HANNORB

To discover the Philippines you need some time and patience. It’s not in a 2 week trip to Manila or in a Resort in Cebu where you get to know the Philippines. It’s a great country with great people. The national language is Tagalog but each Region has his own language. For us Europeans not to understand and luckily most Philippino talks English at least a little bit. 

When you stay outside the big Hotels and live with the local people, you will discover a new world or lets say an old world. I feel like back in the 50’s or 60’s.

In towns like Manila, Davao, Cebu and others, live starts with doing business, having a job, making money and renting or building a house. The traffic is an organized very chaotic mess, I like it and to my surprise their are very few accidents, less than in our over-civilized police world with millions of rules and restrictions.

The Prices and the cost of living and of course the income, is very low like in the 50’s in Europe. That means they start living and earning and looking forward. Outside the towns most people are farmers, very poor and depending on children, that means family is a big word, people live together in one house have a lot of kids and hope that there are some going to work in town or abroad, to send money to the family.

Politicians are corrupt and everything seems focused to Manila, people in Mindanao live on a forgotten Island. But they start to get organized and don't care about the Manila crowd. 

The nicest, safest and most livable Town for me, is Davao. 

Talking about safety, thats another part of Philippino live. Manila, Cebu and other big towns, have a high crime rate, snatchers and also killers. Young people are very aggressive but I think in Europe also. What is shocking, strange and bothering me is the fact that you have to pay attention as white guy, not to get kidnapped. You always need a bodyguard to walk around, except in Davao, thanks to the Major. Than is a problem between Christians and Moslems, thats not easy to eliminate. Most of the people are Christians and some are more christians than the pope. But they forgot that even before the spanish invaders took Mindanao, there were Moslems living here. It’s the same problem as in the USA with the Americans and the Indians. 

Talking about americans, they influenced the Philippines with their culture in pushing all the american Junk here as status symbol for living. The Philippines are complete under the control and under the shoes of the US. I hope one day comes a President who is awake enough and throws out the americans, because they cannot learn something positive from a country who will be soon a third world country. 

Well I’m not here to make critic of the local government and the country, because for me its all I like in one place, nice and warm country, nice and warm people, back in the 50’s where it was good living, it’s Jungle and Town. Keep it like this.