By Carla Gomez (visayandailystar.com)

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines—A blog with over 2.5 million worldwide visitors a month has featured The Ruins in Talisay City, Negros Occidental as among the 12 of the world’s most fascinating ruins.

Oddee at www.oddee.com, a blog that “features, odd, strange and bizarre things” in the world, ranked The Ruins in the 12th place among the world’s fascinating ruins.

The blog described The Ruins as “a mansion built by a sugar magnate at the turn of the last century that not once, but twice, was destroyed in the Second World War in order to prevent Japanese forces from using it.”

The US Armed Forces in the Far East (Usaffe) bombed and strafed the mansion and Filipino guerrillas burned it to keep it from falling into Japanese hands, according to the blog.

The Ruins, built in the early 1990s by sugar planter Mariano Ledesma Lacson (1865-1948), is now a tourist attraction ran by his great grandson Raymund Javellana.

Javellana said he did not know how The Ruins got included in Oddee or who ran the blog, but he was grateful for the publicity it was giving the place.

“I just hope that this can spur tourist arrivals to Negros,” he said.

While he admitted that the Filipino guerrillas set fire to the mansion to prevent Japanese forces from using it as their headquarters earlier in the Second World War, Javellana denied that the Usaffe also bombed and strafed the home as stated on Oddee.

Topping the Oddee list of fascinating ruins is Machu Picchu, the most famous of all the Inca ruins built in the mid-15th century.

Read more about the RUINS in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental