hey guys we're lloyd and mandy we're digital nomads that have been traveling
through southeast asia for the past nine months and today we're going to be sharing
with you our top seven things we wish we knew before traveling to the philippines in 2022
so we've been in the philippines now for almost a month
and to be honest we didn't do a lot of research before coming here we just knew
it was somewhere we really wanted to go so hopefully this information will help
you guys have a better understanding of what it's like here before you come
so number seven would be the wi-fi for us as digital nomads it's extremely important for
us to have high-speed internet and reliable wi-fi because our jobs depend on it and the
wi-fi is a little bit spotty and a little bit unreliable since we've been in the philippines
it's something that we think everyone needs to be aware of maybe before coming here if you are
someone like us as a nomad if you are just coming on holiday it's probably the best place to unplug
because you don't really have to worry about that but as far as the wi-fi speed downloading seems to
be okay but the upload speed is quite slow uh for us as youtubers and just for our other businesses
as well it's been a bit of a struggle we do use a video compressor i myself use handbrake for all
of our youtube videos something to keep in mind it's a free app that you can download for your
computer just to compress your videos to make the file smaller so that's sort of a little tip that
i'll give to you if you are planning on coming here as a youtuber makes your videos smaller
and the upload speed pretty much cuts in half by using that yeah so like mandy said it's not even
really that the wi-fi is slow it's more that it's unreliable you can still stream movies and things
like that but it's the upload speed that really gets you and we find that whenever we check into
a hotel the wi-fi is fine for the first day and i think it sort of runs out of data or something
because by day two or three it's really bad it's really spotty and we find ourselves having to
upload things overnight we actually have a little hack for the slow wi-fi which is purchasing a sim
card to bring around with you it's really cheap and it's just like an extra backup in case the
wi-fi doesn't work there's really two companies you can buy a sim card with and it's either smart
or globe we went with smart because it had better reviews and we just went into a store and bought
a new sim card it was really easy actually the security guard is the one who sold it to us yeah
and there's places you can reload that everywhere but like i said
we haven't really had to use it we just had it as an emergency
if you're on the little islands or provinces you can reload it pretty much from anywhere
so number six and this is something we weren't really expecting was accommodation seems to be
more expensive than other places in southeast asia mainly thailand vietnam and bali we're
expecting the accommodation to be quite similar but it's not you really don't get
as much value for money you have to spend a little bit extra so to give you an example in
vietnam and thailand we're spending like 25 to 30 australian dollars a night and we're getting like
really good wi-fi sometimes breakfast a gym things like that really like good hotels four-star hotels
maybe it had something to do with the pandemic but in the philippines we've really struggled to find
anything on the same level for under 60 australian dollars yeah nothing's really ticked all the boxes
for us so far um i guess one of them being the wi-fi if we find somewhere that's beautiful and
looks good usually the wi-fi hasn't been good so yeah that has been a bit of a challenge as well
since we've been here that's not to say that the philippines is more expensive we actually just did
a video on the cost of living in the philippines you can click the link and watch it later
but it sort of evens out because other things like food and transport is really cheap here
so number five is probably my favorite one philippines says the best seafood i've ever
had in my life and the best barbecue as well i've said this in multiple
of our videos so everyone's probably sick of me saying it but it's true delicious and so fresh
yeah and honestly it makes sense because the philippines is thousands of islands and you're
surrounded by water everywhere you go so it does make sense that they would have good seafood but
the barbecue is something that really took us by surprise the barbecue's been awesome
so number four traveling around the philippines isn't really cheap now when i say transport's
cheap that means like taxis and grabs and motorbike hire that's all cheap but because
everything's sort of so isolated um if you want to travel from different provinces to other islands
it's not that cheap because you have to either get a flight or you have to get a ferry which actually
isn't that cheap either you're going to probably spend about 100 to 200 australian um getting from
one island to another so if you want to go island hopping in the philippines just be prepared to
plan ahead if you can because you will get cheaper flights but we sort of plan a lot of our stuff
last minute so it wasn't very cheap for us at all yeah i think our way of traveling
maybe is a bit different to most like if you're coming for a holiday obviously it's going to be
a little bit different than if you are just like a nomad like us working on the road and planning
a few days in advance but yeah definitely if you can plan in advance do so yeah if i hadn't known
how expensive it would have been we probably would have booked a lot of our trip a bit earlier yeah
we're actually quite surprised at how many people speak english here um if you go to some of the
smaller islands it's still a little bit of a grey area where they don't speak as good at english
but pretty much everywhere if you walk into a shop or a restaurant and you speak english
they're going to know what you're saying to an extent anyway because i have an australian
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so one thing i noticed and wasn't really expecting is just how much of an american
influence there is here i didn't know but apparently philippines is the only country in
asia that doesn't use chopsticks as we mentioned before their bbq is amazing and you'll find like
burger joints and really like western americanized food restaurants all over the philippines
they also drive on the right hand side of the road which was a bit of a shock coming from
the other parts of south east asia they also as we mentioned they speak a lot of english and the
number one sport in the philippines is basketball which was very surprising because everywhere else
in asia it seems to be like soccer or football whatever you call it lots of soccer yeah
we're actually going to our first filipino basketball game in a couple days so make sure
you check out that video when we release it as a canadian i feel like i felt more at home here
because of the american influence i don't know i've because of all the other countries we've been
to it was kind of nice coming somewhere that had that american feel to it it sort of made me feel
yeah like i was back in canada a little bit i'd say it's not quite as much of
a culture shock as it is going to like indonesia and vietnam and thailand yeah
and number one would be the weather so the weather's been pretty inconsistent
and different everywhere that we've been so far yeah i was really surprised because the
first place we really went was el nido and it pretty much rained every day which we knew were
coming in the middle of wet season but then somebody reached out to us and told us that
chagao is actually dry season and i thought that can't be possible like they're not that
far from each other i think it's about an hour flight or something and it turns out that july
is the driest month in shigao and since we've been here it's been pretty much blue skies every day
it's been beautiful the best weather and the water and everything like just being in chicago has been
beautiful like the best i think actually the best weather we've had since we've been in southeast
asia for sure yeah for sure i mean it does rain a lot in chigao but we just happen to get lucky and
be here in the dry months so if you're planning a trip to the philippines it's not a blanket weather
system across the whole country just do your research and you'll find you'll find that there's
probably certain areas that you're better off going at certain times a year just keep in mind if
you are going to these other islands as well just an extra side note because of the rainy season and
being on islands it is a little bit buggy i've noticed like there's lots of you know creepy
crawlies and mosquitoes are pretty prevalent here so if you are you know prone to getting bit just
keep that in mind bring lots of mosquito repellent with you because i'm someone that get constantly
gets bit by everything so just to keep that in mind as well and also being like monsoon season
doesn't mean it rains all day it just might be cloudy for most of the day and you'll probably get
an hour or two of rainfall in the afternoon so it's not too bad anyway we hope you guys have
found this video helpful in some way if you have give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel
if you want to see our future videos if you think we forgot anything let us know down in the
comments and i'm sure a lot of people coming to the philippines want as much information as they
can get if you're a local and you want tourists to know something fire it down into the comments
we appreciate you guys watching our videos and we will see you guys in the next one bye
you