The Strangest Things About Living in the Philippines - 12 Weird Facts!

Pea presents a candlelight culture episode covering a dozen quirky Filipino customs and behaviors that baffle foreigners, ranging from New Year's superstitions involving fruit and grapes to the unspoken dining etiquette of the "shame piece," explaining not just what Filipinos do but the cultural logic (or superstition) behind each practice.

New Year's fruit and grape rituals ​

• Filipinos place exactly 12 pieces of round fruit (apples, oranges — not bananas) on the dining table for good fortune in the coming year
• For those seeking love: crawl under the table with exactly 12 grapes before midnight on New Year's Eve, eat one grape per bell stroke, and you're "guaranteed" to meet your soulmate by 12 minutes into the new year
• Pea confirms Filipinos genuinely believe this, then immediately concedes it obviously doesn't work

Geckos: the uninvited, pooping houseguests ​

• Geckos are everywhere in the Philippines, yelling at each other day and night inside your home
• They have favorite pooping spots — ceilings and door frames — and will drop salmonella-laced poop directly on your head without any concern for your location
• If you try to remove one, they stick to your skin like super glue and pulling them off is extremely painful
• Filipinos generally just tolerate them, but foreigners lose their minds
• The trick: spray garlic extract at entry points — geckos hate garlic
• Pea's joke: the garlic smell repels geckos but attracts your in-laws, so "pick your poison"

The "shame piece" — the unspoken last-bite rule ​

• Filipinos never take the last scoop of rice, last doughnut, or last slice of pizza, especially if there's a guest or an elder at the table
• This leftover is called the "shame piece" — taking it breaks a cultural norm of showing restraint and respect for the group
• Creates a "Mexican standoff" where everyone eyes the last piece but nobody grabs it
• Even in private with just a spouse, the rule still applies
• The Filipina will play the "fraction game" — splitting the last piece of bacon in half, eating one half, then splitting the remaining half again, and again, until there's just a crumb left that someone can grab without activating the shame rule
• Pea's advice to husbands: just grab the last half so she doesn't have to keep doing math with her food

Leaving all the lights on (and the ghost factor) ​

• Filipinas don't intuitively connect leaving lights on to higher electricity bills — if they can't see the electricity being used, it doesn't register
• They also leave lights on at night in big spaces because they're afraid of ghosts
• "Big space" to a Filipina is anything more than two rooms — Pea jokes about Western homes being "gigantic 1,500 square foot mansions" that terrify them
• Related: Filipinas leave doors open when you're trying to heat or cool a room because they've never had to think about airflow before
• Pea asks for patience: "just give us some time"

Never peeling the plastic film off new products ​

• Filipinos leave the factory plastic on TVs and appliances permanently
• The reason: it's a subtle brag that they could afford something brand new rather than secondhand
• It doubles as product protection, "but it's mostly just bragging"
• Your Filipina will look at you in horror when you start peeling the film off your new TV

Filipino time — and the formula ​

• Pea provides the actual conversion formula: "5 minutes" = leaving the house in 30 minutes; party starts at 6:00 = she arrives at 9:00; neither will any other Filipino guest
• The exception: if there's a shoe sale opening at 10 a.m., she'll be waiting outside before sunrise — "it's all about priorities"
• Pea acknowledges foreigners find it rude and disrespectful but says flatly it will never change
• Adaptation strategy: tell people your party starts at 3 p.m. if you want them there by 6

The birthday trap ​

• People in the Philippines seem excited to learn your birthday and enthusiastically organize a big celebration with roast pig, spaghetti platters, and tons of beer
• The catch: in Filipino culture, the birthday person pays for everything
• What looks like a generous gesture is actually a request for free food

No knives at the table ​

• Most Filipino meals and even many restaurants only provide a fork and spoon — no knife
• Filipinos hold the spoon in the right hand and fork in the left, using the spoon to cut food (even meat) and shovel it onto the fork
• Reasons: if they don't need knives, why buy them? Also one less utensil to wash
• Historical note: Filipinos originally ate with their hands (similar to Indian tradition); the Spanish introduced utensils but Filipinos never adopted chopsticks like other Southeast Asian countries
• There's a theory the Spanish withheld knives as weapons, but Pea debunks it — Filipinos worked rice fields with machetes

Cavalier attitude toward safety ​

• Filipinos ride motorbikes at night with no headlights, carry babies on handlebars with no helmets
• In Western countries, parents would lose custody; in the Philippines, it doesn't raise an eyebrow
• Pea frames the cultural contrast: Westerners overthink and overplan everything down to the minute, which either drives Filipinos crazy or makes them laugh
• Filipinos live day-to-day and go with the flow — Pea acknowledges this isn't always the best approach but suggests Westerners could learn to slow down and relax too

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