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guy over on Christ is King (successor to rooshvforum)exposes southeastasia as a scam - 69ixine - 30-04-2026
I need to get something off my chest, I hope you guys don’t mind. I just spend close to 4 weeks in the Philippines and I honestly can’t come to terms with how I feel. I’m not sure if I’m the problem, or better yet loser in this case, or people just lie about this place. The bottom line is I absolutely hated the country, I actually wanted to leave on day one. I’ll try to make this short.
Expectations: Asians, super friendly, speak English, catholic, conservative, top of the line women, tropical paradise.
My Experiences:
Atrocious infrastructure and slum cities. One main road going everywhere, terrible traffic, very hard to understand where to go and how to get there. Hundreds of private companies operating their own transport services that you have to be a local to grasp. Very poor infrastructure for tourists and anyone working with tourists seemed like they wanted to help their fellow Filipinos out; fellow taxis, vendors, etc rather than help you have a seamless experience. The bus stops for random people to get on and sell food and drinks for example.
Insane amount of taxis, Tuk Tuks, motorbike taxis, and their bum friends working on referrals. First day I was getting surrounded by men everywhere I went because I had luggage. This was absolutely everywhere I went unless you go to the finance district. All the tourists with a brain were renting scooters and I’m confident it’s not because they wanted to drive. They also blatantly overcharge, a lot, tourists unless you know the rates and willing to stand your ground. Some “young men” quoted me 50 usd to take me across town to the beach in a car. I did not approach them, I was dropped off at a port entrance and got surrounded as they pushed my driver out of the way for heavily implying I should walk in immediately, my driver overcharged me as well. They will also demand money/“tip” for anything, god forbid some randoms help you with something and they will definitely try.
Filipino men absolutely everywhere on the streets, either bumming around or trying to earn a dollar. I seen guys getting tips for helping a vehicle back onto the street. The men in particular looked Hispanic mostly, would stare at you, and overall looked hateful and sketchy. You feel like a zoo animal out and about. This is everywhere, believe me I tried to find a friendly location.
I went to quite a few places and tourists/expats secluded themselves. Unless you go to a particular beach, hotel or bar it was very hard to find other westerners. Even in BGC, you just see Filipinos and random Asians.
Every single “attraction” has basically random locals and kids surrounding it charging for parking, private tours, entrance fee, whatever.
Culture of begging. Beggars everywhere, especially kids. Kids would yell out “hey give me money” as I drove by on a scooter. Who’s teaching them this?
The women don’t look or act conservative at all. Tattoos, cellphones, kids in tow, teens doing “sexy” dances. Strangely enough I even felt they were a lot nicer to the retirees because of the simping potential. Crazy stories from old men that make the whole place sound like a brothel, people hooking them up with daughters and friends, getting robbed by said women. You can definitely get a girlfriend but I would say just her being part of this culture is a red flag on its own.
The only people who were “friendly” were the kids who strangely enough seem way too happy in general, constantly laughing and smiling, not sure why.
The women were kind of in the background. Compared to other places, if you’re going to cold approach anywhere, you’re going to have a big audience of Filipino men. Unless you go to designated malls or bars, the whole country pigeonholes you.
The things that are cheap are cheap for obvious reasons otherwise nothing is cheap.
Their idea of a beach is a small one that is in the middle of nowhere, with every square inch covered by resorts, restaurants and random people selling stuff. It’s the definition of a tourist trap, you literally can’t do nothing else.
I honestly don’t understand how this is considered the traditional waifu factory. In my opinion it would be torture to live there, deal with her family and probably torture to bring her back to the west.
Anyone willing to comment?
RE: guy over on Christ is King (successor to rooshvforum)exposes southeastasia as a scam - 69ixine - 30-04-2026
Solid post. It reads as being very real and reflects some of my own experience.
The tone is certainly biased towards the negative. Nonetheless, I consider it as a must read for anyone considering the Phils as a destination for wife hunting, digital nomad life or longer term retirement.
The Philippines was the most overhyped destination on RVF due to two general categories of myth-spreaders:
(a) young men low on ethics and high on horniness, and even higher on lazyness, with a keen ability to inflate their stories to make themselves seem like living legends,
(b) older, absolutely clueless middle-aged men who continually justified their overinvestment in someone they just messaged online across continents, and would then accept all kinds of financial abuse and emotional manipulation from local single mums because the guy had no other options.
^ Both groups tended to neglect any downsides of their broader experiences such as air pollution, traffic jams, food poisoning etc.
It seems like the hype lives on given the stated list of expectations. Indeed, no country on earth can fulfil such fantasies. So I think to be fair, with all the video walk-throughs available on youtube etc, it should have been possible to grasp a more realistic picture of the horrible infrastructure prior to arriving.
That said, this is not written in any way to discount your real experience, which cannot be felt by research alone. And I encourage you to continue sharing your real life experiences and raw, unfiltered reflections. Thanks for posting.