Metro Manila

[folkertjong]

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Metro Manila is the most inefficient place I've ever been.

Honestly, I just feel sorry for everyone who has to live there. Why am I writing this? I guess built up frustration. Today I spent 6 hours in traffic traveling a distance that would take 20 minutes in any functional city. I got home, and 8 street kids followed me into a shop begging me to buy them Skittles. As I was leaving the shop a car hit a motorbike right in front of me and he dead now. I'm sure there are nice islands and pretty beaches, and that's probably where I should be, but I'm not. I'm in Manila and I straight up hate it.

I've been here for 6 months waiting for my wife's visa to get approved. In total the visa is going to take 12 - 18 months. The plan was to spend it here. The plan has changed. We've had an ultimatum and are moving back to Bangkok because I just can't do it any more. After living in KL, Bangkok, and Hanoi and enjoying all of them, I thought Manila would be more or less the same. It's not. I honestly believe with no malice in my heart that Phnom Penh has a better quality of life.

Here's my story. It became a novel so I wouldn't recommend reading it. There are so many more entertaining things online. If you're a "foreign person" considering moving here, most of what I saw on YouTube was overly positive. I think this is bait. IMO Filipinos are very nationalistic and they smash that like button when they see bloggers saying nice things about their country. I think bloggers exploit this, or maybe I'm just unlucky and my experiences are not the norm.

Day 1. I Land at the airport. The next 3 hours are spent clearing immigration. When I get to the counter I find out why. The immigration officer full interrogates me. She's been full interrogating everyone. Today they are having a crackdown on efficiency. She wants to see my hotel booking, bank statements and asks why I have so many stamps from Vietnam in my passport. Like most people in the line, I hadn't prepared this because there's no government website that says you need it. I was polite to her the entire time, but she was super accusatory. Eventually, I asked her. What's the problem? I'm visa free. I obviously have enough money for a holiday here, why so many questions? She mumbled something about it being the policy. My blue passport must have got me some special treatment because the Indian guy next to me had to produce a work contract. He said he worked at IBM and they had never heard of one of the world's largest companies.

I get outside and try book a grab. There are no grabs. It takes nearly an hour of trying again and again to book one before someone accepts my ride. At this point, I've spent nearly 4 hours stuck in an airport. It was only a 3 hour flight. Whatever. grab arrives and I get my first look at Manila. I'm immediately taken aback by the poverty. I just came from Thailand but it feels like I've journeyed 30 years into the past. We are sitting motionless in traffic at 2pm. The car is lurching as the driver breaks hard so he can stay 20 cm from the car in front of him. On the other side of the road 2 woman are having a literal fist fight and one's dragging the other by the hair. Everyone around is watching it but not a single person tries to break it up or helps. I got a really good look at this. Honestly, pretty entertaining should have brought popcorn. It takes another 2 hours to travel from NAIA to Quezon. Google Maps tells me this is journey of 20km. That's legit insane. Average speed of 10km/h. Only 4km/h faster than walking.

I arrive at my hotel. This hotel costs $30 a night. It was the cheapest I could find that wasn't gross. It's a significant downgrade in quality from where I was staying in Thailand for $20 a night, which remember the average Thai salary is nearly double the average filipino salary so what gives? Check in takes another 25 minutes. There were only 2 people in the line in front of me. The annoying part is that there's two staff. One is checking people in. The other is on the computer and printing stuff. She can see the line but it doesn't even register to her that we value our time and maybe she wants to help out.

The next week is spent trying to find an apartment. Eventually we find something that's decent in BGC. To move in we need to take a PCR covid test. They gave us a 48 hour time frame. Annoying but whatever. We go get the test. It takes 3 days to get the results. I ring up the place multiple times a day and they just say it's in the lab there's nothing we can do. I get angry because the test was expensive and they just reply with god bless. This really annoys me. Like you can't take the moral high ground on this one. I know it's beyond you control but offer a solution, do something, anything.

On the 3rd day I get the results. No covid yay. The building rejects the results because their time frame is more strict than the timeframe for entering the country. I've also had 3 booster shots and covid at this point so feeling pretty immune. I called the covid testing place to get a refund because we paid extra for 12 hour results. The lady lies and says she emailed them 2 days ago. She didn't. No refund. 5000 php wasted. Can't move into the building. At this point I tell my wife, sorry darling but I think I this place isn't for me. Can we go back to Thailand and do a student visa while your other visa processes? She says okay. We move back into overpriced hotel. Later that night we decided to keep looking for apartments. We've already spent a lot of money on the move, and it will be significantly easier to get the visa in her home country. We find about 5 apartments that look decent and set up viewing. Every single real estate agent was late. Every single building we tried to look at the guards want us to fill out our name, phone number, leave an ID, and just this barrage of dehumanising nonsense.

Eventually we find a place. I won't tell you where because you'll probs try murder me, but we decided to give Manila a go. Maybe once we are settled it will be better. After requesting changes to a rental contact that literally say the landlord has up to 4 months to return our deposit, we say we'll take it. They say okay we'll just process your documents and you can move in in 2 days. 8 days later we get approval to move in. Yay. I'm now behind on my work. The hotel internet is terrible. And we've spent well over $1500 on this move (before the deposit). In any other Asian mega city you can just live in Airbnb's but AirBnb is trash in manila. Prices are the same as what you'd pay in Europe, which just makes no sense for a country where the average person is earning $200 - $500 a month.

We show up at the reception of the apartment. It takes another hour to get into the apartment because they need a gate pass for our suitcases. What's a gate pass? The concept is so ridiculous to any foreigner that I'll try to explain. Because there's so little trust in this society, anytime you take something large in or out of the apartment you need to sign a piece of paper. The purpose of this is to stop you stealing from your landlord. The irony is that all we wrote on the gate pass was that we had 2 suitcases so the content of them is completely unknown. Likewise, if you have a guest you need to physically be there or email ahead to tell them about it. If you need to get anyone into the apartment to fix something, like the hot water which stoped working within a week, they need a work pass. That's for an outside contractor to detail all his tools and equipment before he comes up to the unit.

These passes take 1 hour to 1 day to process. Something I find beyond sanity is that there's all this security, but there's also a fire escape outside the building that can be opened and you can walk up it to reach any floor. In Bangkok even a budget building has RFID scanners on the elevator and door. Here there's just a guard with an AK47 ready to call of duty away all the dangers.

The next mission was getting internet. It took globe 5 weeks to install it. At this point I've been struggling with patchy mobile data for over a month. Trying to develop software at 10Mbps is pain and suffering.

You'd think that once you're settled in all the major inconveniences are out of the way but it legit never ends. Going to the grocery store means waiting in line for 10 - 50 minutes at any time of day. The cashier bags the groceries like they are 50kg dumbbells. If she can't scan any of the items in someone's cart ahead of you the other packing guy, because there's 2 people and it's still this slow, needs to walk through the store to find a replacement to try scan. If you need to pay with card, there's a good chance that she's not allowed to do it and the supervisor has to be called over to handle that transaction. Even Mcdonalds is slow. Apparently to get a job there you need a college degrees, but the high school kids back home run a more efficient restaurant. I don't get it.

I'm learning. I'm leveraging my privilege and solving all my problems with money. I now order groceries on facebook marketplace. We had to do a lot of government stuff for the visa, but there are online fixers on Facebook who take care of all that too. I only leave the house in the middle of the day when there's the least amount of traffic. It's tolerable but it's not fun. If you have to ride a jeepney to work everyday, I have nothing but sympathy for you and my profession advice is to learn to code and escape in any way you can.

There it is my rant. Have fun downvoting it to oblivion.
975 comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/xwjejz/metro_manila_is_the_most_inefficient_place_ive/

[Pinkpanther]

Vrij Negatief bericht over Manila.......   somige punten ben ik het mee eens ...Hotels Duur !!
Traffic.....maar als je er gaat voor vakantie is het wel te doen.
Vlg. de Schrijver is Vietnam of Thailand stukken beter....  Iemand hier ervaring mee ?

MvG

Pinkpanther      

[folkertjong]

Vlg. de Schrijver is Vietnam of Thailand stukken beter....  Iemand hier ervaring mee ?

MvG

Pinkpanther     

Veel goedkoper in Thailand.










https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/xx1wvt/to_31m_ngayon_nyo_sabihin_na_nagmahal_rin_pati/

[Ronny55]

CITAAT, "Metro Manila is the most inefficient place I've ever been."

Zo te horen is die nog maar op weinig plaatsen geweest. Hoewel ik ook niet wil leven in Manila .
Of Thailand beter is , goedkoper zeker niet . Het hangt er natuurlijk vanaf wat je er van verwacht , uitgaan een feesten , hoeren en tamboeren, dan zit je in Thailand goed .
Wil je ernstig een 2de leven opbouwen dan zit je op de beter. Vrouwen zijn overal ter wereld op geld uit , laat je niets wijsmaken ook in    niet onderschatten.
'n Kennis van mij heeft samengewoond 3 jaar in Phuket en moest maandelijks 5000 BHt aan haar ouders geven , toen vroegen ze plots 10000 Bht . Hij is toen bij mij 1 week op bezoek geweest voor hij terug naar ging. Was blij toen hij weg was, behandelde alle vrouwen alsof het hoeren waren 
Het gras is groener bij de buren laat je niets wijsmaken , dikke zever.
 

[folkertjong]

Reken maar dat alles duurder gaat worden hier.

Kleine brocoli op de markt nu 110 peso. Enz.

En maar weer lenen alsof er geen 13 trillioen schuld is.

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/filipinos-debt-ridden-pesos-127000-each-amid-marcos-latest-borrowing-100052516.html

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/10/06/22/ph-borrows-2-billion-from-foreign-lenders-via-bonds

[kristof19]

En maar weer lenen alsof er geen 13 trillioen schuld is.

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/filipinos-debt-ridden-pesos-127000-each-amid-marcos-latest-borrowing-100052516.html

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/10/06/22/ph-borrows-2-billion-from-foreign-lenders-via-bonds

Och is dat alles? Wat een belachelijke schuld....

Om jaloers van te worden van zo een KLEINE Schuld
Helaas heeft mijn eigen land een veelvoud van deze schulden.....

Waw, wat doen ze het toch goed daar op de Filipijnen om de staatsschuld onder controle te houden. Die overheid / presidenten (Duterte, Marcos junior, etc..  )doen het daar blijkbaar een stuk beter op dat vlak dan hier waar de Belgische kinderen ooit met de rekening zullen worden opgezadeld.
Gelukkig is mijn kind Filipijnse

[folkertjong]

Dat je niet de slimste bent hadden de meeste forumleden wel in de gaten.

In totaal bedraagt de rente die België betaalt op de schuld 3,2 procent van het bruto binnenlands product

https://www.staatsschuldmeter.be/

Nearly a third of P5.3-trillion budget to pay for debts

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1651322/nearly-1-3-of-p5-3-t-natl-budget-to-pay-for-debts#ixzz7h79on8A2

[kristof19]

En maar weer lenen alsof er geen 13 trillioen schuld is.

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/filipinos-debt-ridden-pesos-127000-each-amid-marcos-latest-borrowing-100052516.html

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/10/06/22/ph-borrows-2-billion-from-foreign-lenders-via-bonds

Och is dat alles? Wat een belachelijke schuld....

Om jaloers van te worden van zo een KLEINE Schuld
Helaas heeft mijn eigen land een veelvoud van deze schulden.....

Waw, wat doen ze het toch goed daar op de Filipijnen om de staatsschuld onder controle te houden. Die overheid / presidenten (Duterte, Marcos junior, etc..  )doen het daar blijkbaar een stuk beter op dat vlak dan hier waar de Belgische kinderen ooit met de rekening zullen worden opgezadeld.
Gelukkig is mijn kind Filipijnse

2 million 745 thousand 262,34 pesos schuld per Belgische inwoner versus
Filipinos now have a debt of over P127,000 each       

Dat je niet de slimste bent hadden de meeste forumleden wel in de gaten.

In totaal bedraagt de rente die België betaalt op de schuld 3,2 procent van het bruto binnenlands product

https://www.staatsschuldmeter.be/

Nearly a third of P5.3-trillion budget to pay for debts

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1651322/nearly-1-3-of-p5-3-t-natl-budget-to-pay-for-debts#ixzz7h79on8A2

2 million 745 thousand 262,34 pesos schuld per Belgische inwoner versus
Filipinos now have a debt of over P127,000 each       

Dus een dikke 21 maal de staatsschuld per inwoner in Belgie versus een filipino maar volgens onze ZEER slimme forumeconoom is dat niet erg want er moet maar 3,2 % van het BPP rente op de schuld betaald worden in Belge 

En in de Filipijnen moeten ze voor hun lening het volgende betalen:


According to de Leon, the $2 billion bond issue will be issued in 3 tranches:

$500 million 5 years at 5.17%

$750 million at 10.5 years at 5.609%

$750 million at 25 years ESG at 6.10%

Dus conclusie van het economisch wonderkind:
Belgie doet het beter dan de Filipijnen
 


Dat de staatsschuld met 507 euro per seconde stijgt in Belgie is  ook geen probleem

En dat de Filipijnen een zeer jonge en weerbare bevolking heeft versus een vergrijsde en oververwende bevolking in Belgie is ook niet belangrijk.


man man man 

[kristof19]

Philippines

As of March 2022, the general government debt of the Philippines amounts to ₱12.03 trillion ($232,255,149,900). The country's debt-to-GDP ratio, which reflects the ability to pay obligations, stood at 62.1% as of end-June 2022.

versus

Belgium 

Een en ander heeft ook gevolgen voor de staatsschuld. Die zal dit jaar dalen tot 104 procent van het bbp, na 113 procent bbp in 2020. Maar vanaf 2023 zal de staatsschuld weer oplopen, tot zowat 114 procent van het bbp in 2027.

https://m.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20220617_94099795

Ok slimme jongen? 

[kristof19]

In the long-term, the Philippines Government Debt to GDP is projected to trend around 54.00 percent of GDP in 2023, 

https://tradingeconomics.com/philippines/government-debt-to-gdp


WAW!!!!!!!
Om jaloers van te worden 

Goed bezig zou ik zeggen