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Myths in the PH
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Is it true that living in the Philippines is scary, and if you move there you will soon go bankrupt and get many diseases?
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The short answer to all three of your questions is no. If it was such, then we’d be blacklisted like crazy. But we’re not, and the Philippines is both a popular tourist destination and a preferred investment or business process outsourcing location. The long answers I can give are the following: On Scary Every country has lawless locations. There are places in the United States that friends of mine who’ve worked there say they wouldn’t dare trod on (and we’re not talking really big cities here). The Philippines is only as dangerous and/or scary as you make it to be. Meaning, the country will eat you alive if you walk around our streets like some naive kid on his or her first trip outside of the house or school. We do have bad people, but so does every major modern country. If you want to know, we don’t get a lot of people shot just because. With the Taxis, that’s why we have Uber. And I heard once that some of those incidents were manufactured. Hearsay, but you’ll never know, right? On Going Bankrupt Funny where you got this idea. Did you know a lot of foreigners come to the Philippines either to invest or retire because their money goes a long way here? I once worked for a BPO (KPO, actually) with an Israeli for an owner. One of our former VPs in the company I work for now was a foreigner who also built his own BPO (medical transcription) here and made big bucks out of it when an American firm bought it from him. Hell, many of our richest Fil-Chinese had their origins from mainland China, fleeing the repression of Mao to start new lives here, despite the discrimination. Now, if you come to the Philippines throwing money here and there, then, yes, you will be bankrupt. In short order. We so love getting freebies. On Diseases You’re from Indonesia, right? Same tropical climate, right? Next door neighbor? So, aside from a couple indig diseases, I think you and I are exposed to the same stuff. Unless you have an unusually weak constitution and high susceptibility to tropical diseases, then you’re as safe here as you would be in your home country.
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You’re specifically asking about what life is like here for a foreigner. The answer to that depends on a few things: your skin color, your proficiency in English or whichever local language it is in the part of the Philippines that you’re in, how much money you have at your disposal, where you are in particular, and if you’re friendly. Let’s tackle those one by one. Skin Color It’s a very prevalent and apparently well-known phenomenon in the Philippines that white people tend to get treated better and with a certain level more respect than others. I’m not talking about hotels or restaurants, where there are actual standards of service, but out on the streets and in everyday interactions. People here will tend to be friendlier to white people just because they’re white, but also partly because white people are more likely to speak English, which Filipinos understand quite well, on average. Which brings me to my next point…English/vernacular Language Proficiency You’re more relatable to Filipinos if you can speak the local language, of which there are many. In Manila and the greater part of Luzon, most people will speak Filipino, which is derived from Tagalog and interchangeably called Tagalog anyway. In Cebu and the Visayas, everyone will understand Bisaya. In Davao and the rest of Mindanao, people will also be speaking Bisaya, but certain areas will be outliers. My hometown, for example, speaks a Spanish creole language called Chavacano, while in Central Mindanao, most of which is Maguindanao, they’ll speak Maguindanaowon.But it’s fine if you can only speak English. Just make sure you can speak it passably to prevent confusion.Money A no-brainer for some, it’s much more likely that you’ll be treated better as a foreigner if you have money to spend, same as any other country. We don’t tip in the Philippines, and actually bothering to do it will make the tippee act very grateful towards you.Location Where you are is a major consideration, as people in rural areas tend to be a lot more respectful and reverent towards foreigners of any stripe. People are much more rude and uncaring in urban areas wherever in the world you go, but as far as the Philippines goes, I find that cities in the Visayas have far friendlier residents than Manila.Friendliness A friendly person will be treated well in the Philippines. A friendly person who is white will be treated better. A friendly white person with money will have people bending over backwards to help them. A rude person, regardless of money and skin color, will get only the minimum amount of respect and friendliness from Filipinos in return.As for scammers, I can’t actually deny that there are indeed swindlers here. You may have heard of the extortion incidents in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport where people would drop bullets into bags of unsuspecting travelers, which would then be found in x-rays, which would lead to said travelers being held for questioning and potentially missing their flight, unless they paid off the staff. However, those incidents were few and far between, and the happenings in one of the Philippines’ many airports don’t reflect the experience for all of them. Health services are indeed poor in the Philippines. As a foreigner, you aren’t granted any services that richer and more progressive countries would offer. The best you can do is just try not to get sick. By which I mean: avoid eating street food when you can, stay dry at all times, take some multivitamins and only drink water that you know is purified. It doesn’t necessarily have to be bottled, and you’ll quickly be able to tell the difference between purified and un-purified once you try them. TL;DR – It’s not so scary in the Philippines.