Snowy79

At least they can sing , dance and quote from the bible. Who needs education when you have so many festivities to celebrate?

Where do you think those cheap " Tasty" hot dogs come from?

My partners family also have land in Mindanao. She says it's in a great location and her Father has a claim on it but to forget it as the family there are like rabbit's. Her uncles have children by lots of different women. She lost count in the end. On one visit she found two half brothers she never even knew about. There was no mistaking them as all three were a similar age and looked like triplets but by three different women.

A problem my previous partner came across was deciding what heir had what parcel of land. She has just completed a land purchase from her own family. She decided to buy up all the parcels to make one large lot. She was in the fortunate situation of it being her family. It turned out there were 6 heirs. She knew all six and contacted them all to buy and each one said sure no problem. I laughed and told her wait until money is involved. Sure enough the cats got out the bag. Two upped their price and a third started arguing over who had what parcel of land. One wanted it split 6 ways vertically, one wanted the lot facing North another wanted the bit in the middle. It turned into a long drawn out process which fortunately as there was no foreign interest got squared away at a sensible price but the land required a few surveys then separate titling. Good luck if you don't know the family. Sometimes even the family don't know all their siblings.

I would seriously take any up and coming amnesty period with a pinch of salt. Where there are issues with heirs of a Mother title not legally transfering their partition etc there will be charges to pay. Filipino families can be pretty large and to pay off each heir could take time then another heir will appear wanting even more money. The attorney will win either way and the longer he can draw it out the wealthier he will be. I researched property law here for about 2 years before opting for a titled apartment. During this research I kept coming across people who got stung buying on Mother titles that weren't up to date. Buyer beware as they say.

Run for the hills.

Maybe as I'm begining to experience some ex pats have friended others thinking they are being sociable and opened up to them about personel things. The fellow ex pat then tells his partner he has just friended a new guy, she asks what they talked about and she listens. The next thing the whole village knows his personal life and had a little extra added just to make the story sound better. I'm still deciding whether to de brief my neighbour and his partner. He's a nice guy, likes a drink but we just small talk as we share a balcony, never once mentioned anything personal to him. His partner and me exchange the usual good morning and hello that's all. I came back from the gym to find his partner and mine chatting. My partner came in the house and tells me she had been warning her off about me and to be careful as I'll go looking for other women. I thought I'd escaped the crab mentality as I moved islands to escape it and only been here about three weeks. I'm now getting to the stage also of thinking if it's worth socialising much. I like my own company anyway.

It should be re-titled best make up artist as from my little glimpses at it I see prettier at the beach.

Feeling your pain. If I hear any canned laughter, or cackling like an old witch and see another transvestite the television goes out the window. It reminds me I have to be very careful with my humour as it's way different to a Filipinos.

Someone once told me " There is no such thing as 'American English'. There is English. And there are mistakes" .

Bring one of each just to be safe.

It's hit and miss. I tend to say hi or give a nod and usually get one acknowledgment out of 5. Even opening doors and stepping back I get blanked at times. Maybe those retiring here have come to escape the niceties of the West.

Probably a good idea to keep a low profile when buying things. I just got hit with ridiculous white nose tax. I took a photo of a generator twist plug to a hardware store and asked if they had any. The picture even had the Lazada price on it, 117 peso. They pulled one out of a drawer and blew the dust off of it then asked for 1,100 peso. I pointed out he's robbing me so I got it for the massive discount of 1,000 peso. They have no idea of customer service as I buy things regularly and will now avoid the store like the plaque and inform all ex pats in the area. He'll lose his profit in a few days I bet.

Sunny Boracay practically runs on Chinese and Koreans now. So much so the local government has clamped down on the use of signage in restaurants. English and Filipino must be used as some restaurants were only using Chinese and Korean to keep others away.

Personally whether they make it legal or not there will still be a regular supply of ilegal heroine. It never stopped black market cigarettes and it won't stop black market heroine. Having had personal dealings with drug addicts on the ex wife's side of the family I'm very pro Duterte's model.