General Santos
— — a working harbour the tuna boats come home to.
Not only on a wall.
“The southernmost city of the Philippines, sitting on Sarangani Bay below the cone of Mount Matutum. Known in country as GenSan and known abroad as the tuna capital, with one of the largest fishing fleets in Southeast Asia working out of its general port. Manny Pacquiao trained here before every fight. The morning the boats come in, the wharf smells of salt and diesel and the bay is the colour of weak tea.
General Santos, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
General Santos is a highly urbanised city of about 697,000 people at the 2020 census, on the northern shore of Sarangani Bay in the Soccsksargen region of southern Mindanao. It is the southernmost major city in the Philippines, roughly 1,000 kilometres south of Manila by air. The city is administratively part of South Cotabato but governed independently. Mount Matutum, an active stratovolcano standing at 2,286 metres, rises 35 kilometres to the north and frames the city's inland horizon. The bay opens to the Celebes Sea.
General Santos is the largest producer of sashimi-grade yellowfin tuna in the Philippines and one of the major suppliers in Southeast Asia. The city's general fish port complex, opened in 1998, handles roughly 750 metric tonnes of fish on a typical day and runs an annual Tuna Festival each September. The fleet works the rich Celebes and Sulawesi seas south and east of Mindanao. Most catch is shipped iced from the wharf to processors in the same port and on to export markets in Japan, the United States, and Europe.
GenSan is reached most easily by air, with about ninety minutes from Manila into General Santos International Airport at Tambler. The city served as the home gym of Manny Pacquiao, who built and trained out of the Pacman Wild Card Gym for nearly two decades; the gym still operates. Visitors come for the fish port at dawn, the September Tuna Festival, day trips up to Lake Sebu in the highlands of South Cotabato, and the beaches of Sarangani Bay. Local advisories are issued by the city tourism office.