HansS

Is it dangerous to live in Philippines?

They have vulcanos, earthquakes, landslides, typhoons, floods, three kind of terrorist organizations, snakes, lizards, dangerous fishes, mosqitos and other biting insects but the only real danger (beside my wife!) is the traffic.

The traffic rules seem to be individual and pedestrians are not regarded as humans. You are not allowed to drive drunk if it is affecting the driving.  If there is no accident, you are a good driver. Forget about promille and shit. If you are speeding, and you are, you are just told to slow down. There is a lot of signs with speed limits (30km/h) but never a sign when you are allowed to speed up. That means you are allowed to run at 30 and no more... The sugar cane trucks breaks down now and then and are sometimes blocking one lane without any warning light or sign.  30% of the roads are "under construction" and the warnings is normally put exactly where the road works starts. To drive from Escalante to Bacolod is 100km national highway but it takes 2,5 hours. That means an average speed of 40km/h.

The slow speed is good for one thing, you have all the time you need to stop.

If you by accident hit a pedestrian and he dies, you maybe have a problem. If it is nighttime and he is standing on the road and try to stop you, the recommendation is to take him down because he is probably trying to rob you. No one is asking for help nighttime. If it is daytime and the victim is a bread winner in the family you can be forced to pay as much as 10 000Peso.

LTO, the supervising authority, is corrupt, ineffective and unfair. When we bought a new car it took 18 months to get a plate. The tax sticker comes when the tax period is over. LTO office in Cadiz cannot agree with LTO in Bacolod if our tax is paid or not. When they inspect your car they have no equipment to lift the car, they have to go to a carwash nearby. Outside their office is six big signs telling the visitors to avoid "fixers". As soon as you arrive at least four fixers offer their service. Without a fixer a simple issue can take six hours to process. Of course it is illegal to be a fixer but who cares, they share the profit with LTO friends.

Of course we have a lot of friends in Philippines; Myra has a lot of relatives in Negros and Panay.  The more time we spend in Philippines, the more friends we have. It is perfect when you travel around and visit friends during the trip. They take good care of us and we experience a lot more than normal tourists.

Sometimes it is nice to meet foreigners also, we share experiences in Philippines. Ten minutes away lives Jan and Nene van Klaveren. He is a Dutch but has spent most of his professional life in Australia.

Right now he runs a crab factory for an American company, they buy crabs, boil them, and 100 girls are picking the crab meat. Later they send everything to a canning industry in Panay for export to USA.  He like farming and grow a lot of papaya, nice tomatoes, cucumber etc. He also raise pigs, sheep's and chickens.  When we need a pig for grilling we just go to Jan, pick a suitable pig and bring it back home.   Always top quality!  His vegetables are much nicer than market quality. I think Escalante needs more guys like Jan, business minded and industrial. During his Australian years he introduced more than 30 new species of fruit trees to Australia.

Swedes and dutch are the same in many ways and Jan and I are very good friends now.

Also ten minutes away lived Julian, a retired American officer, with his wife in a nice, big, newly built house. For different reasons he get bored of living in Philippines and decided to go back to USA. They sold the house to Tim and Sweet Geddes, a Canadian couple with two kids. They live in Alberta and will stay the same season as us in Escalante. It took less then five minutes to realize they will also be a perfect contribution to the small community. Do I have to tell you all of us are married to Filipinas?

Philippines is an excellent country for diving. This time I dived in Malapascua and Panglao and snorkeled in Sagay. In Malapascua you can see the Tresher Shark, a very nice specie! The body looks like a normal shark but the tail is almost half of the total length. Since the shark eats at nighttime the eyes are really big. Every morning between 05:30-08:30 the sharks go to Monad Shoal outside Malapascua. I saw one shark about 3,5 m long  8m away and ten minutes later two big Manta Ray 6m away. The best dive in my life so far! Monad Shoal is the only spot in the world where you can see the tresher shark. Sorry for you I don't have an UV-camera yet!

Malapascua is a very nice small island with white sandy beaches and only few hotels. We travelled with Philip, Arhur, Merraflor and Papa, Myra's father. A nice, clean bungalow with A/C  right on the beach was only 3000Peso. To travel with a Philippine family gives an extra dimension. They make friends right away with the staff and  Papa bought five kilo fish and hanged for drying on the porch.

When we went home we had to wait at Tabuelan port for 8 hours. One of the reasons for the delay was a missing captain... At the port we saw a fishing boat landing a really good catch of flying fish. They estimated the value of one nights fishing to 500 000 Peso!

Later Myra and I went to Panglao for diving and meeting friends. We stayed at Alona studios, owned by Mikael Forsberg from Sweden. Only eight rooms but very nice with a PC and Internet in the room. The cute girls in the reception asked for help to get a Swedish boyfriend, so just call them!  I dived twice but nothing exceptional happened. 

Some of the readers of my blog cannot understand swedish, so from now on I use english instead.

Almost all Swedish guys know English so I think it is OK for them.

We have just arrived to Sweden after five months in Palanas. When we arrived it was cold and foggy and we longed to back from day one.  Right now everything is OK, except for Myra, she got chicken pox! Normally you get the disease as a child and is no big deal but when you are adult it is really bad.

I guess the acne-look-alike marks will disappear in ten days or so.

I will publish short stories about what happened in Philippines this time. Log in to the blog now and then and please continue to write comments!