A Trip in the Philippines

In September 1989, when I was 11 year old, I came to Philippines during my short vacation. My father brought the whole family, also my cousin Jimmy. We spent 5 days in the Philippines. During these five days, I realized that there were many differences between Taiwan and the Philippines. The most difference was culture. People's language, behavior and also they are happy go lucky.

The first problem I faced was the language problem. Philippine was ruled by Spanish long time ago. Most of Filipino could speak Spanish. I could not speak their language and also English, so what ever they said I just acted like stupid. I still remembered when I went to Cebu, in the hotel, the waiter came in to ask me something about my room. First, I was shock, then I used Chinese to answer her. The waiter was kind too. She started using Spanish, Japanese, French to answer me, but he never used Chinese. If he used Chinese, then that will be the time for me to reply. I run to my father's room, crying, and telling that someone is in my room and I doesn't know why he was there. After my father solved the problem for me. We were all laughing about it.

My father said, "In the Philippines, eating with hands are their culture, you will never see this in Taiwan." In Taiwan, everybody use chopsticks to eat. Nobody will use spoon and folk to eat, because that's a kind of hard. Just like my first time used the spoon and folk. I doesn't know either to use my left hand to hold spoon or use my right hand.

People have longer weekend than Taiwan. Both Sunday and Saturday are their weekend. In Taiwan, we can only have Sunday and half Saturday. For adults, they even only have Sunday to rest. That's unfair to adults. They should have longer weekend then kids, because they worked so hard. So, adults most be exhausted after hard work.

People are happy go lucky. They wouldn't care much money they earn each day. They wanted to have better life than earning more money. Whenever they got a serious problem, like no place to overnight, they were try to find a place to stay like bus station. But if they couldn't find it, they won't worry too much. Also, when I'm in downtown, they always smile at me. They wouldn't care where I came from. They were show me their music, dance and even acrobatics. I really enjoyed it, though I need to pay for it sometimes. In Taiwan, it is impossible to see those shows. All they want is money, money and money. People wanted to earn as much as they can, so that they will have better live in the future.