Gated Communities

As I sit here, freezing in my house (though at least it's finally warm in my room - a nice 15C, or 59F. In my one room only. I'm pretty sure the other rooms are all somewhere around 8C/46F, since I only have the heater going in my living room/kitchen space, but I digress.) I like to think about the warmth and the beach that I left in the Philippines.

I mean like, seriously, my fingers are going slightly numb.

But yeah, I meant to post about my visit to the Philippines, even if I am too lazy to get the pictures up onto this blog in a timely manner.

Anyways.

I was in the Philippines from the 28th of December until the 7th of January, and damn was that fun. I stayed with my friend Maxine in Alabang, near Manila. It's technically in a different city, but I forgot the name.

The structure of the Philippines is quite different than both the US and Japan. We might have gated communities in the US, but the Philippines take that to a whole new level. When we say "gated communities," sometimes, but not always, there's an actual physical gate and barriers to entering into the community. Usually, they'll have some sort of homeowner's association, and usually a community center and community pool and a park or something. In the Philippines, these gated communities are referred to as villages. Some of them can be quite large; Alabang has over 2,000 residents, I think it was? Granted, Alabang, according to my friend, is one of the biggest and richest villages, so my view of villages might be ahem, slightly biased. I think we were able to drive for a good 7 minutes or 10 minutes without actually leaving the village. It had a community place, yes, but it also had a golf course.

Individuals bought lots in the place, rather than houses usually. If there's no building there, or you want to create one of your own, you can do that. They're not policed as far as regulations go on what kind of houses you can and can't have. Some of the "lots" in the place were large enough to hold a mansion and grounds and a pool. I think my friend said there was a princess of somewhere and a famous boxer in that particular village.

Also different, is that the village has a school *and* it has a mall. Yep. A mall. Inside the village. A nice mall too! If that doesn't scream out REALLY LARGE then I don't know what does.

The culture was completely different as well. As my friend put it, there's more of a culture of having maids and servants... though I'm not sure how much of that was due to where I was staying, or what. I was told that the philippines were ridiculously cheap, but actually, for some things, it was approximately the same price. Some things were way cheaper. Fruit. Fresh mangos. Massages. Oh god, massages. Tips. Hiring a boat or public transportation. Sarongs. Street food (maybe). Ziplining. Man that was fun.

But I guess I expected everything to be cheaper across the board. Prepared meals were still somewhere around the same price, maybe a dollar or so cheaper. Shipping definitely cost the same amount. Dried mangos, interestingly enough, cost the same amount. Diving cost around the same as well - or at least, the certification courses were around the same. It was a bit cheaper if you had your certificate already and were just doing free dives - they had a deal with three dives and lunch for about $70, which was not bad at all! I think that might have included rental gear too. The bread at the bread store cost the same. Snorkel around the same price too. But this was probably for the better, since it prevented me from going on a crazy spending spree.

So for four days, I hung out with my friend around Manila, and spent a good day working on finishing up my applications for grad school (and felt kinda lame doing that). The food was pretty tasty, though I was surprised at the amount of "regular" food I could find. They even had a CPK there! Was super super tempted to visit there before I left.

Oh that reminds me. They also had a restaurant called "TJ's" - short for Tiajuana, and it served Mexican food. I just thought it was funny, because that kind of a name makes me want to *avoid* the place rather than patronize it.

Yeah though, I didn't really do too much the first few days I was there. Studied. Went and had a massage almost every day. Met some of my friend's friends. Had some really really really strong drinks.

Filipino rum - Tanduay especially - is ridiculously strong. I don't know what they put into it, but I went through half a drink and I could feel my vision starting to move slightly slower than my head was moving. That was... slightly concerning, cause I don't usually get THAT tipsy THAT fast. Seriously though, if you ever have the change to try Tanduay rum... it's worth it.

That also reminds me of the topic of hygiene, since the place I had that drink... well, let's just say it probably wouldn't get an A in the states, and might have been shut down by health inspection. I went to the bathroom and saw a small cockroach along with a bunch of ants. I sweartogod there were ants everywhere. If I found that many ants in my house here, I would be mobilizing and buying up bug spray and bug houses and whatnot, but nobody seemed to care. Everywhere I slept though, I could usually find at least a couple ants. My friend explained that the philippines were just that way, and implied that I shouldn't be hard on the places I stayed because of the ants; it's just kind of an expected annoyance I guess?

My mom would have a heart attack if she saw the kitchens at some of the places though. But I guess for me, living in Japan, where in the summer, there's always the chance of "extra protein," bugs aren't as big of a deal unless there's like, WOAH amounts of them.

I like to think I've gotten better about the bugs.