In the Philippines

I’m currently in Manila. It’s purely vacation and we’re having a blast. The Philippines is an incredibly fascinating and unique country. The culture is a strange mix of Latin American, US and South East Asia.

The Philippines was a Spanish colony for more than 300 years, but what most people don’t know is that it was actually administered by Mexico until the Mexican revolution, so the hispanic culture here owes more to Mexico than Spain. An example of indigenous Mexican culture that seems to have been adopted early on is Xocolate, which even has an Aztec like spelling:

Anyway Manila is in someways like a very extreme version of Panama City. It’s roughly 10 times the size. The poor areas are huge and very much in your face. They surround all the middle class and rich areas in away that you only see in a few places in Panama.

That said, everywhere in Manila and the Philippines indeed you see evidence of the benefits of Globalization. The middle class is growing, shopping, educating, working and vacationing. There are huge malls everywhere and just like in Panama (but unlike closed Argentina) the normal people are there buying and not just window shopping.

The informal sector is as always showing lots of initiative of taking the globalization in and embracing it. Everything from selling mobile phone prepaid cards to viagra to peanuts.

The American influence is huge. While most people speak some English, most young people seem to have a strong California accent. Probably influenced by all the Philippinos living in California, who constantly go home for visits.

My guess is that the Philippines has a great future ahead of them regardless of the typical hopelessly corrupt politicians that continue to afflict them. Luckily like in the most of the developing world people seem to just ignore the government as best they can and do their thing.