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ManilaMatt

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Posts posted by ManilaMatt

    How much the living coasts in the philipines realy cheaper then in thailand at the moment?

    in Philippines General Chat

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    I moved to the Philippines from Bangkok in December. I have a nice 1 bedroom condo in Mandaluyong, Manila for 20,000 Pisos per month. I consider this high but I was in a hurry, and it is in a nice building with plenty of amenities; Mandaluyong is a reasonably good part of Manila.

    When I was in BKK I had a studio in Ari that I was paying 16,500 THB for a smaller unit not nearly as nice as this. Pros are that it was a 5 min walk to the BTS.

    The MRT here is way over crowded and sort of a joke compared to BKK. In fact Manila is almost as bad as Jakarta as far as crowding and bad traffic goes.

    Taxis are generally just about the same as Thailand, you can get a good one or a bad one, sort of luck of the draw.

    I find food here to be about 20% cheaper and unlike most that have commented, I actually prefer Filipino food to Thai food. I used to love Thai food until I ate it everyday. If I every taste coconut milk again.....

    Mobile phone service here is not so good, even in Manila. AIS in BKK was MUCH better. You almost have to have a dual SIM phone to stay in any sort of reasonable contact. So I have both Smart and Globe and pay around $60 for both including internet. Smart has LTE options and when it works, the speeds are good.

    In BKK I had True for satellite and Internet at home. I paid 850 Baht for DSL, 5 Mbps and 1600 Baht for TV, and had 4 channels that I watched. Here, I have Sky. Cable is 500 PHP and 5 Mbps broadband is 1,900 PHP per month. So significantly cheaper for slightly better service. On Sky my speeds are pretty consistant. I watch streaming movies from the states on Netflix and have VoIP call with no problem.

    I actually believe hotels are about the same cost. Out in the provinces you can get a decent place to stay for $18-25 per night. In Manila, it's $65-90 per night.

    What I find to be the big difference are really 2 things. In general, Filipinos seem to be more open to foriegners. I have found it far easier to make friends here than I did in Thailand. Secondly, the rules seem to be a little more relaxed as far as foriegners staying here.

    When this lease is up, I plan on moving with my GF over to Cebu Island up in Bogo City. There it is very very cheap to live well.

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