Philippines (cont)

Instead of writing a post of everything I did in the Philippines, you can just refer to my facebook page whenever I post pictures. There are a TON of them. You'll get the idea of all the places I went from there. For now, I'll just list how life in the Philippines is different from city life here. (fyi: where my family lives is a small suburb called Morong, Rizal so life there would still differ from say, life in Manila but just so you get a sense of what we experienced)

• Everything (except chocolate) is so cheap. The currency is the Peso and at the time we were there, the exchanges rate hovered around $1 = 46 Pesos. When we converted things, stuff came out to $8 mani/pedis, $1.10 haircuts, anywhere from $0.75-$3 for jewelry, $1 for a beer, $98 for one night in a hotel suite in the city, etc etc. Of course, its a poor country; they dont make as much there so cost of living isnt as expensive as here and such so its hard to compare sometimes.
  
• Traffic patterns. There are no traffic patterns. People weave in and out of lanes, they honk as a way of saying, "out of my way, I'm coming through," people just walk out into the street expecting the cars to stop - and they do. People may drive like crazy, but no one gets mad. You can stop right in the middle of the road and other cars would just drive around you.
  
• There is no central air. The houses that are fortunate enough to have air conditioners have units in individual rooms and its typically only 1, maybe 2 bedrooms, in the entire house that have A/C. (I'm glad we went during the hottest recorded summer ever.)
  
• There is no hot water. Downtown in the city, hotels, restaurants, etc have hot water but I'm not sure about the homes there. In our town, in our house, there is no hot water. Not that you really need hot water since is so freakin' hot, so sometimes a slightly cool shower is refreshing, but even in the heat, you'd like for a least a lukewarm shower every now and then.
  
• The security check at the airport has a separate line for Males and Females
• McDonald's serves rice
• Bars stay open all night
• Orange Juice is the most expensive beverage to order (yes, more expensive than beer, even more expensive than a Long Island)
  
• They have different models of cars there. We saw a car that we thought was a Honda Civic, but it was actually a Honda "something-or-another-that-I-have-never-heard-of-and-doesnt-exist-in-the-US." In fact very most of the cars they have there, we dont have here.
  
• Movie theaters have assigned seats! When you buy your ticket at the counter, they show you a seating chart and you pick which seats you want (like you would for tix to a concert or a sports game)
• They dont sell cold milk. They sell things like Yoohoo (although I never actually saw the Yoohoo brand) and such that are just in cartons or cans and can be kept on the shelf/pantry.
• They dont have cabs/taxis, they have tricycles. They dont have metro buses, they have Jeepnies.
  
• They play Glee songs on the radio. :)
  
• Nurses still wear white scrubs. (I'll post about my experience walking through the local hospital later)

Anyway, thats all that I can really think of for now... I'll try to think of more later.