City of Gentle People — university life, freediving, and Malatapay's goat market
Dumaguete is a relaxed university city on the eastern coast of Negros Oriental, nicknamed the City of Gentle People for its unhurried pace and open community. Silliman University — the oldest American-founded university in Asia — gives the city a cosmopolitan intellectual character that shows in its café culture, independent bookshops, and waterfront boulevard lined with students. Dumaguete is also a world-class freediving hub: the dive sites around the Dauin coast and the Verde Island Passage host schools of sea horses, thresher sharks, and one of Asia's finest night dives. The Sunday Malata…
Dumaguete was established as a Spanish colonial town in the 16th century and served as the capital of the island's sugar-producing economy before American governance shifted power and built the university in 1901. The city was occupied by Japanese forces during WWII and suffered significant damage; postwar reconstruction maintained the colonial street grid and the Campanario de Dumaguete, a 19th-century watchtower on the city plaza that served for centuries as a lookout for pirate raids. The city today is one of the Philippines' most liveable, consistently placing in surveys of the country's…