12:52 Philippines is a country of thousand beautiful paradise island , tropical hot weather and happy friendly people. But traffic wise, look back about 20-30 years in Europe and it was probably even better there.
It is a well known secret, that most of the drivers have bought their license or don’t have it at all in rural arias. Thus creating a situation where most of the people don’t have any clue about traffic rules – what is fine for all of them, as they are used to it, but is pretty confusing for foreigners at the beginning.
And I can bet after you live and drive around here for long enough time, you would be lost in Europes mostly very well organized traffic 🙂
Roads are ruled by motorbikes. Law says that you must wear a helmet every time you ride your bike – But the statistics is the opposite. In Metro Manila area statistics are better and helmet is used by about 90% percents of drivers, however in rural areas it is the exact opposite, 90% of the drivers wont use helmet (source: TopGear Philippines)
As far as I have seen, only few drivers use helmet here. Driving your bike 70km/h without helmet is a death sentence in any way. Helmet is not almighty, but will definitely up your changes when the worst will happen.
To make things worse, the technical condition for most of the moving objects here is unbelievably bad – Imagine these vehicles going through MOT in England or even Estonia 🙂 Interestingly we haven’t seen a lot of broken down vehicles beside the road – Or they just get really quicly removed.
I have to be honest, I’ve been ignoring the law for few times also, not wearing helmet – And even stopped by a police road block. As far as your driving license is okay, you are good to go. Helmet or bike MOT papers are not important. They should learn a lesson from Thailand and start penalizing drivers without the correct gear, thus reducing the amount of traffic accidents and road kills.
I’ve seen one crazy accident here – Luckily nobody got hurt! – A big truck had fallen on the sideways on steep and narrow mountain road. They quoted us, that it was because of overload. The climb was probably 30-40 degrees and truck was heavily loaded on the top back side, thus it fell over on the way up. Must have been pretty frightening moment for the guys inside.
All this little bit lawless attitude creates also a lot of fun – There is nothing better than driving in the back of a truck with wind going through your hair and sun padding your back. Also driving Habal- habal with 4 persons has it own uniqueness to it.
Habal-habal is a motorbike driver, how offers a ride with his/hers motorbike to anywhere with previously fixed price – So it is faster and more comfortable than triscycle but usually little bit more expensive.
I made the same mistake again and started hiking before midday – it was hot. I would suggest going early morning and use a lot of sunscreen. View from the top was worth the long trip, you could see the whole anda and most of the Bohol. So after about 4-5 hours hiking (I took it easy, enjoyed views and took in all the nature) I got down to almost bottom and went for a refreshing swim to Anda Falls pool.
Not in any way I’m trying to encourage alcohol use – As excessive alcohol use will definitely cause short and long term health issues! But for us, Europeans you cannot get over the fact, that stong liquor here is extremely cheap.
We don’t drink too much, but a beer now and then or small rum on coke will probably not harm you (some of the researches even say, that small amount of alcohol on daily bases helps to prevent cardiovascular problems). I admire people who don’t drink at all, but the same rule applies here – Live and let others live 🙂 I don’t mock your choice do not drink and please don’t do the same for me.
All you beer fans (like me, who prefers one or two small quality hand crafted beers to dozen of cheap not even real beers) there is nothing to be happy about. You could find bigger choice in large supermarkets, but nothing really interesting or special that is locally made.
The most popular and cheap beers here are San Miguel (light, dark and flavoured ones) and Red Horse (which is stronger beer with its 6.9% alcohol volume). All of them taste like cheap beer, so nothing to enjoy and not really a reason to drink them a lot. Price of beer is similar to Estonian same class beers. Cider as we know it is not found here 🙂
Now jumping from light crafts to stronger liquor – It is much cheaper here than in Europe or Estonia. You can get a litre of local rum (of course not a taste to really enjoy, but okay) for under 2 euros.
Same quality rum in Estonia is more than 10 euros a bottle, more like 20 euros, if we are talking about 1 litre. Same applies to GIN, which is really cheap. It probably has a lot to that, that most of it is locally made and the taxes here are non existing !
Interestingly enough I can’t see alcohol here being to big of a problem – Excessive drinking, big parties and drunken people hanging all over the streets. Ofcourse every village has its own „village fool“ or drunken hobo, but that is not the point.
Trying to control populations alcohol consumption with laws, taxes and campaigns is mostly useless (as our coverments effort in Estonia shows). Keeping a clear mind and not finding solutions from alcohol is every humans personal choice, that cannot be altered by anyone else.
For the second time, be advised, that drinking large amount of alcohol is definitely bad for your health – Se please do not drink!
