Manila / Philippines / SE Asia tips and advice wanted

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi all, I posted a similar thread before the holidays which got very few views and no responses. I’m trying again in the hope that I just hit a bad time for the board, if this one fares no better then I’ll take the hint …

Basically I’m moving to Manila, in the Philippines, to take up a new position with my current employer in the up-and-coming office there. I’ve been to Manila for a week to check it out before accepting the job, so I’m already committed to going.

Now I want to find out as much as I can about the South East Asia, the Philippines and Manila in particular. I’ve read through the guide books and the obvious websites and I’m just looking for more.

Just tips, advice, anecdotes, warnings, musings, whatever, ideas for things to do, places to visit. Anything at all would be good, even if it’s not my sort of thing I’ll have people coming to visit so the more information the better. Hopefully I’ll be able to return the favor when I’ve been there a bit (actually I should look out for travel threads a bit more).

Pointers to any good websites or message boards covering the area would help too. Although I know some of the people in the office I will find myself on my own a fair bit, so finding people to hang out with might be nice too, or just finding friendly places to go.

Thanks.

SD

2

The one bit of advice is to be really careful where you rent your house/apartment. Traffic in Manilla is incredibly bad and if you are not careful you could end up with a 3 hour commute each day. Before you sign a lease try the commute during rush hour.

3

There are internet forums operated by & for expatriates living in the Philippines. You’ll learn quite a lot by perusing them. Two of the better ones are
http://www.livinginthephilippines.com/forum/
which is heavily moderated and orderly,
and
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/cebucitytoday/
with light to no moderation and sometimes resembles a bunch of 4-year-olds shitting in the sandbox, but has some valuable info.

Get the Lonely Planet guidebook to the Philippines. Lonely Planet puts out an extensive series of books for the world traveler. Every one I’ve used has been excellent.

4

Oh God yes, the two things that stick in my mind from my visit are the heat (well, I am from Scotland) and the traffic. I finally found a decent on-line map of the place and was stunned at how little distant we were covering each day.

Cheers for the links Mr. Duality, that’s exactly what I was after.