THE PHILIPPINES RIGHT NOW - Is This The Best Time To Visit?

After two years of pandemic-related border closures, the Philippines has finally reopened to tourists. Pea delivers a ground-level reality check for foreigners considering a visit, breaking down what to expect based on whether you're coming to reunite with a partner or arriving solo hoping to explore and meet women. She covers the gauntlet of health protocols, the decimated nightlife scene, and the practical frustrations of navigating a country still far from normal.

If you're coming to reunite with a specific person, it's probably worth it despite the hassles ​

• Your Filipina will likely meet you at the airport and smother you with attention for the duration
• "Anyone who knows anything about Filipinas can tell you that we typically smother you with attention and we really don't like you looking at other women like some kid in a candy store"
• Pea frames the pandemic restrictions as a silver lining for Filipinas: "The virus is actually a blessing in disguise for us Filipinas — it lets us keep tabs on you by reducing your temptation level"
• Filipinas love being useful, locking you arm-in-arm, never more than a step away, always within sight
• You won't care what's open or closed because Netflix and chill is just as good as any adventure "that she's not going to want to do anyway"

If you're coming solo to meet Filipinas, you're in for a rough time ​

• Masks are required everywhere in public, which hides facial expressions — the key tool for reading people
• Masks specifically take away "the Filipina's biggest weapon — those quick flirty little smiles we use to show you we might be interested"
• You can still interact in restaurants and coffee shops where masks come off, or use Tinder, which Pea notes "is considered a legitimate dating site here in the Philippines"
• Without a Filipina guide, getting around is significantly harder right now

Finding open businesses is a maddening exercise in futility ​

• Many businesses still show as open on Google but are actually operating on restricted hours or closed entirely — "you won't find out until you go there in person and see the closed sign on the door"
• Pea says even in normal times this is a constant problem, but during the pandemic it's "10 times worse"
• Calling ahead is almost useless: "Even a business that's open rarely answers the phone — it's like they regard basic phone service as an optional luxury"
• You can spend hours driving place to place only to end up back at your hotel raiding the minibar
• Malls are open, but everything else is hit or miss

The health protocol gauntlet is exhausting and relentless ​

• At a hotel in Cebu, every re-entry required: filling out a health declaration form (Pea jokes it asks for "your name, address, bra size"), hand disinfectant spray, a talking thermometer check, then walking through a full-body spray tunnel
• At grocery stores: an armed guard sprays your hands with liquid "that sometimes smells suspiciously like chlorine," takes your temperature, and swipes your QR code
• At the airport: Pea got "crop dusted by a guy in a hazmat suit" right off the plane — "I don't know what was in the spray can and I knew I better not ask — just close your eyes, turn your head away, and hope it doesn't shoot up your nose"
• Then lengthy health forms, followed by a line that "moves even slower than Filipino time" for manual review
• This was just a local airport — traveling within the Philippines is its own ordeal on top of getting into the country

Cebu's nightlife has been gutted ​

• Many establishments couldn't survive two years of shutdowns, alcohol bans, restricted hours, and no foreign tourists spending money
• Cebu has an 11 p.m. city-wide curfew
• Mango Square, the hub of Cebu nightlife, is now "more like a ghost town"
• Planet X, a popular club for westerners to party and meet women, is boarded up and permanently closed
• Marshalls, Pea's favorite Irish pub that used to be packed with live music every night, is "shut down and abandoned, never to return"
• Cubana, once so busy you couldn't find a seat, is technically still open but hasn't recovered
• One small food vendor near Mango Square is still hanging on, with menu items "appropriately named for the area"

Super Typhoon Odette compounded the problems ​

• A huge super typhoon ripped through less than two months before filming, destroying infrastructure
• The good news: damage was confined to a relatively small area and things are slowly recovering
• Pea estimates a couple more months before most places show little evidence of the typhoon

Pea's bottom-line advice ​

• Coming to be with a partner: "Come on in, relax, enjoy — but don't plan on doing a lot"
• Coming solo: "You might want to wait until the economy comes back, places reopen, and you don't have to get squirted, sprayed, and dusted every 10 feet"
• She acknowledges the nagging voice telling you "happiness is waiting just over the horizon" and that all the good Filipinas will be taken — "The happiness part is true, but we'll never run out of Filipinas"

Pea closes with a mock news broadcast about the border reopening ​

• Jokes that the opening "has brought joy to the hearts of many men and dread to the hearts of many Filipinas who realize they now have to choose between their western boyfriends and their local husbands"
• Foreigners are about to find out if the 300 dollars a month they've been sending "was money well spent"
• Reports shortages of large-sized condoms causing concern among suppliers struggling to keep up with "the stiff demand"
• Filipino YouTubers in Dumaguete spotted digging "fallout shelters" in their backyards

📺 Watch the full video on YouTube

🔔 Subscribe to The Filipina Pea