Travelers to the Philippines can now book a room in the world’s largest building shaped like a chicken, located in the country’s remote highlands.
No, you’re not expected to bed down on top of a pile of straw in a chicken coop.
The towering six-story building stands nearly 35 meters (over 114 feet) tall and has 15 rooms, all equipped with air-conditioning. The rooms don’t have windows, though – they’d ruin the effect of the chicken’s feathers.
Located atop the hills of Campuestohan Highland Resort on the island of Negros Occidental, the new landmark was officially given the Guinness World Record title for being the largest building in the shape of a chicken on September 8.
The brainchild behind the building, Ricardo Cano Gwapo Tan, told CNN he always wanted to leave a “big legacy in this mortal world.”
The 70-something former local politician said he is still a “big kid at heart,” and the resort has always been his playground to create something with a “wow factor.”
Tan said he dedicated the building to the game fowl industry that employs tens of thousands of people in the Philippines and set his heart on creating the chicken-shaped structure to honor the bird’s importance to the people of Negros.
Cockfighting, known locally as “sabong,” has been a traditional past time that dates before Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. The practice also remains popular in rural parts of Thailand and Indonesia although it is banned in India.
“The fighting cock industry is a billion-peso empire in our province,” Tan said. “The Philippines now has an iconic building that is a source of legacy, pride and honor.”
There are over 2,000 game fowl breeding farms across Negros Occidental and it has become one of the leading local industries in the province alongside sugar production and swine breeding.
Millions of pesos are made in cockfighting arenas across the Philippines where rowdy punters cheer on combative chickens duel until one dies, despite protests from animal rights groups.
Aside from being fierce fighters, Tan said chickens can be “calm yet commanding creatures.”
As a young boy, the cockle-doodle-doo around Christmas time was also the reminder for families to attend Misa de Gallo – Spanish for “Rooster’s Mass” – which is a novena of dawn masses in the nine days leading up to Christmas, Tan said.
And just ahead of the holiday season, the resort and its rooster-shaped hotel is fully booked with dozens of families staying over through the end of January 2025, Tan said.
A room for four people in the rooster hotel is just under $80 and for bigger groups of up to seven people will cost about $120, according to prices on its Facebook page.
The land was a quiet mountaintop when Tan’s wife, Anita, bought it decades ago. But since developing the five-hectare plot in 2010, the resort now has two massive wave pools, a restaurant, a cafe and hundreds of dinosaurs and cartoon statues to keep guests entertained.
It’s a bit of a journey to get to the giant rooster. Travelers can start their trip by taking a domestic flight from Manila or Cebu to the Bacolod-Silay International Airport in Negros Occidental, one of the over 7,000 islands of the archipelagic country. From the airport, it’s about a 17-mile drive across farmland and an uphill ascent.
