folks I heard this via email from my wifes aunt who has nothing to do with our dealings but she just was relaying a message so it could be a little twisted up anyway due to some limited work here on my end on the job and such I had to miss 2 payments on our house now I had missed before whenthe house was still in constuction phase it is done now 12 01 finish date at least as far as the biulder/agent is concered his agree part is finished now he is demanding the other half of the total due by Dec 23 witch is impossible for me to meet I can make up the missed 2 months payments and will keep makeing the required payments when they are due I have 2 years to go and we are over half way paid off at this time ahead of schedual anyone have any ideas on dealing with this issue because it was stated if the final half payment is not made on 12/23 all is forfitted

Playing hardball with private financing is how things are done in the Philippines. The builder has no incentive to work with you for missed payments, as he stands to gain all by enforcing the loan default provisions.

Hey, I'm here! I've been up since before 5 a.m., but strangely enough, there was nothing of substance on the list. (-: What's happening anyway? I have a little news for the group if they are the least bit interested. We haven't been able to get adequate re-financing on our home yet, so until we do, we will postpone our move to the RP, but it could happen at any time in the near future. No predictions. I may take a trip soon to look around for housing from Angeles City, Olongapo/Subic as far north as San Fernando, La Union, including Dagupan, San Fabian, etc.

By cargo ship, is a nice way to travel, I don't know if the old rusty steamers are that nice though... When I moved to the states from Finland in the mid seventies (the dark ages). I did it on a cargo ship. It was made possible through some inside contacts at the shipping line. I had to travel as a member of the crew, special assistant to the chief cook or something like that, to avoid passenger surcharges for the ship at the ports we visited. But I lived for three weeks in the owner's quarters, like a one bedroom luxury suite, ate like a king at the captain's table, put on 15 pounds of weight (fat), it was a trip I will always remember. You may want to check directly with some of the shipping companies traveling between US and Asia. Also check with the foreign companies, their rules are often more relaxed that the US owned ones.

Citibank is a good bet, an international bank with branches in the RP, plus purchases & cash withdrawals with their credit cards are quickly authorized. When we cashed out a certificate of deposit at Philippine National Bank, they gave us a Citibank cashiers check. For sending cash, we use Metrobank, which has the lowest fees we've found for remittances. While in Cebu, we opened joint accounts with the parties we wanted to send money to, which makes such transfers a snap. Their office in London is listed as: LONDON OFFICE 26 Seymour Street London, WIH 5WD Tel. No. : (44)(171) 723-56-57 Fax No. : (44)(171) 724-40-46 Contact Person : Christopher Joseph August Representative Officer

A None of us would prefer to return to Estatos Unidos, but having US-based credit cards sure helps when shopping on the Internet. December 9, 2001 Ex-Expatriates' Bumpy Returns By HOLLY HUBBARD PRESTON AMERICAN expatriates may need to remember the adage ""Out of sight, out of mind."" Without careful planning, investors who step out of the United States financial machine could find themselves shut out of the system when they move back home. That is what Bart Bartok and his wife say happened to them when they returned to Seattle in 1990 after a decade working in Switzerland. Initially, the couple could not get a mortgage when they tried to buy a home. Even their bank, Washington Mutual which had been holding more than $100,000 of the couple's savings for more than a decade, would not give them a loan. The Bartoks faced a similar situation when they applied for a credit card. Despite 10 years of good standing as offshore cardholders with the American Express Company , it took them three years in the United States before they could get a major bank credit card. Car insurance was a problem, too. Without a recent track record in the United States, Mr. Bartok, a previous policyholder with a squeaky-clean driving record in America and Switzerland, was categorized as a high- risk driver and paid high premiums for almost three years. After a two-month hunt, the Bartoks finally found a mortgage, offered by a loan officer at Great Western Bank. The lender accepted Mrs. Bartok's three-year contract with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva - the job she was actually about to leave - as a basis for income figures that would qualify them for the loan. ""My wife had to provide a statement that she had every intention of working out her contract and remaining in Switzerland,"" he said. In fact, she stayed in Switzerland for four months and then rejoined her husband. The Bartoks still have an account at Washington Mutual, the bank that turned them down for a mortgage. While Olivia Riley, a spokeswoman for the company, would not discuss the Bartoks' case, she acknowledged that the bank probably would not have had resources to adequately research and process the loan of an expatriate couple 10 years ago. Today, the company has operations in 50 states. ""If someone comes to us who has been out of the country for a while, we will need to spend a little bit more time with them, but we will work with them,"" she said. The Bartoks' story is old, but not out of date. ""Creditors often like to see three years or more at the same address, and anything foreign scares them,"" said Adam Starchild, an offshore investment specialist in Panama City, Fla. ""The very thought that a borrower might move abroad would tend to leave most lenders trembling."" Barbara Frew, author of ""Personal Finance for Overseas Americans,"" could not agree more. She and her husband, Donald Plants, who is in the United States Foreign Service, came up against this issue when they tried to buy a home in Plano, Tex., in 1992. The couple had just returned to the United States from Helsinki, Finland, where Mr. Plants had a three- year assignment. Mortgage brokers turned them down because they could not prove that the property would be ""owner occupied"" for at least six months. As an employee of the State Department, ""you never know what might happen or where you'll be sent,"" Ms. Frew said. They lived in rental housing for a while, then went back overseas for assignments in Moscow and Vienna. In 1997, while Mr. Plants was on leave from the State Department, they were finally able to buy a home in Sterling, Va. The couple went directly to one of the country's largest banks, Chase Manhattan and obtained a loan. They say expatriates would be wise to bypass mortgage brokers and deal directly with lenders, particularly those that keep some percentage of the loans they make on their own books. Typically, banks that make mortgages in the United States sell the loans to companies that package them into securities. This practice requires mortgages that are nearly identical to one another. Banks that originate loans and continue to service them can often be more flexible about the particular problems of expatriates, she said. People who buy homes in the United States and then move overseas, Ms. Frew said, face some other problems. They also need to make sure that their homeowner's insurance covers the property if it remains unoccupied for more than 30 days. Ms. Frew also advised that people moving abroad ""don't sever relationships with U.S. banks and credit card companies when living abroad."" A current credit history is essential when repatriating, she said. Charlotte Gilbert-Biro, a spokeswoman for J. P. Morgan Chase , said that the bank ""recognized a need"" to accommodate expatriates. She acknowledged that someone who did not maintain at least one major credit card issued by an American bank while living outside the country might be turned down because of a lack of credit history. But she said the bank would try to ""deal with them on an exception basis."" While the Internet has made it easier for expatriates to maintain day-to-day oversight of existing bank and brokerage accounts in the United States, it can be difficult to establish new American accounts while living abroad. Many American brokerage firms ""tend to look at the address rather than the citizenship,"" Mr. Starchild said. ""That is not entirely unjustified,"" he added, ""since they have to consider whether they might be violating laws of the country the person resides in, where they are unlikely to hold a securities license."" IRMS with branches outside the United States sometimes provide services in the countries where those offices are, but ""once off that network of countries,"" Mr. Starchild said, an investor can ""get stuck."" For that reason, he said, expatriates would be wise to maintain an address of some kind in the United States. If they do not own a home, they can do so through a relative or by using the services of commercial mail-forwarding services like Mail Boxes Etc., a subsidiary of United Parcel Service he said. Ms. Gilbert-Giro said that J. P. Morgan Chase was willing to mail statements overseas to expatriates who chose to keep an active account.

I have a thought, maybe worthless, but something that crossed my mind. I believe men over 50 or more are very much in demand for recreational ship cruises that are populated by wealthy widows who primarily for ballroom dance partners since there are no hubbys to dance with. I think besides being able to dance a little, you have to be breathing, in and out. Jack Lemon and Walter Mathieu starred in movie with this as the setting. I wonder if you could get an ""around the world trip"" and terminate it at the first Asian stop, or Manila. Most of these go out of Florida and NYC I believe. But I am sure LA and maybe some others have their share.

I would like to know if anyone has purchased medical insurance for their inlaws. My wife mother and father is in there early 50's and neither is employed. They do not have any medical problems at this time. I would like to get them into a policy to help with an emergency if need be. Can anyone enlighten me on the latest info in Cebu regarding Medical insurance.

I have a thought, maybe worthless, but something that crossed my mind. I believe men over 50 or more are very much in demand for recreational ship cruises that are populated by wealthy widows who primarily for ballroom dance partners since there are no hubbys to dance with. I think besides being able to dance a little, you have to be breathing, in and out. Jack Lemon and Walter Mathieu starred in movie with this as the setting. I wonder if you could get an ""around the world trip"" and terminate it at the first Asian stop, or Manila. Most of these go out of Florida and NYC I believe. But I am sure LA and maybe some others have their share.

Has anyone had any experience with a time lease from your wife/girlfriend or boyfriend/husband for property or dwelling? Questions I have are: If things go bad how good is that lease? Is it recognized by the PI officials for you as a foreigner? What if any other rights would you have? (i.e. could the document allow you to sale the property) I have just joined the list in the last week and have already had a number of questions answered this is great.

Your question isn't specific, but I'll try assuming that your question is that the lease you are speaking of was signed by a Philippine citizen you are married to or living with and your relationship hypothetically goes south, what is your standing on the lease? In this case, none. You as a foreigner have a right to enter into a lease agreement yourself and if you have, your relationship is irrelevant. The situation would become murky if you both have entered into a lease jointly, but chances are that you would still be out. You as a foreigner have no rights of ownership to property, so you have no rights in it's sale. I hope I've answered your question.

I understand what you are saying, Earnest, I believe. For instance if you buy a house and lot here it really belongs to your wife. So maybe you feel you can lease it from her for 50 years. If you have a problem with her you want to know if you can sell the lease, I believe. That sounds logical. But one of the elements of a contract is ""consideration."" To make a good lease contract with her you would have to pay her for the lease. A token payment of a few pesos would probably not hold up in court. The courts would immediately see it as a way to circumvent the law of non ownership of property by foreigners. Not being a Filipino citizen you may not get the kind of court decision you would like from the judge. But you can bet the attorney representing you, probably the one who drew up the invalid lease contract for you would assure you that you would win, if you paid him up front. You maybe may be asked to pay the judge too. But don't count on prevailing. My bet would be the wife gets the house anyway, no mater how many hoops you jump through. I do believe if you leased the property from the owner and paid fair market value for a 50 year lease you could resell that lease certainly if there was a provision to do that in the lease or maybe even an absence of a prohibition. Since the owner of the property would be the maker of the contract the contract his lack of including a prohibition would be construed as permission to sell the lease, I believe. This is legal advice from a layman, worth what you paid for it. Maybe someone sees it differently and with better authority than just a guess. as mine is.

Sorry if the question was unclear. I was referencing a situation where you would have a lease from the owner of the property on paper!!! Your wife or husband! I am being told this is common practice to protect your interest as a foreigner. Sorry if I offend anyone but like I said this was suppose to be a fairly common practice.

Please, your question is a valid one and in no way it should offend anyone! Let me take another crack at it. I think I understand now. also understand that I'm not a lawyer ether, it's only my opinion based on a couple of decades of part-time living experience in the RP. Firstly, t sounds to me like you need to be careful who you listen to. A lease is only a lease. So, the situation is that you are married to a citizen who does have legal ownership to the property and your relationship goes south. Whether or not your lease is on paper, you have engaged into a contract agreeing to ""rent"" a property for a length of time, say 99 years or something like that. I think the answer is still the same. The property owner can break the lease at any time. You may sue, but in my experience the best you might hope for is that a Philippine court would rule that the owner compensate you a token amount for the broken lease. This could be a few months up to a year of your ""rent"". You would still be out the property. You would be far better off engaging into a lease with a disinterested 3rd party. The owner may die and then you would have to re-negotiate your lease with his heirs and I've seen this happen not infrequently. However I've seen squatter situations happening far more frequently. It may surprise you, but squatters may have more ""rights! "" in court than a lease holder (depending upon their relationship to the owner [if any] and the length of time they'd been squatting)! The darker side to these ""lease"" arrangements is the all too common predatory practice of extracting contract fees from gullible foreigners. You will find this happening around ""foreigner retirement communities"" like Olongapo and Angeles. You pay an unscrupulous agent a large fee to draw up a leasing contract with big promises. A legitimate lease may be drawn up by a legitimate attorney for P100, but these ""agents"" may extract tens of $100's from you. You'll still be stuck with a lease that will only be good for as long as your relationship lasts and your ""agent"" will have long disappeared! If you are seriously trying to ""invest"" in property in this way, you'd better choose your mate very carefully!

Hello. I will be in Davao from the 21st to the 28th December. Iloilo from the 28th to the 6th January. (I will be having a 3 or 4 day stop in Boracay) Then back to Davao until the 25th. I will be in Manila on 19th & 21st December and then 25th, 26th, 27th & 28th january. Does anyone know of a good supplier of laptop computers in any of these towns? The best places for buying small gifts for family members? Advice on best experiences in using the WGA Superferry? Any other advice you can give will be very mcuh apreciated.

Al, Look up ""freight forwarders"" in your Yellow Pages. Ask them the same questions. They can give you an idea of the ship lines that stop in both Manila and in Cebu and their schedules. It would be wisest to listen to the company names, and then contact them. Many freighters have a small number of cabins for passengers. In addition you may want to try and trace down American President Lines, if they still exist. They may still have limited passenger service to parts of Asia.

You do what you think best, but if such a proposal were placed in front of me I'd be running away from it as quickly as possible!!! No foreigner has control of any property in the RP! It just isn't so. If you wish to ""buy property"" through your wife's name that is one thing, but you must make very certain that the property title is free and the seller is in a position to sell it to your wife. No kind of ""lease"" or contract is going to give a foreigner that right. You may be paying a lot of money for a worthless piece of paper. There are other nuances to property acquisition. For instance, you may not own property, but you can certainly own the bricks and mortar that have been placed upon it. The legal property owner still retains the right to remove your bricks and mortar if he gives you proper compensation, but you may not have any say in the matter. If you wish to cause the owner some headache with a law suit, you may find yourself deported with no say at all. Good luck to you!

The things you mention were some of the thoughts I had but am not sure how they are handled in the PI. I am semi-involved in this situation coming and going. Semi since I am fact seeking about a proposal that has been put before me. I have an individual who has paperwork supposedly giving him total control of property and dwelling thats in the name of a ex-girlfriend. From your's and Ron's posting I would guess he could not sale maybe only sale the lease. He wants to sale and I would have to put it in my wife's name. I have no problem with the property being in my wife's name she is a lovely lady due to give birth on or about Christmas. I was also being told the lease would give me rights in the event the family pushed into the picture. Again you guys are definitely giving me food for thought.

If you think it is only foreigners who have a hard time dealing with real property in the PI, consider this... I know a wealthy Filipino in N.E. Mindanao who had me over for dinner at his very lovely home in Dipolog and he told me that 1/4 of his land has been in an ownership dispute and in the courts for 30+ years! He is obviously very intelligent, but is frustrated that despite his clear proof and legitimate docs, he cannot sell it until the challenger has used up all the remedies. Wow.. and I thought things got tied up here in the U.S.! 30 years?? No, until they change the laws, any land you buy in RP is a donation to the 60% owner(s). Resolve to give your wife a big present and then be careful not to p!ss her off! Remember.. a little selos (real or imagined) could be enough not only to lose your wife, but your living quarters! It is not unusual for a mother-in-law to easily turn her poor daughter against her husband for suspicion of infidelity.. hey, Filipinas don't have recourse against a naturized husband, but foreign husbands are an easy target in terms of their visa and real estate ""ownership."" That's why I say.. if you are wealthy enough to donate funds to your wife and HER beneficiaries, by all means, go for it - you can't 'take it with you' anyway. But if you are risking your life savings or lifeline, then you are either more courageous (or crazier) than I am!

I don't want to say anything that will mislead some poor soul about to be separated from his money because of his innocence! The options for foreign ownership's of business or condominiums should not be confused with ownership of property. I'm hazy about beneficiaries of inheritances, but as far as I know there is still no provision for foreign ownership of property regardless. You may own up to 60% of a business (certain kinds) and you may own a condominium unit if 60% or more of the units are owned by citizens (you still have no right to the property it sits on). The laws preventing foreign ownership of land have been in discussion in the senate and legislature for a long time and I think that if changes are made that they will first broaden or eliminate the restrictions of property acquisition placed on returning Filipinos. These restrictions were originally enacted when property acquisition was not allowed to any returning Filipino who had become the citizen of a fore! ign government. There have been some strong arguments for relaxing this foreign ban of property ownership, to favor and encourage foreign investment for instance, but the forces of isolation are still very strong and that change is not in the foreseeable future IMHO.

You know what? As an alien in such an environment, I don't see the risk going down enough even as a 100% owner in a business venture or real estate. 60% majority ownership is about as valuable as 40% if you have been deported due to being stripped of your visa due to an unscrupulous opportunist or estranged spouse. No, until there is more protection of foreigners, I believe you need to roll the proverbial dice and hope your character judgement of your PI partners (whether business or marital) is dead on target. Not trying to bash the PI, but it is one country that is possibly commiting continued financial self-destruction by subscribing to isolationism. I know it's important for a country to be independent, especially a country like th PI that has been so ravaged by colonialism, but ironically it is the former 'agressors' who may hold the keys to building a better PI.

Hi from Davao Best place in Davao for laptops is YeePeeCom phone 222-9380 and ask for the owner Jay. I have delt with him for years and I am sure he will give you a good deal. Never travel on the ferries, but I hear from others that its ok, specially if you get one of the better cabins. When in Davao drop into Red Knight Gardens in Guadalupe Village Lanang, next to the Grand Regent hotel. Bar is open from 6:30AM until 10:30PM Look forward to seeing you .

Hi everyone here! This is my first post, so let me introduce in a few words: Thoemme is not my real name, but an alias. I come from Germany and have been in the Philippines now four times. My favourite singer there is Jessa Zaragossa with this eternal song: ""Ibigay Mo Na"". I like the Pinoy way of life: ""allways be happy and dont worry about problems!"" My favourite places are the Visayas, but I admit that from all these 7000 islands I know only a very tiny part of it. Now my question: Is anybody here familiar with the northern part of Palawan? A friend of mine has settled down there. He lives now on an island somewhere in the north Palawan, where he probably has no access to phone and email. After a long time I got an email of him where he discribes the way to go there: with a banca from near Taytay to Marcello Laudan (Colon). Thats all I know. Does anybody know where Marcello Laudan (Colon) exactly lies? How far is it from Taytay? What is the next bigger island that I find on a map? Thanx allot.

I'm planning to take a trip to Busuanga Island in Northern Plawan this spring. All I really know about the place is what I've seen on the internet. It's in the Calamian group of Islands about half way between the main island of Palawan and Mindoro. Has anyone ever been there, or know anything about the place??

Never heard of Colon in that area but there is a Coron town which is the main town on the island of Busuanga in the Calamianes islands group north of Palawan and very close to Coron town there is also a Coron Island: CORON TOWN is located on Coron Bay on the South East Coast of BUSUANGA Island. Busuanga is the principle island in the Calamianes Group of Islands in Northern Palawan and is located some 150 nautical miles (200 kilometers) North and East of Puerto Princessa Palawan and 150 Nautical miles (200 kilometers) South and West of Manila. There are three main islands in the Calamianes Group: BUSUANGA ISLAND(to the North), CULION ISLAND(to the South) and CORON ISLAND (to the East). CORON TOWN is the commercial, business, and transportation center for the Calamianes Group.Population: 30,000. CORON ISLAND: Coron Island is basically uninhabitted and is reserved for the Tagbuanas (a cultural minority). Other towns on Busuanga island: CONCEPSION: A small town located on the West Coast of Busuanga Island. Connected to Coron Town by road. SALVACION: Second larhgest town on Busuanga Island. Located on the central West Coast. Connected to Coron Town by road. You can go from Manila to Busuanga Island: All airlines fly into the Busuanga ""airport"" which is approximately 28 kilometers from Coron town. Open-type jeepney transfer to Coron Town is provided. The ride takes 45-60 minutes and the fare is 150 pesos (USD 3.00) GPS is ok in Philippines and should work fine. Just don't operate it on the plane make sure it has batteries so that you can confirm that the burger-flipper at the metal detector definitely has no idea what it is and passes you through (you might also bring the user manual with you in the unlikely event that Ninoy-Aquino security checkers ask you about it).

It is good to know you are alive even though possibly very wet. Can you give us some kind of impression of your life in Manila so far? And maybe some indication of your husband's and children's feelings about it. You are the only expat I know who walks their own dog when they are not in the mood. How many maids, cooks, helpers, drivers do you have, if you have gotten into that? Vern gave us a blow by blow account of his impressions over his very short stay here. He made some very interesting comments. I am sure you also have some important to us all. Can you share them with us? I hope so, but if you feel it is not time, it is not time. Thank you for hanging in with us so long, old timer.

My Niece sells medical insurance policies (HMO's) over there. Very good rates, I was impressed. the highest rate was a 100,000P policy which is about 2K U.S. but that covers 5 years. The policies go much lower in price however. and the amount of coverage is impressive. It's a better deal than I get with United Airlines. best to contact her for the details. Let me get hold of her and find out if she minds our would like e-mail or phone or written.

I goofed on my original reply, hope it doesn't double post. anyways, I don't recall a ceiling and there was no co-pay, but it has been 3 weeks since I was there and looked at the brochure. I am getting hold of my niece and will post the info soon. I also recall a vast number of locations, huge. I will also get the list of medical facilities which accept retired military. The list I saw was very large. They bill the US military directly, nice plan I never knew about. This info will take me longer to get though.

LAST week I attended a conference in Taipei on ""Asian Youth at Risk,"" a meeting that drew more than 70 participants from throughout Asia who reviewed findings from various youth surveys and their implications for youth programs and policies. It was one of the best meetings I've ever attended and I hope to write about its proceedings in future columns. Today, though, I want to highlight one of the issues that emerged in the meeting. This is the tendency, particularly strong in Asia, to attribute young people's problems to ""modernization"" and ""westernization."" The temptation is to imagine, and yearn, for a time when life was simple and stress-free for Asian youth, guided by ""Asian values,"" particularly a respect for authority. At the Taipei meeting I had to remind conference delegates that such an idyllic past probably never existed. In fact, the very concepts of ""young adults,"" ""adolescents"" and ""teenagers"" are very recent in human history. For most of human history, children became adults shortly after puberty, leaving home to start their own families. The word ""teenager"" does not exist in many Asian languages because societies didn't recognize such a period in people's lives. Respect had a different context then: you were subservient to parents until you were married, which usually happened at a very early age. If you were male, you were fortunate because you were now on your own. If you were female, your loyalties were merely transferred to your husband and later, to your sons. In Taipei, I couldn't help but cite one of my grandmothers as an example of the mythical ""good old days."" This grandmother -- I will use Ama, the way the Hokkien Chinese refer to grandmothers -- died in 1990 at the age of 98. She lived in Davao, and each summer when I visited, I would listen to her stories, many repeated over and over again, about her life in China and in the Philippines. In those good, old days, to be correctly female and bourgeois, Ama's feet were bound -- tightly wrapped with cloth starting when she was very young, about 4 or 5 years. ""Waahhhh...,"" Ama would exclaim as she described how they'd crunch her toes and the arch of her feet before tightly swaddling the feet. I still remember how she would wince as she described how she would wake up in the middle of the night, sobbing from the pain. She'd beg her mother to stop the foot-binding, only to be scolded: ""You're a girl and a girl has to have her feet bound."" I'd listen to her stories while staring, fascinated by her ""lotus feet,"" which were about four inches long. Eventually, I found a very old book in the University of the Philippines' library about foot-binding. I learned that the lotus feet were considered quite erotic, with poems written to extol its beauty, and the way it made women walk in tiny, measured steps. The book also had X-ray photographs of the lotus feet, and the fascination I had over my Ama's lotus feet gave way to disgust, realizing how cruelly deformed the feet were. With an understanding, too, of human anatomy, I realized how much more difficult and dangerous it must have been for women like her to have gone through each pregnancy, supported by those tiny feet. Ama didn't just talk about the foot-binding. She recalled, too, how badly she felt seeing her brothers going to school and learning to read and write. Again, her mother told her girls were meant to stay home. What use would there be for reading and writing? Ama was married off when she was 15. In those good old days, all marriages were arranged by parents. My grandfather left shortly after for the Philippines and then came back many years later to take her to Davao where, it turned out, he already had another wife, a Filipina. After the second wife died while delivering a child, Ama took in the orphaned children, including the newborn one. Ama breast-fed that child, together with one of her own sons. She explained to me: ""The child was, after all, your grandfather's son."" In those good old days, that was expected of a woman, proof of her loyalty to her husband. Ama was widowed when she was 35 and raised her own four children as well as four from the other wife. She never remarried (widows were not supposed to) and she raised the children with some financial help from her brothers and by doing odd jobs as a dressmaker and midwife. Filipina women were in many ways more fortunate than the Chinese, but I know, too, that arranged marriages, child brides, total obedience to husbands and sons, silent and solitary suffering, all existed too during the good old days in the Philippines. Reading about the sad, short life of Maria Teresa Carlson tells us, too, those good old days remain with us in the Philippines. Certainly, the good old days live on in some countries, traditions upheld in the name of religion and culture. We read of Afghan girls segregated from boys when they reach the age of 7, married off at 12 and sentenced to a life of invisibility, wrapped head to toe in their burqa. There are no ""youth"" problems in countries where youth is forbidden. I have no quarrel with women's traditional expressions of strength in terms of loyalty and sacrifice. But even more admirable, I feel, is the strength they show when they question and defy tradition. Ama, in her 50s, having accomplished her duties as wife and mother, learned at last to read. She never learned to write and I suspect that's why she told me her stories over and over again, her way of unbinding those lotus feet and unraveling the myths about the good old days.

Sees that you are familiar with this region. My friend told me that I have to take a trike from Taytay to Akpai for 100 pesos. This is a 15 minutes ride. From there he said I should take a banca for 1000 pesos to Marcello Laudan (Colon). He said 1000 pesos, because of a monopol. So maybe it is a different way than in your description (350 Pesos). And what is ""Marcello Landau""? It rather seems to me as a name of a person than a name of an island! I also did not find Akpai on any map.

Sorry, I really never heard of Akpai or Marcello Laudan (Colon). Neither was I able to find any info on the net. The only thing I can tell you is that I checked the names of all towns in Palawan and also the names of all barangays in all of these towns and not a single one has a name resembling Akpai or Marcello Laudan (Colon) except the town of Coron mentioned in the previous post. So, they may be names of islands (good luck - there are about 1700 islands in the Palawan group), names of landmarks (countless!) or god knows what else. So...

I will follow up your info when I get to Davao. We are booked into a business class cabin on the ferry from Iloilo to Davao. That should be comfortable enough :) We will be in Boracay for 3 nights in January. Can anyone recommend any nice restuarants?

Hi all, A relative of mine in Manila needs to transfer a substantial sum of money ( several hundred thousand pesos) from an account in one bank to an account in another bank. The teller told her she would need to withdraw it all in cash, physically take it to another bank and pay it in there... naturally she is not wild about walking through Metro Manila with that sort of money in her bag. Here in the UK we have certified cheques made out by a bank to pay into another account which are guaranteed by the bank to be paid (the cheque is from the banks own account not your account, they then debit your account the value). This is then as good as cash to the other bank where it is taken. Does the equivalent exist in the Philippines ? Many Thanks,.

The health program that most military retired use around Olongapo and Angeles is Health Visions. I am not a member yet, as I am working in Cuba, but will join as soon as I get to the PI. I do not know much about it other than the people I know who use it are very happy. I also do not know about the types of coverage they have for other than military retired. Some one who might know or can get you in contact with someone is Chester at www.raosubic.com. Hope this helps.

There are alll sorts of place to eat along the beach including variations on German, Italian and American food if your taste runs that way. Good food can be had in any of these places. If you are after atmophere you can take your pick of some really nice places that have live music nightly. Walk around- half the fun is wandering around.

I live in the Uk. I have been to Cebu 2 times I plan to go again early next year. I only have funds each time to stay in pension houses so i feel unsafe carrying all my money around with me all the time. I like to ask the group is it possible to wire money to a bank there and draw it as i need it. Or is it possible to go there and open a temporary account. i hope to go also again later in the year to stay for a long period