Survivor Philippines: Palau is the second season of the Philippine version of the reality television series Survivor. The show started airing on August 17, 2009 on GMA Network. Auditions were held in key cities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The winner will receive ₱3,000,000, the largest ever cash prize in the history of Philippine reality game shows, and the title Pinoy Sole Survivor. Paolo Bediones returned as the host of the show. Reports of the season being shot in Palau were leaked by local media in the said country when its president, Johnson Toribiong, reversed an order which required members of the Philippine crew to pay US$500 each, saying that the fee was discriminatory and his actions were the result for his desire to promote tourism in his country. The show later confirmed the reports and the location on its blog on July 26, 2009, further elaborating that the season would take place in the island of Peleliu, located southwest of Koror, where Survivor: Palau and Survivor: Micronesia took place. The tribes for this season, initial tribes Airai and Koror and the merged tribe Sonsorol, are named after three of the sixteen states that make up Palau, along with Peleliu. Interestingly, both names of the initial tribes are also tribe names previously used in the US version: "Koror" in Survivor: Palau and "Airai" in Survivor: Micronesia.