Christmas in the Philippines 2025

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Are there any Dopers in the Philippines? It’d be cool to have a Dopefest here. I’ve attended 2, one in San Francisco CA in 2023 where there were 10 Dopers and 2 spouses, and one last year in San Antonio TX where there were 6 Dopers and 1 spouse. Is anyone here in the Philippines?

Hello from Manila! I landed last night and will be here for a month long vacation. I’m here for a family reunion led by my mom who grew up here. I was born here, and was 3yo when the folks hauled us off to the US. I’m the oldest of 5, with the first 3 of us being born in the Philippines.

After getting past recent health scares for both me and my wife, my family started talking about this trip. Let’s do it!, we said. We should go!, we said. So here we are. My mom and brother and my son are here now, and in the coming days there will eventually be 11 of us here.

This trip is really for my mom. She is 86 and she wants to visit the places where she grew up, and to see family and friends she hasn’t seen in years. At her age (86) this is sort of a last hurrah for her. I’m excited that she wanted to travel! In the last year of planning and discussing this trip, my repeated mantra to her was, No Falling! Your mission, mom, should you decide to accept, is to not fall and hurt yourself this year. She mostly succeeded. She fell recently, and she thinks she may have a broken rib. She’s in a little discomfort, but it’s not too bad. She’s here, she made it!

Speaking of broken ribs, I have one of those too. A month ago I had a tipover on my new motorcycle. It was not an accident, but literally a tipover — while stopped in a field it tipped over on some softball-sized rocks and I landed on those. One got me directly on rib #6 on my left side. The ribs hurt for a few weeks but were getting better, but then in San Francisco last week at a gas station I had another tipover — the bike, it’s tall and heavy (BMW R1200GS Adventure, if you’re familiar), and it was leaning a bit too far. I would have held it and corrected it, but the rib pain flared up and it was too much, and down again I went. The ribs hurt like hell and I went to urgent care, and the CT showed the fracture. Oh well. I’ve shared about my recent return to motorcycling over in @Johnny_L.A’s thread here ➜ The Great Ongoing Motorcycle Thread ■ .

So anyway, we are here! Hello from Manila, Philippines. Has anyone been here recently? Any recommendations for things to do, places to go, or people to see?

(Mini) Dope Fest in the Philippines. Who can join? Mon 28 Dec in Visayas, on Bohol Island
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Today is day 7 of 30 of my trip. On day 3 I tested their GrabCar system which is their Uber/Lyft. My brother and I went to the US Embassy to arrange a tour of it. They do not typically give tours but I’m trying to work with the MSGs there, the Marine Security Guards. It will be a test of my (admittedly lame) skills of sweet talking them.

I never did any MSG duty in my time, but it can be really good duty, depending of course on where you’re posted. I had some discussions and I hope the MSGs can set me up at a later date.

Here is my brother and me (hat) with an embassy representative (I wanted to protect her identity).

The picture makes my brother and her look like giants, but that was the camera angle and also what we were standing on. But she is tall, and so is my brother at 6’3” (I am 6’0”).

Here is me with my brother in the embassy entryway.

The embassy representative gave me her ID card lanyard! It is embossed with the USA and PHL flags, and also embossed with USMC MSG Detachment (yellow oval in the picture). Is a trivial thing but I was stoked. I hope she can set me up with a tour. That would be a major score! Some of the WWII war crime trial hearings were held in that building.

The embassy is located here, ▲ 14.5774, 120.9782. My AirBNB in Las Piñas is near the Ace Hardware here, ▲ 14.4494, 120.9813.

I prefer DD Lat / Long coordinates and denote them with ▲. Pasting those numbers into the map should get you to the exact spot. DD coordinates are exact, unambiguous (e.g., a search for US Embassy yields several places in Manila). Also, addresses, street names, and even streets can change over time, and address formats can differ by country (sometimes they’re lengthy!), but Lat / Long coordinates persist longer, and the DD coordinates format is simpler than degrees minutes seconds.

The traffic and congestion in Manila is highly oppressive. There isn’t a high degree of order for vehicles here, and that’s the case in many places (Tijuana MEX is another). That simple, 11 mile trip to the embassy took well over an hour. So I decided to rent a motorcycle and that’s what I did on day 5. Here is what I’ve rented:

It’s a Honda NX500 which is a big motorcycle for here. Most folks get around on scooters and small motorcycles with small engines. I went with a 500cc engine because it is legal on the expressways (400cc minimum). I plan to do some exploring while I’m here. Wanna get away? I do, and the motorcycle will be a huge help. I’m looking forward to exploring some parts of the Philippines.

On day 5 we visited my cousin. None of us had seen him in many years. He is the eldest son of my mom’s brother who has since passed on. My mom really talked with him for a long time. My cousin is 1 of 9 siblings. Not only has my mom’s brother, his father, passed way (over 15 years ago), but also 3 of the siblings passed way, all in the last 5 years. The last one passed way less than one month ago.

Here we are with my cousin:

From left that’s me, my son, my mom, my brother, and my cousin

And we also briefly visited my Lola, the half sister of my paternal grandfather. Here we are:

From left that’s me, and my lola, my brother, mom, and my son

Finally, my cousin likes McDonald’s so we picked up lunch to bring to him. I got a kick out of the fact their menu has rice and fried chicken, and also the old style apple pies that are deep fried, not the lame-ass baked pie that they sell to us in the states. Very good, but not good for you.

Here is another customer’s order waiting for them to pick it up.

And their fried chicken, they call it McDo.

3

I am jealous ! That McD looks good, wish they did that in the UK.

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That’s so cool, sounds like a great time for you and family. Are you conversant in the local language?

Okay in the background that’s some crazy jumble of utility lines, what’s going on there?

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Wasn’t there a member of this board who planned to move to the Philippines in November (and retire) because he found a girlfriend there.?

There was quite a lengthy thread on that.

6

That might have been Si_Amigo.

Glad you’re having such a great trip chela!

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I understand some words and can sometimes roughly follow a conversation, but not really, no. In the 50s and 60s my parents experienced discrimination for people who have a strong foreign accent, and they didn’t want that for their kids. So our English is quite good but our Tagalog sucks.

The Philippines is a 3rd world country. That’s how it is here.

Speaking of 3rd world, there is a lot of abject poverty. A wide gap between the haves and the have nots. That became very obvious for me last night. And I saw it my 2 previous times visiting here, way back in 1971, and in 1983.

One of my cousins works with a theater group and last night was closing night of their production of Shrek the Musical, at the Newport Performing Arts Theater in the Newport Mall. I arrived quite early and looked around at the casino there at the Newport World Resorts (wiki, ➜ Newport World Resorts - Wikipedia ■ ).

A very opulent casino! And the mall is very nice, as is the theater, nicely appointed, and the people there (customers) were quite coiffed, well dressed, privileged, while what I’ve seen in much of the Manila I’ve been to this week is a lot of squalid poverty and when there’s not this squalid poverty, the standard of living for most of whom I’ve seen is not high.

I couldn’t help but wonder about these people in the casino and mall and theater, how can you live like this while knowing that most people in the country live so poorly and have such a low standard of living (to my rough eye that is not an expert eye)?

It is quite sad.

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Thanks for this. I found his recent thread on the Philippines and sent a PM to @Si_Amigo .

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The Taal volcano is interesting. At least it was before it erupted.

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What does chela mean in this context ?
(Or did you think the OP was @chela )

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I loved your McDo photos upthread. I like my roommate’s more Japanese take, Macudonanudo. My phonetic spelling of the latter is terrible so am going to look it up after work.

12

You got it, but with a “k” instead of the “c”.

I was in the Philippines for a month in the mid 90s for a work project.

The third world aspect was a shock for me then.

It’s a beautiful country and I really enjoyed the trip.

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I did. May have been late at night.

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Yeah I guessed that it might’ve been something like that.

We PM’d. He’s not in the Philippines now. But thanks for the tip about that you guys. My wife wasn’t able to join me on this trip but if we come back it’d be cool to meet him here.

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We’ll be going to see Taal Volcano and Tagaytay tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

My internet connection here is not great. I’ve seen some nice sights and taken some pictures but cannot share because I cannot upload due to poor internet. That, and also imgur has been erroring out due to being over capacity.

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Some of you know my son is a professional dancer. When visiting relatives and old family friends he gave an impromptu dance for a couple of people. Here is the video link. It’s approx 1½ minutes. It goes on after that but that’s the key part.

➜ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ElDfXuOxxlrgjQM39R6M4yXXHSHQ-TpQ/view?usp=drivesdk ■

I’m trying to get access to better WiFi.

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Wifey and I are at our Winter Palace in Bohol until late April. There are some places I’d like to see, particularly historical sites, around Manila but I don’t foresee going there. The air pollution is a deal breaker for me. I’m a fan of the late Dr. Jose Rizal and have read much of his work that’s been translated into English. It’s available free at the Gutenberg Project. The Rizal Museum in Manila would be at the top of my list.

The world-class snorkeling is the greatest attraction this place has for me. Look up Balicasag Island, Pamilacan Island and Napaling reef.

I’d be happy to see you if you or any other Dopers could visit.

BTW I’m also a former Marine.

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Cool. We’re actually thinking about going to Bohol next week, flying either to Cebu or to Davao and renting a car. We haven’t solidified plans yet but we really want to visit Bohol. Would you be up for Philippines Mini Dope Fest?

Back to the thread…

I’ve started seeking cafés in interesting locations, to go out and explore something new each morning. So far I’ve been to 3 cafés (again, DD coordinates). Again my starting point is near the Ace Hardware Las Piñas ▲ 14.4494, 120.9813.

The first café wasn’t all that interesting, except for seeing some areas east of me in Las Piñas and coming to the realization that I can find new and interesting spots each day, before the group heads out for the day’s planned events: Altitud Café, Las Piñas ▲ 14.4264, 121.0125.

The next café was simply a Starbucks in Bicutan City ▲ 14.4836, 121.0376. I got my coffee to go and headed over to TLC Park, Taguig, on Laguna de Bay ▲ 14.4885, 121.0632. It was a beautiful spot.

It was sunny and hot but I sat alone under a large canopy and the sea breeze and shade were very comfortable.

To get to this spot the ride took me farther east to Alabang and along the shoreline of Laguna de Bay, to Iglesia ni Cristo church ▲ 14.4191, 121.0502 and then north along the shoreline on the old road, Manuel L. Quezon. Although the old road is slower than the expressway parallel to it, it took me through the local towns and I get a bit more local flavor. Indeed, I experienced more of how the more common Filipinos live. I’m glad I took this route because this felt more like the ‘local suburbia’ to me. It’s still crowded and busy, but to me this felt like ‘inner city suburbia’, if that makes sense.

My third café was in Cavite City on Bacoor Bay ▲ 14.4812, 120.9076.

The ride out (along △ Cavitex Expy ▲ 14.4659, 120.9454) channeled a little bit of one of my favorite drives, the beautiful Miami to Key West drive on the Overseas Highway (hwy US-1). This was also a nice spot but my favorite coffee spot so far is TLC Park Taguig.

Today is day 12 of 30 on this trip and the group plans to drive south about 60 miles to Tagaytay, the Taal Volcano, and Taal Lake. This is a unique geographic feature known as a recursive island. Recursively there are 3 islands. You have an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in the Philippine Sea.

Wiki has Lake Taal listed on its page for Recursive islands and lakes ➜ Recursive islands and lakes - Wikipedia ■

Mainly for my benefit because I want to keep it straight:

:right_arrow: Island #1 = Vulcan Point ▲ 14, 121 ➜ Taal Volcano Main Crater Lake - Wikipedia ■
:right_arrow: Lake #1 = Taal Volcano Main Crater Lake ➜ Taal Volcano Main Crater Lake - Wikipedia ■
:right_arrow: Island #2 = Taal Volcano ➜ Taal Volcano - Wikipedia ■
:right_arrow: Lake #2 = Lake Taal ➜ Taal Lake - Wikipedia ■
:right_arrow: Island #3 = Luzon ➜ Luzon - Wikipedia ■
:right_arrow: Philippine Sea (the largest sea in the world) ➜ Philippine Sea - Wikipedia ■

For now we have to settle for pics I grabbed off the web of the recursive island Taal Volcano. I should get some photos today. Unfortunately I don’t have a drone for good aerial shots.

My mom and brother will go in the van with our driver and our caretaker and they’ll caravan with my Tia (she’s really my Lola but she wants to be called Tia). I’ve decided to add to the caravan and go on the motorcycle. I’ll be able to ‘follow my nose’ a bit more and do some independent exploring.

I put my more motorcycle-specific posts in the motorcycle thread (eg, ➜ The Great Ongoing Motorcycle Thread - #571 by Bullitt ■ ), and there is some more of my Philippines experiences in my posts there dating from 16 December.

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Now, if there was some way to get to Vulcan point with a shovel and bucket, you could take it one step further.

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I looked up Taal volcano last night. For some reason I thought it was currently erupting.