Blogger, backpacker and heritage activist Ivan is frustrated by the fact that Philippines is not able to attract as many tourists as other South East Asian countries. He offers some reasons on his blog. “Since we target mainstream tourism too much, we fail to realize that the bigger market is the budget traveler, the backpacker. You would be surprised with the ratio of foreigners to locals in major tourist cities in our Southeast Asian neighbors such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. The reason they are attracting millions of tourists is because they are backpacker friendly.”