From the 2015 Census 211,862.00 foreigners comprise 0.21% of the country's population.
I am 1 of the 211,862 foreigners who is living here. I immigrated from Canada in 2005. So this is based on 1 individual account.
The Reason:
I married a Filipina I met online in 2004. We spent 6 months online getting to know each other and when I visited her in March of 2005, we both knew immediately we were meant to be.
6 months may not seem like a long time of courtship, but we spent hours and hours every day Talking and Talking and asking each other questions to really get an understanding of who each of us was. If we had a physical relationship at first I have no doubts physical and sex would have been a distraction to getting to know each other.
Instead, we talked. And talked, and talked. Communication is the key to really getting to know a person. In fact, our first fight was about my past and a child I had been a father to for 9 years prior.
My GF wanted nothing to do with a guy with baggage and she was really upset I had a kid from another woman.
I told her the kid wasn’t mine biologically, that in fact, the woman had lied to me about who was the actual father. I just mentioned that I was a father to a child in a previous relationship.
So, after my emotional GF let this sink in she knew she would be the only one to have the honour of bearing a child with me.
It may seem petty, but I totally agreed with her feelings that way as I too didn't want someone with someone else's kid. Everyone is different and we both got that little issue resolved, by talking it through.
When we met in March of 2005, it was as if we had known each other for years. We went to dinner in the evening. It was our first actual meal together, aside from maybe eating on camera while doing FaceTime online. There was no awkwardness, and we both just ate like a couple of famished animals sharing each other's food and not worrying one iota if we spilled some food, or had some on our cheek, nose, etc.
We’d had cybersex but it was now going to be the real deal. Would we both pass the actual looks test in person?
I can only speak from my perspective, but my GF was astonishing in real. She had incredibly silky smooth skin and was more than a 10/10 from what I’d seen online.
However, she said she wasn’t a slim girl, “Taba” is the Filipino term. I didn't give a rat's patooty how much she weighed, as long as she was proportionate. She was 5′4″ and weighed about 145 lbs. About 163 cm and 65 kg.
She was 24 years old and worked out at the gym with weights, so she was solidly built and proportionate.
When I arrived at the airport we immediately went to our hotel room. I decided I was going to carry her through the threshold to our awaiting bed. As I’ve mentioned she was solidly built so I scooped her up at the hotel door and proceeded to carry her into the room. I’m a pretty strong guy, I stand 5′9″ and weigh 200 lbs. I’ve worked out my entire life so carrying 145 lbs in my arms was no big deal.
However, the bed was about 20′ from the door as we had to walk past a huge bathroom first. Carrying my bride-to-be was not a problem for the first 10′ or so. Then the 19-hour plane ride started to affect my body. And the realization she was a pretty heavy girl. As I got closer to the bed my body was going lower and lower as I kept hanging on, not to drop her.
Imagine Austin Powers pretending to walk down a set of stairs, well that's exactly what was happening as I got closer and closer to the bed.
I was holding her barely above the mattress, by the time I got to the bed, and literally, I threw her on the bed with every last ounce of my strength.
We were compatible sexually.
So after a whirlwind month of being with my cyber girlfriend, we got married just before I went back to Canada.
Let’s just say marrying my GF in the Philippines was a huge issue now for the 2 of us.
Since she was my wife, not some cheap labour for our country's wants, she was at the back of the line when it came to immigration priorities. My local MP told me we’d be looking at 3–4 years of wait time. Unless I hire an immigration lawyer and pay 10s of thousands of dollars to them, and have a bank account with about $400,000.00 CAD.
We both wanted to start our lives together so I did what any normal person would do, I quit my job, sold off all my worldly goods in Canada, gave my car to my nephew, and flew off to the Philippines in September of 2005.
What do I think of the People:
I married a Filipina, so it is obvious I am good with her, and them, and never think about it. Why would I?
I grew up in multicultural Toronto and my association with all kinds of nationalities was just how my life was. English, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Maltese, German, Latvian, Pakistani, Indian, Black, I mean seriously, we were all just us. Those are some of the ethnic backgrounds of my group of friends, I kid you not. We played hockey, and football went to parties together, and hung out at the mall, we just didn't think about race.
So when I married my Filipina wife I didn't and never will think of her, the people I live with now, as anything but People.
My son is considered a Half here. It’s kind of a step up the ladder when it comes to being a more prominent or advantaged person. Here’s a stupid term, Half privilege if you think of the stupidity of the term “White” privilege so prevalent today. My son is just my son. I was a white kid in a poor family, so screw the white privilege shit.
I am given special treatment here because people think I am a “Rich” Americano. Haha, I am just a working-class stiff like anybody else My skin colour is looked at as being privileged or someone who is “RICH!” Everybody calls me sir, except my wife…haha
Even elderly people, older than me, call me sir. I know it’s a sign of respect, but come on, I should be calling my elders sir or ma’am.
So the people are nice, respectful, smile a lot, they enjoy simpler things than back home. In fact, the people who live in the rural areas, the ones we call poor because they don’t have all the material things, we are brainwashed to have to make us happy. They are way happier and richer than most Canadians and Americans back home.
It’s ironic but I am way happier now than anytime I spent in Canada for 40 years of my life, prior to meeting my wife. My wife and I both work online, we make a decent living and we are bringing up a great kid who is a musical prodigy.
What do I think of the Country:
Geographically the Philippines is awesome, amazing, bucolic, and spiritually uplifting. I lived in the city of Manila with my wife for the first year I moved here. I hated it. The pollution, the traffic, and the people all crammed together, it wasn’t for me. My wife was from there so I naturally wanted to appease her.
For our first anniversary, we decided to fly to a province called Palawan.
Okay, so we flew from Manila to Puerto Princessa and then on a 19-seater plane to this... My wife was a little airsick from the turbulence, I was absolutely blown away by what I was now seeing.
What was supposed to be a week ended up being a month-long 1st anniversary?
When we got back to Manila we immediately packed up our household belongings and moved to Puerto Princessa.
We were now into year #2 of our 5-year plan of enjoying life together before we’d have a family. Fate has a way of changing things and my wife’s period came late in June of 2006. Oh well, so much for the 5-year plan.
But then my wife got her period and we were actually kind of bummed out. We’d already mentally prepared ourselves it was time. We accepted this aspect of our life and we were actually looking forward to having a baby. So when my wife’s period came it got us thinking and talking, like we always do. My wife stopped taking her birth control pills and right around her birthday on July 16th, she got pregnant.
9 months later and one week after my birthday our Junior was born. All I can say is, that having a child planned, with someone who also wanted him as much as I did, was and will always be the happiest time in my life. Provincial life is great for a single or a couple. But we were now seeing that the infrastructure wasn’t as modern for bringing up our little cherub.
We moved back to Manila in August of 2007. Life was moving along with us both working online, a kid growing like a weed and just living. Then in September 2009 Typhoon Ketsana, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Ondoy hit us with a vengeance. At the time we were living in a 2 bedroom house in a quiet residential neighbourhood a km from the inlaws.
We had a 2 story house and when the rains started early in the morning, It just seemed like your typical typhoon. Heavy rains and strong winds we’d been used to.
However, by about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the heavens opened up as I’d never seen before. It was as if someone had turned on the shower full blast and just left it on. The waters started rising on the lower floor of the house. Our car was starting to get submerged so I waded in thigh-deep water unplugged our battery and stuffed a plastic bag into our exhaust pipe.
My wife, our 2 1/2-year-old son, and I settled upstairs as the rains kept falling. And it kept pouring and pouring. After a few hours, the water was already halfway up our stairs, and by nightfall when the power went out we were wondering about the “What If” it got to us on the second floor. All our windows had bars on them to keep intruders out. We were now prisoners in our own home and I kept thinking of my wife and son and how we could get out if the water kept rising.
We had this friend who worked for the UN and we were texting him with constant updates of our situation. He had seen many disasters in his years of traveling around for the UN and our texts of the ongoing situation were literally scaring the hell out of him
After 6 hours the constant rains stopped. And I kid you not, it was the most rain I’d ever seen in my life. Since I was a former Weather Man in the Canadian Air Force I knew a thing or 2 about rain and storms. This one blew me away and scared the life out of me.
I sat looking out the window at the waters as they rose in the street and I kept looking over at my son. Luckily being so young, he had not a worry in the world, I aged 10 years that day worrying about how we were to survive this ordeal.
We were lucky as only about 5 feet of water rose in our house. People in lower-lying areas, like our godparents just a few blocks from us, had their entire houses and cars ruined by the flood.
In 6 hours of that deluge, we had 65 cm of rainfall. That’s over 2 feet and with drains getting plugged with plastic bags etc. you get the flooding.
It is surreal to see your refrigerator floating in the kitchen and all your household items completely immersed in this brown murky water that smells like gasoline, diesel, and feces.
After a couple of days, the flood waters subsided and the clean-up began. Bleach is the #1 thing used in sanitizing all the walls etc. as you get rid of the sludge and crap that has infiltrated your home. You lose a lot of “Stuff” and basically have to start over when it comes to material things. Our Toyota needed a new battery and starter motor. It had to be completely reconditioned and sterilized. But we were alive and considering the lives lost and the damage to others, we were lucky.
This changed me psychologically though. After realizing how utterly helpless we were in that house with bars on the windows, we decided to move.
In December 2009, we moved to a place called Pampanga and an area known as Angeles. This is a place we knew was known for its red light district because of the former USA Air Force base it was situated by. We had always driven by it on our way to Subic to go swimming in the ocean but stayed away from the area because of the stigma attached to its sex industry.
After we started scouting around for a safer flood-free place to bring up our son we came to realize that it was the best of both worlds for us.
On the one hand, we had all the infrastructure of a city like Manila, because of the ex-pat population living in the Angeles area of around 30,000. Anything you could get in Canada or the USA was here. So that was our first check mark. Secondly, we knew flooding wasn’t an issue in 90% of the areas we looked at. That made me feel a lot better and calmed down my PTSD from the flood.
And, there were a number of great International Schools for our son who would be soon attending.
We moved to a nice gated subdivision called Brentwood and this has been the next aspect of our family life in the Philippines.
We no longer worry about floods. But, we live in an area with 2 volcanoes. To the east of us about 10 km away is Mt Arrayat. A stratovolcano that has no known date of when it last erupted.
And to the west of us is a much more active volcano known as Mt Pinatubo. Mount Pinatubo is an active stratovolcano in the Zambales Mountains, located on the tripoint boundary of the Philippine provinces of Zambales, Tarlac, and Pampanga, all in Central Luzon on the northern island of Luzon. Its eruptive history was unknown to most before the pre-eruption volcanic activity of early 1991. Then on June 15.1991, the century's largest volcanic eruption occurred.
More than 350 people died during the eruption, most of them from collapsing roofs. The disease that broke out in evacuation camps and the continuing mudflows in the area caused additional deaths, bringing the total death toll to 722 people.
Today Pinatubo is still very active, but not the threat it was 32 years ago. We get earthquakes all the time here.
The Philippines is situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Plate tectonics colliding and shifting all the time can make for interesting times.
When I first visited my GF in 2005 in Manila, we had an earthquake while we were in our hotel room on the 15th floor.
Being from Canada, and having lived my entire life in a geologically stable area known as the Canadian Shield, I was a complete newbie when it came to earthquakes.
That changed that day in our hotel room when my GF suddenly blurted out, “Earthquake!”
I jumped off our bed and crouched in the middle of the room surfing out the swaying of the building. We had a dining room area in the room and the chandelier was swinging back and forth as I was surfing out the quake.
That was my introduction to earthquakes and my first feeling of helplessness. I’ve experienced dozens of them now and the only one I was actually terrified of was when we were in the mall on April 22, 2019. On April 22, 2019, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck the island of Luzon in the Philippines, leaving at least 18 dead, three missing, and injuring at least 256.
We were at Clark SM mall after my son had just gotten his braces on. I told him to have a nice big meal because within 12 hours his teeth were going to be very sensitive because the braces starting to move his teeth.
We were sitting in a restaurant when a loud rumbling noise started. Then the place started shaking really violently. And I mean violently. I immediately yelled out “Earthquake!” My wife had taught me well all those years earlier in that hotel room. haha
I told my son and wife to get under the table and we rode out what to this date was the scariest earthquake I’ve ever been in.
So aside from an active volcano, a few earthquakes, and the occasional typhoon, according to the UN, “The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Annually, an average of 22 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility, of which about 6 to 7 cause significant damage.”
Life is really good here.
I got homesick at first, mainly missing the geographic beauty of Canada. But once my son was born I adapted quite nicely. I was lucky in the sense both my parents were already dead and I came from a very dysfunctional family of mostly narcissistic sisters who were man-haters. one less man for them to hate back home.
Life is pretty good. Labour is much cheaper here. Houses will cost you about 2.5 million pesos, $50,000.00 USD, and up. Renting can be dirt cheap depending on your budget. 3000 pesos and up. depends on where you wish to live and your needs.
So it’s a great life compared to the WOKE bullshit going on back home.
Is it perfect?
Nothing is perfect, but it certainly is a wonderful place to hang your hat if you have the right mindset.
And oh yeah, one other thing, we have big spiders here. I didn't know about this until we moved to Pampanga. I was sitting on our couch one lazy day when I looked over my shoulder. I guess my premonition of being watched was true as on the wall behind the couch I saw this…
Being an arachnophobe I did what anybody with that condition would do. I jumped off the couch and yelled for my wife. Okay, I started screaming like a girl…
This was one of the scariest moments I’d ever experienced in my 50 years on planet Earth.
My wife got a broom and started swatting at it on the wall. It jumped off the wall. I ran like a silly little girl screaming as it started running away from my wife with the broom. I jumped up on a chair and was yelling at my wife to “kill the goddamn thing!” It was total mayhem. I am lucky I didn’t suffer from any high blood or heart conditions. I would have had the “Big One” right then and there.
Finally, my wife in shining armour, with one perfectly executed blow, crushed the beast. I made her scoop it up and get rid of it as far away from the house as possible.
A few years ago we got ourselves a new addition to the family. Karly is a mixed black Lab. She’s golden and white and weighs about 30 kg, 70 lbs. She loves to eat, obviously by her weight and her specialty is cock roaches, flies, butterflies, chicken, and Spiders!
I haven’t seen one of those nasty big bastards in over 4 years now.
YEAH! Thank You, Karly.
I hope you enjoyed my sharing of what it’s like to live as a foreigner and live in the Philippines. Obviously, I have just touched on a few things, hey if you want to ask me a question, go for it in the answer part of this op piece.
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