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Safest Areas in the PH
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Where is the safest place to live in the Philippines?
Rossman5
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Where is the safest place to live in the Philippines?
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The Philippines as a country is generally safe. However, you might want to specify how you define “safe”. Safe from what exactly? If you want to be safe from crime, then you might want to avoid the big cities. Metro Manila and even Cebu City have as high of a crime rate as any other urban cities. There are pickpockets and hold-uppers from time to time. Still, living in these cities are still relatively safe given that you familiarize the spots where these events usually occur and that you practice safety precautions. Don’t bring too much cash with you and don’t flaunt expensive jewelries when in those areas. Since the Filipinos are generally friendly and hospitable, (extra friendly and hospitable to foreigners, even) locals will most likely give you these tips and tell you which places to avoid anyway. If you want to be safe from calamities, then it is best to avoid cities or towns near the east coast as those places usually get wrecked by typhoons more often and with higher storm signals. Since we are in the “pacific ring of fire”, it would also be best to stay away from known active volcanoes and fault lines. If you want to be safe from terrorists or rebels, then stay away from a few provinces in Mindanao. Not the entire Mindanao region as opposed to what the mainstream media and the Luzon’s colloquial knowledge would suggest. There are a lot of areas in Mindanao which are terrorist-free and are even safer than the average city or province. I was born in Misamis Occidental and we’ve never had any experience on terrorism, just hoaxes and false alarms. The cities of Cagayan De Oro and Davao to name a few are also very safe and in fact rapidly developing. The only key areas to avoid in Mindanao would be Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga City, Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and Marawi. This is based on reported terrorist activities and casualties in the past 5 years. Recently, the issue regarding the current administration’s drug war has caused quite a turmoil. The effects of such regarding our general safety is still highly debatable. Some say it eliminates the bad elements reducing the threat, while others are concerned about the deaths of the innocent and how it is treated as just collateral damage. Objectively speaking, you just need to avoid the slums and squatter areas as this is where the raids usually occur. If you want a list here are ten of the safest cities I know of, based on different reliable sources, in no particular order: -Davao City -Cagayan De Oro City -Bacolod City -Dumaguete City -Valenzuela City -Makati City -Baguio City -Cebu City -Santa Rosa City -Mati City To put it simply, despite the Philippines being a poor third-world country, most of the provincial/rural areas are very safe and peaceful, more so than in the cities listed above. If you can’t stand the provinces, just know your way around the cities and you’ll definitely be just fine. Add that to having friendly Filipino neighbors and you’ll surely live a good life here.
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Pretty much everywhere. I have no idea where foreigners get the impression that we’re somehow a war-torn nation. It’s easier to tell you which places are dangerous. These are already the places that most Filipinos also avoid, so you shouldn’t have problems knowing where they are. As a rule, listen to the locals when they tell you not to go to a place. First off, the cities. Like everywhere else, cities have much higher crime rates. So apply the same common sense logic you apply everywhere else. Do not carry expensive items in crowds. Do not walk alone in dark alleys at night. Do not pick fights with drunk people. And so on. But generally, people are people. Do not make the mistake of assuming poverty equates to crime. The slums of Manila do not have the same culture as the favelas of Brazil or the ghettoes of the US. A more accurate comparison would be to think of them as like a rural village that suddenly got transported into the middle of the city. There is still a strong sense of community in these areas, unlike the dog-eat-dog desperation that characterizes slums in other countries. Secondly, communist rebels. This only happens in some of the more isolated areas, in a kind of low-intensity struggle with the government that’s been going on for more or less 70 years now. Usually in small impoverished communities in the mountains where they can brainwash supporters and keep them impoverished. Unlike Muslim separatists, however, they leave foreigners alone. Especially since the only reason their leader is still free is because the EU do not consider him a terrorist. So there’s nothing to worry about, unless you’re a soldier, a cop, or a politician of the Philippines. Lastly, terrorism. These red areas (only the red areas) are the places you need to avoid as a foreigner. DO NOT ENTER THESE AREAS. Not unless you have a military escort. It’s not a challenge, and it’s not an adventure. You’re risking your life. These are the traditional homelands of the Muslim Filipino minorities. While the people are generally just as friendly as the rest of the Philippines, it is also home to Muslim Separatist groups and terrorists who have been abducting foreigners for decades and ransoming them or killing them. They can blend in with the population in these overwhelmingly Muslim areas because of family ties, so it’s hard to get rid of them. It is also badly underdeveloped because of the on-and-off violence, as well as the fact that the same separatists/terrorists often target government workers as well as non-Muslim visitors. In 2017, ISIS sympathizers destroyed a city there – Battle of Marawi. Note that this shouldn’t give you the impression that the rest of the island of Mindanao is unsafe either. The island is about the size of Ireland or Florida, so it’s massive. The rest of the areas are quite safe. There is very little interaction with the Muslim areas of Mindanao and the Christian/Animist areas of Mindanao, despite sometimes being right next to each other. It’s like in Thailand. Millions of tourists enter Thailand each year and remain completely unaware that Thailand, like the Philippines, has pretty violent Muslim insurgencies in their southern border with Malaysia. There are terrorist attacks sometimes in some of the larger cities, but no worse than anywhere else in the world.