The Philippines verses first world

[Lee2]

Since I just got back to Florida, I thought I would start a thread on this subject, how does the Philippines compare to where you lived before, especially the good but also the bad and differences but hopefully mostly the good.

1) Okay so let me point out one of the good items for us, the low cost of taxis, we arrived in Fort Lauderdale and had to take a taxi home, the meter was a little over $20 and of course the driver expected a tip, the U.S. is a tip society, how about where you came from, do you have to tip taxi drivers or others, anyway so here they expect at least 20% so over $25, the same ride could be compared in Cebu from our condo to say SM but of course was a lot smoother and with less traffic on the better roads we have in Florida vs Cebu and the ride to SM would be a maximum of p150 in heavy traffic, so $3 verses $20 so around $25, so for us, the low cost of taxis in Cebu and elsewhere is a huge plus.

2) Now one negative, why the heck don't they take care of bugs in most places in the Philippines? Here in Florida there are Chemlawn trucks all over, I do not think I ever saw one on the roads anywhere we have been within the Philippines, do they even have law and home treatment companies? Could it be the cost of chemicals, the lack of availability or maybe they just do not like to use them? Bback in the village where my wife was born the ants and many of the other insects are left alone, some children play with the larger ones as toys but why do you think it is that they are left alone?

Anyway on to my grip of sorts but tolerable and controllable, we arrived in our Florida condo after it was empty for a few months to thankfully find not a single ant or bug, we are not so lucky in Cebu as the ants are plenty but thankfully the roaches are few, or never seen at all in our condo, maybe because we put down Borax before we leave and spread it around the pipe chases so any bugs we see are usually dead but still the ants survive and not long before we left, the termites were flying outside and a few found their way into our unit via the loose fitting sliding doors, pissed me off but luckily the whole condo is made of concrete walls ceilings and all and the cabinets are made of plywood that termites apparently do not eat and also we were awake at the time but what about when we or you leave your homes? Why the heck are termite mounds not controlled?

How about you, can you think of any?

[BudM]

I don't know about it all really but I know things are a lot better here.  And these problems you bring up are near non-existent where I am.  And yes, there are pest control companies around.  The only thing I have difficulty with those is those freaking ants you talk about all the time.  They show up every so often out of no where.

As far as back in Florida.  I read news from there every day from one of the local TV stations in Jacksonville.  And ever day it is the same story.  This number of people were shot yesterday while playing video games inside there homes from a drive by and this number of people were shot driving down the road and this number of people from people upset about their driving and this number of people got run over and this number of people were taken to the hospitals and this number of people were arrested for various other things.  It is sad though how all of these people who died at the hands of others or because of them being dumb as dirt were such kind loving people who never did any wrong or hurt anyone and helped everyone out along with not deserving to die.   Why could it not be someone else?  But, that is ok.  There are always the lawyers who find their prey and do not have too much trouble convincing the families victims to sue, sue, and sue some more.

I sure am glad I am somewhere that I don't have to worry about all that crap finally.

[Lee2]

I don't know about it all really but I know things are a lot better here. 

What things are a lot better there, I know there are many, please list some besides shootings because I read about them happening in the Philippines daily?

[JoeLP]

Have not been back in 5 years. The bugs and the net are the negatives.  The continual fresh food usually picked or killed in the last 24-48 hours are a positive.  The weather(I lived in Michigan mainly) is also a positive.  No snow to shovel, no cold to brave, no icy roads to drive on.  Again, a positive...a very nice positive.  Oceans so close to where I live.  Longer beach seasons.  Lake Michigan beaches are nice, and while minus the coral, they have shorter seasons.  Get 2 months most years, with maybe 3 in a good year.  Getting a lot more than that here.
Also, most of the locals I meet in this rural municipality are friendly.  That's always a great thing. 
The goods way out weight the bads.  Just wish the net speed would get better.  I shouldn't complain seeing in the last 6 months or so we finally got unlimited date and "10mbps" setup.  Granted it's rarely above 2mbps during the day, at night it's pretty nice and even during the day much better than the very slow, rarely over 1mbps speeds I dealt with before.

[Lee2]

The wife and I love all the fresh fruits and veggies from the street vendors near our Cebu condo, they are there Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we do not bother to go to the bigger street markets but they are there if we wished to. We also really enjoy the banana cue and the availability of Buku Juice, there are so many items that it is hard to remember all, that is why I posted this topic, I hope you all can post them.

[JoeLP]

That buco juice reminding me of a lot more. Again, I lived in Michigan.  Tropical fruits were a treat and often came in frozen bags or cans.  Rarely eaten raw and fresh.  So always nice with the wife or our maid cuts up some fresh pineapple, mango, papaya or some other local fruit/veggie.  Also enjoy when they open a buko and ice the water for some drinking.  That refreshes the body so nicely.
Also, at least in my neck of the woods here in the Philippines, there is always a nice, yet very reasonable prices resort near by.  Nice to hit those from time to time just to be away and relax even more than the normal day brings...if possible.

[Lee2]

We enjoy jackfruit too

[Gray Wolf]

Bugs are prevalent due to there not being a winter season to knock them down for a few months. Also something to consider are the rodents. We have to put down sticky pads to catch them and always make sure to clean the floors frequently (2-3 times daily) to make sure that no urine trails are left.

But on a positive note, the fresh fruits are great, of course, as is the fresh seafood, including edible seaweed/algae harvested daily. My favorite is Arusip (Sea Grapes) sprinkled with a little vinegar



I also miss the night street vendors, serving up bbq chicken, bbq pork, banana cue and other delicacies. Nothing like that in America. I even enjoyed the occasional penoy along with a cold Red Horse.

But the number one thing I miss most about the Philippines is the people. Friendly folks walking the paths in the barangay, children laughing and playing, families sitting out front spending time together and lots of good, cheap beer. I miss those things most of all.

[BudM]

What things are a lot better there, I know there are many, please list some besides shootings because I read about them happening in the Philippines daily?

I don't know where all you guys are living here or living when you are here.  Once in a while when I hear of a crime, it is in another city in the metro area.  What is there?  Something like 17 cities in Metro Manila? Most of the crime I hear of is from outside of here. No, I am not saying it is crime free around my area.  Not at all.  But, I hear of very little.  In Jacksonville, that crap is going on every single day.  It wasn't like that when I moved there in '73 and there was about 600k people versus today close to 1.4m.  The place is getting like the bigger cities with all the crime in the US. Crime, crime, crime there and you guys are talking about some little crap that happens once in a while?

And someone with all the bugs and netting?  Netting for what?  You live in one of those huts?  And urine trails across the floors from what?  I think they mentioned rodents.  This house we have now, we moved in over 4 years ago.  We have had one mouse that we have known of inside.  That was discovered less than two days after we moved in and it was caught with a sticky trap.  Well, I know the people who had owned it before had all the doors wide open during the couple of days prior to our move in while they moved all their stuff out.  Also, during that time, I have seen and only known of two rats on our property outside.  They were done away with quickly or just left or something because they were not around long.

I lived in a condo on the other side of SLEX over next to Laguna DeBay or whatever it is called, during the first year here, and I did not have all these problems you guys talk about there either.  Man, I didn't come here to rough it.  I am retired and relaxing.  If I have to live amongst rodents and bugs overrunning me, I am out of here.

[BudM]

What things are a lot better there, I know there are many, please list some besides shootings because I read about them happening in the Philippines daily?

Let me answer this one more time specifically for you Lee.  No, not everything is so much better here.  There are things that I miss and can not do here.  But, you know what I value most?  My family and my peace of mind.  My peace of mind here is so much healthier because in the US my peace of mind was like crap.  I got tired of having to look over my shoulder every place I went and taking different routes to and from work and being worried whenever I got home as to if my place and belongings were still intact.  To me, that is what makes the any disadvantages all worth it.  But man, I can die now knowing I have lived my last years (a long time yet) with peace of mind.

[Lee2]

The place is getting like the bigger cities with all the crime in the US. Crime, crime, crime there and you guys are talking about some little crap that happens once in a while?

Problem is that the news in the Philippines does not cover much for the most part, most things never get reported, I can attest to that first hand, I have heard gunfire right in Cebu City on a main street and it goes on all the time in other parts of the Philippines, it rarely makes the news, family members have been stabbed, some shot and killed, never made the news, a friend was an undercover police officer in Manila, he was afraid to walk the streets with us in Makati and he carries a gun, I am going to guess he knows better than what we hear in the news, so comparing any place in the U.S.where news is very overdone and sensationalized, to any place in the Philippines where IMO news is almost always lacking, just does not work. In the U.S. the news is a 24/7 business, in the Philippines not so. IMO it is a false sense of security to think any place in the Philippines is any safer than a first world country where we actually see police patrolling all the time, so to see which is safer, dial 911 or whatever they call it in your part of the Philippines and see just how long it takes, if ever, to get help... If people want to stay safe, then all we have to do is be realists and know that crime likely goes on around us, therefore we need to be careful to avoid it, that is what we do while in the U.S. and while in the Philippines and it has worked for us in both places for the most part...

There are many great items in the Philippines, why don't we try to concentrate on those.

[Gray Wolf]

I don't know where all you guys are living here or living when you are here.

Since you are responding to at least a couple of my statements, I'll attempt to clarify a bit. This may take a little work on my part, but I don't want any misunderstandings. We live full time in Louisville, KY. When we visit our family in the Philippines we stay in the house we built for the family, in Bagong Silang, Caloocan City. This is the general location of the house:



When I first met Gloria in 1999 this is what the property looked like



We decided to help the family by building them a nice house, which would also give us a base of operations when we visit. We put roughly Php1.5M into constructing a 5 BR 3-story residence on that "jungle" property. This is the view looking west from our rooftop:




Even though the area has been built up a lot since 1999, it is still on the edge of a ravine flowing down into a river, which gives wildlife an avenue of approach to the back of the houses along our pathwalk. Neighbors killed a cobra behind our house one year



And the last time we visited (late 2016) one neighbor came out of her house screaming for help because she saw a snake crawling up the wall and disappearing into the ceiling of her home. Sorry, no photographic evidence. Yeah, it's on the edge. Naturally there will be insects of all types. And where there are insects, there will be rats and mice.

And someone with all the bugs and netting?  Netting for what?  You live in one of those huts?  And urine trails across the floors from what?  I think they mentioned rodents. 

Joe was the one who mentioned "net" (not netting) but he was referring to the internet, not "netting" to catch bugs, mice or fish.

As far as urine trails, wherever there are mice or rats there is the possibility of urine trails left by those little scumbags. For those who don't know, rodent urine can carry lots of bad stuff including Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome, Lassa Fever, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic Chorio-meningitis (LCM), Plague, Rat-Bite Fever, Salmonellosis and Tularemia. Quite a list, isn't it? So we (the family) use sticky pads to trap anything that happens to invade the house and we (the family) keep the house as clean as possible to avoid any contamination. As far as insects, yeah, we see ants (who doesn't) and the occasional roach, which is quickly dispatched, the area cleaned thoroughly and either spray or powder put down to help keep the next guy away. It's a tropical country and critters are everywhere, whether you see them or not.

Not all of us have the where-with-all to live in a condo. Even our house in Kentucky is a modest 4-room home. Hell, our house in Bagong Silang is bigger than our house in the US. But the house in Bagong Silang is not airtight, nor does it have aircon, something I do miss when we visit the PH.

Why, you ask, would we build a house in such a "bad" area? Because that's where the family owned property. We built the house for "them", not for us. It is what it is. I still enjoy our visits there and in spite of the house being in a somewhat austere area, it's still one the the biggest houses in Bagong Silang and it's spotless inside. I love our neighbors and miss sitting on the rooftop snacking on food from the night vendors and sipping cold Red Horse with select neighbors and family members.
 
Whew! That was a lot of work! I hope it enlightens anyone who had questions about when, where and why

Peace

[BudM]

Problem is that the news in the Philippines does not cover much for the most part, most things never get reported, I can attest to that first hand, I have heard gunfire right in Cebu City on a main street and it goes on all the time in other parts of the Philippines, it rarely makes the news, family members have been stabbed, some shot and killed, never made the news, a friend was an undercover police officer in Manila, he was afraid to walk the streets with us in Makati and he carries a gun, I am going to guess he knows better than what we hear in the news, so comparing any place in the U.S.where news is very overdone and sensationalized, to any place in the Philippines where IMO news is almost always lacking, just does not work. In the U.S. the news is a 24/7 business, in the Philippines not so. IMO it is a false sense of security to think any place in the Philippines is any safer than a first world country where we actually see police patrolling all the time, so to see which is safer, dial 911 or whatever they call it in your part of the Philippines and see just how long it takes, if ever, to get help... If people want to stay safe, then all we have to do is be realists and know that crime likely goes on around us, therefore we need to be careful to avoid it, that is what we do while in the U.S. and while in the Philippines and it has worked for us in both places for the most part...

There are many great items in the Philippines, why don't we try to concentrate on those.

I am done with this crap on the crime.  You feel safer and more content with how and where you are spending your time and I feel safer and more content with where I am.  I am not an expert on it all plus don't know all the experts and neither do you.  I am not ignorant to what goes on in my life around me when I go out on the street and go plenty of places.  And all that matters to me in my life is how I feel.

[BudM]

Sorry about jumping the gun a little bit on what you posted Jack.  And Joe.  I had been reading some stuff right before that kind of insinuated the same stuff all the time.  I am not saying that the OP on that particular stuff feels this way but there are a couple or several people on here that lean towards the negativeness of living here which is kind of like people making that choice are insane.

I don't live in a condo.  I only did that the first year.  I don't have a lot of money and everything I have ever had in the past and currently have been or are modest.  I have a modest 4 br in a halfway decent and halfway clean neighborhood.  I am not saying the bugs or rodents are not here.  I just don't have a problem with them.  And like you, the floors gets mopped daily or usually twice daily.  I haven't seen any snakes to this day.  I guess I haven't gotten out deeper in the province enough yet.  Speaking of cobras, back in Jax about 10 years ago, I had some kids who were out trying to make money cutting grass clean up a small ditch behind my place and then sliced one in half.

I said that I didn't know where some of you guys are living but I sure did not say anything about why anyone would build in a "bad" area.  Maybe some have but I am sure not all have.  I know all areas are different and a lot of things depend on where you are.  I grew up and went through high school in the sticks in NY.  Ever since I left there, except for a few deployments totally up to maybe a little more than two years, I have lived in an area of a good sized city.  Both there and here.  I want to eventually get out more in the countryside.  That was my plan when I retired.  But, it won't happen for at least a few more years.  Then I can get a view maybe like you do down that ravine.  And of course, I will have a different scenario of problems to deal with.  But, it is like everything and everyplace else.  Going to have good and going to have bad no matter how you look at it.

[Gray Wolf]

Not a problem at all, bro. I just wanted to be sure that everyone understood my living situation. In the past I received a lot of negative comments from others about me being the Admin/Mod/List Guide for this forum and the Yahoo group since I didn't live full time in the Philippines. I've made it clear to all those I've talked with over the years about my connection with the country. Maybe during my next visit I can arrange with the warden to let me off leash so I can come visit