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Originally Posted by cocofrite
A few observations from my limited 7 days experience :
- So far I have been disappointed by people's english.
Maybe I have been unlucky but taxis, ppl in shops, and my landlord speak bad english.
This is rather strange, unless you had really high expectations that people were more fluent. I'm extremely happy about the general skill level, and through 3 months never really had a problem with getting a message through. Yeah your casual english convo that you would have with your friends that are 100% fluent is not gonna be understood too well, like Alex said, simplify it and cut out the more advanced words. Try to be on
their level when you communicate. That helps.
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People say "yes yes" all the time even when they don't understand **** and taxis seem to never know where you're going even if it's a 2 minute ride.
That will sometimes happen as the Filipino are quite polite people - they don't wanna be rude like, ever, to foreigners anyway in my experience.
I had the same problems with taxis in my first weeks. After a while it gets more obvious
when they have no clue. They also won't know all locations so try another landmark or big place nearby.
Also if they see you as a fish they wanna extract money from, that counts positive for just somehow wanna get there even being sorta clueless.
Avoid taxis in rush hours (ranging sometimes from 4-9pm). You'll much more often run into drivers that want extra and other BS. I try to schedule my plans outside rush hours for the most part.
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- 90% of girls are 7+ in the clubs.
That's about right.
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- In my 10ish taxi experience, no one has really tried to screw me.
Will happen. A significant amount. Just use nearby taxis for leverage when they pull some "how much you willing to pay?" scheme or GTFO asap.
I've never been ****ed over by some more advanced stuff, they mostly just give you a little hard time and try to exploit naivety or spewyness.
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- Aircon is annoying, I have had it close to my bed most of the time and it's a bit noisy or too much air in the face to sleep well.
You get used to this. Most aircons have a pretty high noise level. I used earbuds at first actually.
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- It has rained cats and dogs from 6pm to 9 most days.
Yep. Rainseason and it seems kind of heavier than I expected. Might be random. According to this girl it will end some Sept/Oct
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- Icon is for posers, Embassy was much nicer, more real people and half the price
While I like Icon a decent amount that might have some truth to it.You should try Republiq at Marriot, it's a new hotspot, if you haven't yet been there.
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- Jetlag is extremely hard for me as a european, I'm still having a 5 hour nap in the afternoon and mini nights after six days.
- Cigarettes are $1 a pack.
Also being euro, I struggled with jetlag for about 2 weeks here. Waking up at random hours and being awake for 36 hours without feeling tired. I still have a problem with sleep schedule but that's due to borderline alcoholism imo.
Cigs are lolcheap but imo the Marlboros are somewhat harsh, feels like 3x worse than in EU/US but that might be some developing COPD