One of the most magnificent sights when going east of Manila is Lake Taal, a very large lake with Taal Volcano on an island within the lake, with a two-kilometer wide lake in Taal Volcano's crater, and a smaller island inside that lake! Lake Taal itself consists of water which collected in the caldera of a massive volcano, so there are high ridges above the lake, however when I visited it wasn't even possible to see the lake from the top because the air was so murky, and there certainly wasn't any hope of seeing Taal Volcano. The volcano is very active, there have been numerous eruptions over the centuries, the most recent activity lasted from 1965 to 1977, during which pyroclastic flows travelled several kilometers across Lake Taal, killing hundreds of villagers. You can get some sense of how hazy the air was from this photo of the faux castle at "Fantasy World Resort" near Lake Taal, which is supposedly modelled after the very famous Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria - which was itself a fake 19th century concoction!
That castle isn't the only great work of culture in the area east of Manila, there's also this mermaid at the coastal town of Atimonan, known locally as the Sirena.
It's said to be a replica of the famous Little Mermaid on the rock in Danmark's capital, Copenhagen, but my guess is that the Danes have no great need to fear this bit of competition!
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