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The Philippines offers a more social, laid-back, and affordable lifestyle compared to the US, characterized by strong community ties and a work-to-live culture.
The host reflects on what he misses about living in the Philippines, highlighting the vibrant social scene as a primary draw. He contrasts the ease of striking up conversations and building connections in the Philippines with the more hurried and sometimes transactional interactions in US cities. This laid-back atmosphere fosters a sense of community and reduces feelings of loneliness, reminding him of a simpler time in the US.
Beyond social connections, the significantly lower cost of living in the Philippines is a major factor. The host details how affordable dining, transportation (like trikes), and even basic necessities are, making it possible to enjoy life without the constant financial pressure often experienced in the US. He also touches upon the unique and less structured shopping experience, which, while sometimes unpredictable, offers a sense of discovery and vibrancy.
The presence of 'third spaces' like malls and public areas where spontaneous social interactions occur is another aspect the host misses. He contrasts this with the more isolated experiences in US cities, where encounters with acquaintances are rare. The Philippines' work-to-live culture, combined with the necessity for people to stick together due to economic factors, encourages group activities and shared experiences, such as group commutes or shared trike rides, which are less common in the US.
Finally, the host discusses the reduced pressure and increased stability offered by the lower cost of living, particularly affordable rent, in the Philippines. This financial freedom allows for clearer thinking and better future planning, unlike the constant cycle of working, chores, and sleeping often dictated by high living costs in the US. He concludes by acknowledging the positives of the US but emphasizing the unique appeal of the Philippines and Southeast Asia for those seeking a different lifestyle.
The Philippines offers a more social and laid-back lifestyle compared to the US, with easier spontaneous interactions and stronger community ties. This contrasts with the more hurried and sometimes transactional social environment often found in US cities.
The cost of living in the Philippines is significantly lower than in the US, especially for rent, dining, and transportation. This affordability allows for a more relaxed financial situation and the ability to enjoy life without constant economic pressure.
The Philippines excels in fostering a vibrant social scene with frequent spontaneous interactions and a strong sense of community. This is often more pronounced than in US cities, where social connections can feel more planned or isolated.
The Philippines generally has a 'work-to-live' culture, contrasting with the 'live-to-work' mentality prevalent in the US. This leads to less daily pressure and more emphasis on enjoying life outside of work.
Yes, the Philippines is considerably cheaper than the US, particularly regarding housing, food, and daily expenses. This lower cost of living is a major draw for expats seeking financial freedom and a different lifestyle.
Third spaces in the Philippines often refer to public areas like malls where spontaneous social interactions and community gatherings occur frequently. These spaces facilitate casual encounters and a sense of shared experience, which are less common in the US.
The Philippines has a vibrant social scene where striking up conversations and building connections is easy. This laid-back atmosphere fosters a sense of community and reduces loneliness, unlike the more hurried and transactional interactions often found in US cities. Spontaneous social interactions are more common in 'third spaces' like malls.
The cost of living in the Philippines is significantly lower than in the US. Affordable dining, transportation like trikes, and basic necessities allow for a comfortable life without constant financial pressure. Rent is also much cheaper, providing financial freedom and reducing the need to work excessively.
The Philippines has a 'work-to-live' culture, which contrasts with the 'live-to-work' mentality common in the US. This leads to less daily pressure and more time for social activities and shared experiences. Economic factors also encourage people to stick together and engage in group activities.
Shopping and dining in the Philippines offer a unique, less structured experience compared to the US. While sometimes unpredictable, it provides a sense of discovery and vibrancy with many small private stores and street vendors. Malls and public markets are bustling with activity, unlike the often-declining retail scene in the US.
The ease of making connections and the prevalence of 'third spaces' contribute to a stronger sense of community in the Philippines. This makes spontaneous social interactions more likely, reducing feelings of isolation that can be common in more individualistic societies like the US.
The video creator does not explicitly state how long they lived in the Philippines. However, one commenter mentions being there for eight weeks and thinking about it daily for the past year, indicating a significant impact from a relatively short stay.
0:02 Hey YouTube, Alex here and in today's video I want to talk about what do I miss about the Philippines? It's been a few months since I've been over there, and I've had time to reflect on my experiences. There's quite a bit that I miss about living in the Philippines, and these aren't going to be in any particular order. I just want to share some of the things that I'm reflecting on.
0:28 The first thing that I miss a lot about the Philippines is just the social scene. Being able to just talk to people at random on the street, in the store, being able to joke around with people, being able to connect with people really easily is great. You know, in some cases throughout the US, especially in the high cost of living cities where a lot of the jobs are, people are kind of trying to size you up to figure out if they can use you to get ahead in their career or something like that.
1:05 Where in the Philippines, life's more laidback and people are more easygoing. It's just easier to just like talk to people at random. You don't see that as much here; it seems like people are more in a hurry, people have a lot more going on. I notice it at the grocery store, it's kind of crazy when I see it, but people will be like charging through the aisles with their grocery bag. I can understand if you're in a hospital or wearing scrubs, why you'd want to be in a hurry, but we're talking at the grocery store where I talked to my buddy Tony.
1:45 Tony talks about how he finds it relaxing to go to the grocery store, but there's this split of people who are in a super rush all the time, and it's kind of awkward to be around. I notice it in traffic too, and just like whether it's my home state or in Colorado where I'm at now. I know for sure I've seen in California where people are just in a super hurry all the time.
2:14 In the Philippines, that laidback atmosphere can be a double-edged sword. Sometimes we get frustrated if we're not able to check out quickly or find exactly what we want at the store, but you don't really feel lonely. Like I anticipated, man, you know, leaving Dumaguete, I'm going to feel more lonely than I felt because here, every single day I go into town, I'm running into people I know that either recognize me from this channel or people who recognize me from collaborations I've done or friends that are pre-existing that I've already made.
2:55 This is just really a lot of fun when you have this atmosphere to be social. It reminds me of how the United States was when I was a kid, when the economy was growing a lot faster and cost of living wasn't so high. People weren't in such a rush. So yeah, that's the number one thing I miss: just the social scene.
3:13 I also met expats from all over the world in Dumaguete. I think a lot of people think, oh, it's just Americans, but I also met friends from Europe there, Australia, even from like Eastern Europe, all over the world. And it's such an international, dynamic feeling. You get that in the big cities in the US, but I find the people that move to the big cities in the US, they're there to make a buck, they're there to work. They're not really there to make friends, and they could even be kind of insular for their protection or safety; they stick to one another.
3:46 There's a little bit of that among some expats in Dumaguete. I found most expats, and especially Filipinos, are open to new people joining them and hanging out. That was just a really great thing. I've stayed in touch with a lot of the people that I got to know there.
4:08 It's, you know, I've gotten a lot of encouragement from my last video I posted last night about, man, you got to, you know, put away savings, investments, and get back over here. And it's easy to take a lot of those things for granted. I was there for almost a year, and it's easy to take for granted having a social scene. And then I came back over here, and there's not really much of a social life.
4:34 There's a little bit, like if you have a really niche community you're into, or you've lived in the same small town your entire life. But for me, I've had to move around pursuing work and jobs. My life in the US has been kind of scattered around, where in the Philippines, I had a conversation with Paul and Mike as well at one point. You know, that 8 months in Dumaguete is like the longest I've spent anywhere in a really long time.
5:03 It was really nice to know, hey, at the end of every day, I'm coming back to this apartment blocks from the beach, and I'm going to walk by these different businesses where my friends are working. Just having that stability of not just like, oh, I'm in town for like a day or two and then I'm jetting back out to go back to work, but really like, hey, we can get together, we can go to a coffee shop, we can meet up at this restaurant, we can get together and do different things.
5:38 It was just a really vibrant experience, really exciting experience. It's something I miss a lot, something I look forward to next time I make it over to Southeast Asia. I felt like the social scene is especially strong in the Philippines, but it's to a lesser extent true throughout Southeast Asia. Just more of a work-to-live as opposed to live-to-work type of culture.
6:11 Now, at times I could be overwhelmed. I'm more of an introvert, so there were days where I'm like, I don't feel like socializing today. But I find that here it's kind of the opposite. Like, man, I wish I could socialize more. I think that'll change with my new career; I think my new career there will be more of a social component in it, and I will be able to connect with more like-minded people.
6:31 But in this transition time, I have felt like, man, I miss being able to not even reach out to people. I would just go to certain spots in Dumaguete knowing I'm going to run into people I know there. And here that's not the case. Like I'm back in Denver, I'm going back to a lot of the places that I used to frequent when I lived out here.
6:51 I'm not saying anybody I know. Most of the people I knew from back then, this was, I moved to Denver about 10 years ago. They've since moved away from Colorado, back to the East Coast, onto the West Coast. They are not here. There's very few people from that era that are still here.
7:13 And it's, you know, they're working a lot, they're busy, they've got a lot going on. So it's like not that same kind of, I'll show up at this place and I'll sit down with my friends and hang out for a while. It's more like, I'll see you when I see you, I hope I see you, but not really counting on it.
7:33 The next thing I miss about the Philippines is the lower cost of living. I'm not going to harp on this one too much because it's obvious. Anybody that's been to the Philippines knows that generally services are cheaper. A big one is that for those of us who don't like doing dishes, like I like to cook, I just don't like doing dishes. You can go out to eat for a pretty reasonable price.
7:54 Here, you know, I went to Chipotle today. It's 12 bucks, whereas in Dumaguete I could go out and have a nice meal for, say, I don't know, five bucks. There are nicer places that would run you more like 10, 15 bucks ahead. But Chipotle, while it was delicious, I wouldn't call it like a high-end establishment for sure.
8:21 What else? What else? You know, being able to like hop in a trike, get around town for like 40, 50 cents. Being able to go to a coffee shop, get a coffee for like a couple bucks. Going to get some like random electronic device I need, cables, things like that, clothes. I was actually surprised at like the clothing selection in Dumaguete. They have a lot of great clothing stores.
9:02 Just that, I don't know if you call it zany, but it's like here shopping is very structured. It's made as efficient as it can possibly be. You can buy a lot of things online, so you really don't need to go out and go to the store. You can do it somewhat, but it's not really the same. You're going to pay a premium.
9:23 Stores, I don't know. The shopping experience is just not as fun as it is in the Philippines. Where in the Philippines, you go to the clothing store, you don't know what they're going to have unless it's like a name brand like Adidas or Nike. You go to like a regular non-branded or like local chain, there's no telling what they're going to have.
9:42 And you go to a restaurant, and sometimes they have what they have, and sometimes they don't have what they have. So there's just this like eclectic kind of vibrancy there where you're like, okay, well, I've got a small amount of money in my wallet that'll cover me. I used to go out and do, and I knew that 1,000 to 2,000 pesos probably covered most of what I needed that day unless I was buying something specific like a pair of shoes or some clothes or something like that.
10:14 Where here it's like, I don't know, cash is more and more discouraged. So it's like, okay, just swipe your card. Well, that abstracting away the purchase makes you think, oh, it's only $12 or it's only $30 or 50 bucks, and you can really spend a lot of money very quickly here in ways that it's just harder in the Philippines, in my personal experience, my opinion. I know there's guys that spend a lot in the Philippines, more power to you if you got it.
10:47 But I like that not only is it a cheaper country in general, you can still have a good time without spending a lot. Going into the next thing, the third spaces, the presence of third spaces. Here in the US, you don't have as many third spaces. It used to be people would have work, they would have their home, and then they'd go to the shopping mall or church or maybe.
11:07 to the shopping mall or church or maybe a gym or things like that. I think those third spaces, unless you're in like a really nice city, like I'll be fair, Denver is a really nice city, San Francisco, LA, you just don't have those third spaces. And I've noticed it when I've been like back in Tennessee, they just don't exist as much, if at all. And so you're going, you're like at home or you're at work and you kind of go back and forth between home and work and you don't have that spontaneity of like, 'Oh hey, I'm going to just go to the mall.' Like if I go to the mall here, I'm in the US, anywhere in the US really, I'm not going to see anybody I know. I'm not going to run into people much. If you try to talk to people, they'll think you're some kind of scammer or you're trying to sell them something from like a mall kiosk or something like that.
12:02 It's very different in the Philippines where you going to Robinson's at Dumagetti for example, I could probably sit down at many different tables that have a free seat, just start talking to people. They're not going to have a problem with it. They might be a little bit shy, but it's not going to be like, 'Dude, who are you? What are you doing? Get out of here.' So that a lot of people think when it comes to cost of living, it's just I can buy stuff cheap. It's not really just that. It's like people aren't so short on time and there's a bit more of like a mystery about what's going to happen.
12:38 When I would go out and do, I could never predict what was going to happen that day. It was always I was going to see something interesting, see something funny, hear people joking around. I would see people dancing. You know, they have these dancing get-togethers in public. It was always so fun. I've never seen that in the United States. Maybe it's out there somewhere. Maybe if you're living in like Manhattan or something like that, you see that some. But that was something I loved about Dumagetti is and different kinds of dancing too. You'd have young people doing hip-hop dance. You'd have older folks doing like a more, I don't know, how do not tango, but like more of a classic style of dance. You could go to the boulevard and go people watching.
13:26 And that's because people have more of a work-to-live kind of atmosphere there. Think people would also do things. I think people there have to stick together more to get by because it's expensive, more expensive relative to wages. And so you see people like going fishing together, right? You see people just doing a lot more stuff in groups and it's, I think some of that is just the cost, right? Like you might see two people or three people on a motorbike in Dumagetti because they're trying to cut down on their commute cost. You might see two or three people sharing a trike because if you pay, like the trike driver is able to charge a lower rate if it's not just a personal ride.
14:48 I think part of the challenge too with like the cost of living is people here are more kind of salesy and you know, it kind of affects like the trust where in the Philippines, if I approach somebody to start talking to them on the street, they don't assume it's going to be some kind of salesy type of conversation like they do here. Here, if somebody approaches you on the street, I assume they're a scammer. I assume they are trying to get money out of me because it's expensive to live and people value their time and they got to you. Some people do pro-social things like get a job. Other people try to finesse other people out of money, right?
15:30 And so in the Philippines, like knowing that that's not people's first assumption when you want to have a conversation or want to talk, especially in the smaller cities, I could see Manila being a little bit more stressful. It's more of a big city vibe, a little bit more pressured. But especially in the smaller cities, just thinking about like rent. I mean, my rent was $135 a month in Dumagetti and that was for a studio apartment and I didn't have to have roommates. I've had some great roommates here in the States. I've also had some really bad roommates here in the States. But that was a great location, walking distance from a lot of the places that I enjoyed going to. I could hop on a trike, I could get to town.
16:20 And the last apartment I rented on my own here was a shoebox for like $1,100, $1,200 a month. And that was cheap in California, right? Most people would assume I'm paying at least double that in California. So, like knowing, okay, so that $1,100 I used to pay for rent in California, that's covering me for at least a month in Dumagetti. And yeah, that was that that was Sorry guys, I got distracted because I had some folks walking by. I'm trying to do this in just one take. But what else do I miss about the Philippines?
17:23 I think you know with part of that cost of living too is I could think a little bit more clearly at times in Dumagetti because I didn't have so much pressure. Like here it's like, 'How am I going to make the rent? Okay, I got to do this chore. Got to do that chore.' You feel this kind of pressure to constantly be doing different things.
17:46 There, because cost is less, I felt like I could kind of plan things out a little more. Ironically, because a lot of people think, 'Oh, you can't plan as well in the Philippines because it's so spontaneous.' But as far as for my future, I took a lot of time to research different career paths that I could do when I came back to the States. And here, because costs are high and I don't really have family to lean on here, I can't really plan ahead nearly as well.
18:11 In my personal opinion, it's like I'm either working or doing chores or sleeping. Like that's mostly it. That's mostly my life here in the States. You get some holidays periodically where you have off for Christmas, but a lot of times I'm just sleeping in on those holidays like, 'Oh yeah, I get to rest.' So, it's uh there's a lot I miss about the Philippines and a lot of things I didn't realize I would miss until a few months in things kind of set in more like, 'Oh, I can't just talk to random people on the street. They're going to think I'm crazy or a scammer. Oh, I can't just go to the coffee shop and look around for a friendly face. It's like, no, people are going to look at me like, 'What are you looking at, dude?'
18:59 Um, it's uh, you know, America's got a lot of positives. There's a lot of things to like about the United States. A lot of us foreigners that want to live overseas or have lived overseas or are currently living overseas or making plans to live overseas were coming from these countries with historically strong economies where we could save and invest a lot and have the money we needed to live, like, you know, passive income through rental properties or through dividend stocks or through businesses. But there's a lot that's great about the Philippines, about Southeast Asia. And anyway, I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up. I appreciate you guys watching. If you haven't already, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel down below and comment. Comment if you have travel plans coming up. Comment if you are wanting to make a trip soon. And we'll talk to you um in the near future. Bye, everybody.
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