Philippine Archipelago

The Philippines is an archipelago or a group of islands located in the South East Asia which is geographically located between latitude 4023N and 21025N and longitude 1160E and 1270E. The archipelago is composed of about 7,100 islands. The largest island is Luzon followed by Mindanao. The Philippines is divided into 17 political-linguistic regions. There are 79 provinces all in all. Each province is administered by a provincial government headed by the governor. There are 117 cities and 1,500 municipalities. The cities and municipalities are further subdivided into smaller political units called barangays. The term barangay is derived from balangay which originally refer to boats used by earlier settlers in the archipelago. There are 41,975 barangays. Moreover, each barangay is headed by a barangay captain.