit, as the cock fighting space is known. Naturally there’s more to the event than just the sport, or Sabong as it’s known here, it’s a…

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The torture never stops

As if the gore splattered meat market in Tomohon wasn’t enough fun, the extra curricular entertainment of cock-fighting is also available for your edification, so I put on my sports correspondent hat to check out a match for you. It is popular throughout south-east Asia and is well over a thousand years old in Indonesia, so hardly a cultural practice to be ignored. If you only watch for a few minutes in the early stages, you could be forgiven for…

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