In the Philippines, they lived in a house just a few hundred meters from the beach. In Poland, they rented a two-bedroom apartment in the countryside near Żywiec.
Dinner at his house, lunchtime at mine. In Warsaw the temperature is surprisingly higher than in Calatagan, because it is only 23 degrees Celsius. However, due to the high humidity, the feeling is different. It is dark outside, but the whole family is barefoot and wearing only shorts. In the kitchen there are only a few cupboards with sliding doors and plastic windows. A table covered with oilcloth, garden chairs. Unlike tourist resorts equipped according to European standards, Przemek’s house is not cooled by air conditioning. In the corner, against the wall, there is only a working fan.
— Moving to the Philippines was a mistake, Przemek admits. At the same time, however, he regrets having to return. He came here in search of paradisiacal beaches and found them. He also fell in love with the laid-back lifestyle, the wild nature for which the Philippines is famous and the extremely friendly people.
However, there is no remote work contract, as is the trend among Poles with full-time IT jobs. “Unfortunately, I don’t use Excel, and locally I can earn a maximum of PLN 40 a day. I couldn’t support myself or my family,” he says. He is an electrician and construction worker. He worked on construction sites on the other side of the world, in Denmark. “The system was like this: I worked half the year and the other half I managed to earn a living in the Philippines,” he says. He calculated that an income of PLN 15,000 was enough for this lifestyle. PLN a month. That’s how much he managed to earn. Except that it’s exhausting. “I can’t take it anymore, and my family was angry that I left anyway,” he says.
Renting a two-room single-storey house with a kitchen, terrace and garden cost him the equivalent of PLN 1,200 per month. Przemek will pay twice as much for the apartment he rents in Poland. “Anyway, the cost of living in the Philippines is rising and we can’t afford good schools. We are returning to Poland to better educate our children,” he explains.
Calatagan, where Przemek departs from, is located on the largest island in the Philippines, just 130 km from the capital Manila. As hoteliers praise, here “beaches and endless sunsets meet in a place of peace and joy of life”. Tourists more often go to Cebu, where there is excellent diving, or want to admire the beaches of Palawan Island hidden among the cliffs. Calatagan Beach, however, attracts visitors with its famous white houses stretched out on high piers at the bottom of the sea. But that’s for tourists. Locals live differently. Filipino migrants pay thousands of dollars to illegal agencies to go the other way. In March, Al-Jazeera television reported that approximately 30,000 Flippin employees are in Poland. Mostly illegally. “Bida, bida and bida again,” admits Przemek.
Exotic holidays every day are a dream for which more and more Poles are interested in moving to the distant Philippines. Certainly not as many as, for example, in Spain, but more and more questions are being asked in Facebook groups about what kind of business can you start or in which part of the country is there the best Internet for remote work?
The answers are not optimistic. “Thailand is much cheaper,” I read. Or: “After eight years living in the Philippines, I came back. You must have a solid education. Also reserves for a possible return to Poland. I saw more than one foreigner on the streets.”
Rafał Baran, the author of the YouTube vlog “Life in the Philippines,” admits that Poles planning such a move are writing to him more and more often. He has filmed several episodes based on it. In one of them, he talked about the idea of meeting a younger friend in the Philippines and buying an apartment or a restaurant, because only a Filipino citizen can buy real estate here. The problem is that this is a common local scam model that attracts gullible foreigners.
Then Aries tries to calm the enthusiasm: – If you have a full-time job and can work remotely, come. Otherwise, consider that finding a job in the Philippines is virtually impossible, he says. An average Filipino, for example a waitress in a city restaurant, earns 400-500 pesos, or about PLN 30 per day, and this is the maximum she can achieve. More tips, this is less than 1k. PLN per month. – Enough to survive, but very modestly – says Baran. However, he recorded a vlog episode about how to survive a month in the Philippines for PLN 1,000. – It is possible. However, you need to know that you will have a meal for the equivalent of PLN 5 and you will be satisfied. Only it will be a portion of rice with vegetables. The same for lunch, the same for dinner. Well, it is bearable for a month, but another month will be a nightmare. You will not go to a restaurant either, you will only eat the cheapest street food. You will walk everywhere because renting a scooter costs PLN 300 per month. You won’t get an air-conditioned room because electricity is expensive. And if you find a cheap apartment – because you can rent a low-end one for about PLN 400 per month – the wall will be made of bamboo and the sun will shine through it. And it will be 25 square meters. In addition, there are circumstances that sometimes the electricity is turned off for several hours. Then the internet doesn’t work and the water pump in the bathroom doesn’t work. That’s why Filipinos provide their own generators and backup water, and there is usually a bucket with a ladle in the bathrooms.
“It’s poor, but it’s not a ‘Third World’ either,” Przemek said. He had just said goodbye to the woman from whom he regularly bought fish at the market. “I’ll miss you because it’s so peaceful here. I used to visit the beautiful beach every day and bring back fresh fish from the market. Children are raised to be independent, not to be failures.”
“I like that nature is still wild here,” Baran says. “I actually finish work in the middle of the day and in no time I can get to the resort by the pool, with a ticket for PLN 10 and a mango smoothie for PLN 6. We also often eat out because it costs maybe 10% more than when we cook and saves time and effort. And on the weekend we can go to another equally picturesque island,” he says. He lives in Dumaguete, a city of 120,000 inhabitants in the Central Visayas region on the island of Negros. The city has won the competition for the best place to retire several times because it is in the center of the country and has good transport links and high availability of health services.
Aries has been living in the Philippines for almost ten years. He has the advantage that as an IT specialist he earns enough and can work remotely. “I came as a tourist, I didn’t know much about the Philippines. Since it’s far away and flights aren’t cheap, I applied for a two-month visa and left my return ticket open. I didn’t know if I would like it enough to stay that long. But literally after a week, maybe two, I felt that this was it. Completely different mentality, everything unlike Europe. No rush, no rush for money. For the first time in my life, I experienced that it is possible to live like you are on vacation all the time, that you can function like this every day,” he says. Then two things happened that made Rafał Baran stay permanently in the Philippines – first, the owner of the newly opened restaurant offered him a salary plus room and board in exchange for taking care of the marketing of his company. Also, he fell in love and married a Filipina.
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— In the Philippines, my 12-year-old son rode a scooter and no one required him to have a driver’s license. And I’m taking him to a country where he will have to wear knee pads on the bike, – Przemek is nervous.
On the old-fashioned beige tiles of the terrace of their Filipino home, there are already ten suitcases stuffed with clothes, toys and kitchen utensils. Each one weighs more than 20 kg. They didn’t take everything anyway. You’ll have to buy a microwave again, as well as a bicycle, a scooter or a car. They sold everything they could, even small items, on eBay. When they moved to the Philippines, they paid for half a container with their belongings and furniture. The other way around doesn’t work – there are no such services.
On the terrace of Przemek’s house there are many plastic containers with clothes, toys and books. Everything must stay. There will also be a tricycle, a vehicle – a cross between a bicycle, a rickshaw and a bus, which Przemek’s wife Marvelyn used to transport the children the 2 km to school.
Marvelyn understands Polish, although she prefers to speak English. She does not mourn the move, although she has more reason to than her husband, as she leaves behind her adult son and teenage daughter from her first marriage. Her daughter will join her in Poland after she graduates from school.
— I was born in the Philippines, but I worked in Europe for several years. I’m not afraid of this change, says Marvelyn. They also know the Beskids because they once lived in Poland and their youngest daughter was born here. She is 6 years old and will go to Polish school in September. He speaks mostly English. Their eldest son, Antoni, 12, dreams of being a fisherman, like a true Calatagan resident.
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Baran admits that after his initial admiration for life in the Philippines, he sobered up. “I have had this wonderful passion for the Philippines for a long time. I learned to live like a Filipino, with what the next day will bring. All I needed was something to eat, a place to sleep and something to put on my back. I enjoyed it when my friends sent me pictures of their new cars or bragged about their vacations. I didn’t plan anything and it was very refreshing. Until my daughter was born. I thought it would be better to leave some capital for her. And I started working,” he says. Especially since he notices the increase in prices. “At the turn of these years, you can see the differences. At the beginning of my stay, you could find a really cheap apartment, say a two-room apartment for PLN 600-700. Today, renting a decent studio in the city – that is, a room with a kitchenette and a living room – costs about PLN 20,000. peso, that is, PLN 1,600,” he says.
I ask you what advice you would give to Poles who want to move to the Philippines. – Leave an emergency exit and an escape route. Don’t sell everything at random, because there are a lot of crazy people who have never been to the Philippines and suddenly sell their house and fly to the end of the world. And then they have nothing to go back to.
