An Englishman and the Philippines

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/users/Kurious-679098/

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/users/Kurious-679098/

I met an Englishman the other day at the hostel where I stayed here in Taipei, and from our long talk I've learned that  he's been living in the Philippines for 2 or so years out of 3 years since he left his beloved England back in 2010. I've never met someone, especially a foreigner, who is enthusiastic about the Filipino culture, admires the Filipino way of life, appreciates Filipino beauty, and just love the Philippines in general.

But every story has its sad part. He told me that UK citizens can only stay for 21 days max in the Philippines visa-free and those wanting to stay longer have to cough-up a sizable amount, some even amounting to almost 10 thousand pesos, which even I don't know about, and to top it all off, he mentioned about the non-electronic, non-computerized way of payment, ie. hand-written receipt and not logged onto the system, like a piece of bus ticket just stapled onto his passport. He finds it amusing and at the same time misleading since this practice, which he believes, promotes corruption. Imagine, hundreds of thousands of foreigners paying-up roughly tens of thousands of pesos each time they want to stay longer in the Philippines, every hundreds of paying foreigners the corrupt pockets up some, he says even CCTVs are no where in sight, which he finds it ridiculous.

In Taiwan, if you wanna extend your stay, for up-to a maximum of 60 days which can be extended twice totaling to 120 days, the process is free, just as long you can show adequate funds to support yourself, or one can just leave the country and come back to get a fresh 60-day visa.

Also, he mentioned about the rampant drug trade, peddling of drugs and such, every time he pass by customs, because there are no sniffers, no cameras, no nothing.

Another interesting tidbit I've learned from him, which to my surprise he knew who Mayor Lim is, the once popular LA Cafe near baywalk, owned and operated by an Englishman also and now named Manila Bay Cafe, was once closed down by then-Mayor Lim but was reopened shortly because apparently the bar owners have been extorted by the mayor and they didn't want to pay up what Lim was asking. I didn't know anything about this news but a couple of hits from google showed up about this. So in a gist, even the "benevolent" Lim is as corrupt as any public officials in the Philippines.

Philippines is in such a bad state, PNoy vowed to clean everyones acts up, but up until now the trash hasn't been cleaned up yet, now why is that?