Island Escapes--Asia's 7,000 Tropical Hideaways

This winter, I took my first ever trip to the Philippines. It’s a land of tropical islands--7,107 to be exact.

I’ll write about buying and renting in expat hangouts like Cebu, Manila and white-sand Boracay Island in the International Living Magazine (my first report will be published in four days). But I’ll tell you right now that this island nation is cheap, cheap, cheap. You could enjoy a great life for very little outlay.

You might think that $0.60 doesn’t buy much nowadays. Here, though, it gets you a bottle of San Mig beer…or gets two pounds of laundry done.

A 30-minute massage: $2.55. A man’s haircut or shave: $2.13. A house call from a doctor: $10.60. If you want to splurge, a seafood dinner for two (crabs, oysters, shrimp, calamari, blue marlin, and veggies) on up-market Boracay’s white-sand beach costs $27.

That's if you want to splurge. Although they wouldn’t be fancy, on a tight budget I reckon you could get three meals a day for under $6. In Manila’s Chinatown, I passed a street kitchen selling bowls of rice for 15 cents and pork dishes for around one dollar.

In some expat areas, two-bedroom apartments rent for 14,000 pesos ($300) per month. Renting may be the way to go if you dream of beach life instead of big city buzz. (But beaches are never far from anywhere.) Although there are ways around the law, foreigners can only own condos--and these are mostly found in big cities.

One of Cebu’s best addresses is the Crown Regency’s Fuente Towers. I’ll explain how to get income from a hotel condo arrangement in the International Living Magazine, but you could live here full-time. A 729-square-foot apartments with a sea view starts at 5 million pesos ($102,500). Studios are from 3.5 million pesos ($72,000).

Sure, much of the Philippines is impoverished, but a lot depends whereabouts you go. There’s plenty of middle-class wealth around. And people are still spending.

Cebu’s downtown Carbon Market is undeniably gritty, but glitzy malls like the city’s Ayala Center (and Greenbelt in Metro Manila) are some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. Cineplexes...classy restaurants with outdoor eating areas...Starbucks and their competitors at every turn.

The restaurant/entertainment areas of malls usually stay open until midnight, and security guards keep out any undesirables. What I liked was that malls and hotels employ people to give you a taxi slip. They note down the cab you’ve got into and check the driver is licensed. Regular readers will know I seem to attract rogue cabbies, but I never got ripped off anywhere here.

Steenie Harvey
Roving Travel Writer, International Living

Editor's Note: See the upcoming May issue of the IL Magazine for Steenie's first premium report from the Philippines--"Live on the Philippines' Most Magical Island for Less Than $1,000 a Month".