I feel tall and medium here, a far cry from my short and little situation in Australia. I’m at least half a head taller than most of the local women – that makes me “tall”. Jeans sizes in stores start at around 25… I am a size 27 – that makes me “medium”. I am sure that I’ve seen Filipinas that could be a size 24 or even 23. I think many of them would be unable to purchase clothing in their size in Australia, except perhaps in the children’s departments.
***
They think I’m Filipino. People here keep speaking to me in Tagalog. This used to happen to me a lot when I lived in Hong Kong too so that didn’t surprise me. However, what I do find funny is that the locals keep talking to me instead of James. After finishing our lunch at one restaurant, James asked for the bill. The waitress confirmed this request by asking me, “do you want the bill?” When she returned with the bill, she handed it to me. I passed it to James and he paid for it. The change was then promptly returned to me. Is it because they think I’m Filipino, or because the females usually take care of the bills in this culture? I’m not sure.***
Being Asian, I dislike being overcharged… immensely! Whilst I recognise that prices in the Philippines are cheap by Australian standards, there is an innate part of me that is unwilling to pay a Peso more than I believe I’m supposed to. This is one of those things that reminds James and I that we actually do possess cultural differences within our characteristics - Western James thinks to himself, “so what if I’m being overcharged, it’s only 5 dollars!” whereas I think, “a local would be paying only half this much, how dare they try to take advantage of us!”***
We met not one, but two honest taxi drivers. I am used to Malaysian taxi drivers trying to rip us off – Filipino taxi drivers seem to be more honest than their Malaysian counterparts. Both offered us their services to the airport for P2000, but upon learning our departure time, advised that we take the bus (P300 per person). Had we been in Malaysia, the taxi drivers would most definitely have attempted to convince us that the bus would be too slow, traffic on the bus route would be shocking, and we would inevitably miss our flight if we didn’t choose their reasonably-priced taxi services and make use of their knowledge of the much faster back route.
