I've traveled quite extensively over the past 30 years and have now lived in the Philippines for the past few years. There are many things that are different here but overall I have found the people warm, good natured and friendly. I’ll still share a couple of my favourite culture shocks with you though.
Coming from the UK and getting here via South Africa, Singapore and Australia the most immediate culture shock in the Philippines was the traffic, it’s terrible and the standard of driving also has to be seen to be believed. Windows are often blacked out and any indication of what you are about to do is seen as a sign of weakness. Because of this, a slow pushing in or tentative creeping method is employed when pulling out or changing lanes. Despite the poor vehicle standards, lack of awareness, suicidal risk taking and general poor road conditions people are not being maimed or killed every few kilometers as I would have expected, there’s a sort of flow that works, at slow speed anyway. Bizarrely it is on Sundays when every good catholic is in church and the roads of Manila have 80% less traffic that I see the most accidents. This I put down to plain stupidity in 90% of cases because there are a large number of painfully slow drivers and darkly clad moped riders who seem absolutely oblivious of their surroundings. These meandering fools can be of any age and often don’t have or do not use their lights or mirrors. They randomly weave from lane to lane on the highway at 25 kmh in their usual weekly manner but now the cars and coaches bearing down on them are travelling at 60 kmh as the road is almost clear. It’s scary to experience and I now have a dash cam for this very reason.
The second big shock to me was subtle and came much later. FOOD!!! Filipino life revolves around food, they worry if you skip a meal and they peck at sugary and salty snacks all day long. Believe me even a tiny (4′8″size 6) local girl would easily consume far more calories in a day than I do. I would readily believe that your average Filipino puts away more rice in one day than your average westerner does in a week! Even the diet, which is generally very unhealthy being highly processed and full of carbs and sugar should mean a country rife with obesity but it’s coming but more slowly than you’d imagine. Typical breakfast food is a processed red hot dog in a bun with rice, soft sweet bun containing pork in a sweet sauce, char cooked fish with rice or a sweet bun and cheese whizz. A local meal the other day consisted of Pizza with sweet dough, sliced bright red sausage with sweet tomato sauce, cheesy pasta with more sweet red sauce plus another pasta dish covered in squirty cheese. All of this was being washed down with full sugar “Royal” (fizzy orange) Coke or Sprite. It is not unusual for the poorer or less knowledgeable to have many teeth missing due to decay by their mid twenties.
I also don’t understand why the standard eating utensils here are just a fork and a spoon. Maybe it’s a safety issue as I also see local eaters struggling to spoon things apart such as pieces of chicken off of the bone! With that meal I gave up and ate the drumstick in Queen Victoria fashion, with hands, this gave the thumbs up to the other eaters around to follow suit. I suspect that’s what would have usually happened anyway.
Salamat po!
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