The Philippines is a great place to buy indigenous art, woodwork, masks and religious artefacts, mostly at rock-bottom prices. Manila also contains a number of shiny malls with stores offering much the same designer gear you can find in London or New York. The country’s two main department-store chains are Rustan’s and SM. Both are good for clothes and shoes, at slightly lower prices than in the West; children’s clothes are especially inexpensive.
CDs are a bargain in the Philippines, at around P500 apiece for legitimately produced items, though the choice is limited to mainstream Western artists and OPM (“original Pilipino music”) from local stars. DVDs are also cheaper than in the West (P500–950 for legitimate releases), the range limited to Hollywood blockbusters and local movies. Note that pirated products are sold in many malls and on the street for a fraction of the price. The best places to buy legitimate releases are in Manila; elsewhere it’s a case of scouting around in the malls to find local retailers.
Souvenirs
Typical souvenirs include models of jeepneys, wooden salad bowls, cotton linen and small items such as fridge magnets made of coconut shell or carabao horn. In department stores you can find cutlery sets made from carabao horn and bamboo and costing less than P2000. Woven placemats and coasters are inexpensive and easy to pack to take home. Filipino picture frames are eye-catching and affordable. Made from raw materials such as carabao horn and Manila hemp, they are available in most department stores. All towns have markets that sell cheap local goods such as sleeping mats (banig) that make colourful wall hangings, and earthernware water jars or cooking pots that make attractive additions to a kitchen.
For serious souvenir-hunting, you’ll have to rummage around in small antique shops. There aren’t many of these, and they’re often tucked away in low-rent areas. The better shops in big cities are listed in the Guide; elsewhere, ask around at your hotel or look in the local Yellow Pages under “Antique dealers”. Many of the items in these shops are religious artefacts, although you’ll also find furniture, decorative vases, lamps, old paintings, mirrors and brassware.
Some souvenir stores and antique shops will ship goods home for you for an extra charge. Otherwise you could send bulky items home by regular post. Note that the trade in coral and seashells as souvenirs in beach areas is decidedly unsound environmentally, as is the manufacture of decorative objects and jewellery from seashells.
Tribal and religious artefacts
Not all tribal and religious artefacts are genuine, but even the imitations make good gifts. Woven baskets and trays of the kind used by Cordillera tribes are a bargain, starting from only a few hundred pesos. They come in a range of sizes and shapes, including circular trays woven from grass that are still used to sift rice, and baskets worn like a backpack for carrying provisions. The best are the original tribal baskets, which cost a little more than the reproductions, but have an appealing nut-brown timbre as a result of the many times they have been oiled. You can find them in antique shops around the country and also in markets in Banaue and Sagada.
Some exceptional home accessories and ornaments are produced by tribes in Mindanao, particularly in less touristy areas such as Marawi City and around Lake Sebu. Beautiful brass jars, some of them more than a metre tall, cost around P2000, while exquisite wooden chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl cost around P3000, inlaid serving trays P500.
Rice gods (bulol), carved wooden deities sometimes with nightmarish facial expressions, are available largely in Manila and the Cordilleras. In Manila, they cost anything from a few hundred pesos for a small reproduction to P20,000 for a genuine figurine of modest size; they’re much cheaper if you haggle for them in Banaue or Sagada. At markets in the Cordilleras, look out also for wooden bowls, various wooden wall carvings and fabric wall hangings.
The best place to look for Catholic religious art is in Manila, though antique shops in other towns also have a selection. Wooden Catholic statues called santos and large wooden crucifixes are common. Cheaper religious souvenirs such as rosaries and icons of saints are sold by street vendors outside many of the more high-profile pilgrimage cathedrals and churches such as Quiapo in Manila and Santo Niño in Cebu.
Textiles
In market areas such as Divisoria in Manila, Colon in Cebu and the Palitan barter centre in Marawi, Mindanao, you can find colourful raw cloth and finished batik products. Don’t leave Mindanao without investing a couple of hundred pesos in a malong, a versatile tube-like garment of piña (pineapple fibre) that can be used as a skirt, housedress, blanket or bedsheet. Ceremonial malong are more ornate and expensive, from P4000 to P10,000. Another native textile is Manila hemp, which comes from the trunk of a particular type of banana tree. Both piña and Manila hemp are used to make attractive home accessories sold in department stores, such as laundry baskets, lampshades and vases. The versatile and pliable native grass, sikat, is woven into everything from placemats to rugs.
Department stores everywhere have a good selection of Philippine linen products with delicate embroidery and lace flourishes. Some of these are handmade in Taal; a good set of pillowcases and bedsheets will cost about P2000 in Taal’s market, half the price in Rustan’s or SM. In beach areas you’ll find a good range of cotton sarongs, cheap (from P200), colourful and versatile – they can be used as tablecloths or throws.
Jewellery
The malls are full of stalls selling cheap jewellery, but you’ll also find silver-plated earrings, replica tribal-style jewellery made with tin or brass, and attractive necklaces made from bone or polished coconut shell. In Mindanao – as well as in some malls in Manila, Cebu City and at souvenir stalls in Boracay – pearl jewellery is a bargain. Most of the pearls are cultivated on pearl farms in Mindanao and Palawan. White pearls are the most common, but you can also find pink and dove grey. They are made into earrings, necklaces and bracelets; simple earrings cost around P450 while a necklace can range from P1000 for a single string up to P10,000 for something more elaborate.
Musical instruments
In Cebu, and increasingly on the streets of Manila and Davao, you can pick up a locally made handcrafted guitar, bandurria (mandolin) or ukelele. Though the acoustic quality is nothing special, the finish may include mother-of-pearl inlays, and prices are low – a steel-string acoustic guitar will set you back P2000. Mindanao’s markets – such as Aldevinco in Davao – are a good place to rummage for decorative drums and Muslim gongs.
Bargaining
Prices are fixed in department stores and most retail outlets in malls, but in many antique shops and in markets, you’re expected to haggle. Bargaining is always amicable and relaxed, never confrontational. Filipinos see it as something of a polite game, interjecting their offers and counter offers with friendly chitchat about the weather, the state of the nation or, if you’re a foreigner, where you come from and what you’re doing in the Philippines.
Never play hardball and make a brusque “take it or leave it” offer because that’s likely to cause embarrassment and offence. Start by offering fifty to sixty percent of the initial asking price and work your way up from there. Foreigners tend to get less of a discount than Filipinos, so if you’re travelling with Filipino friends, ask them to do the haggling for you and hover in the background as if you’re not interested.
Sari-sari stores
A Philippine institution, the humble sari-sari store – sari-sari means “various” or “a variety” – is often no more than a barrio shack or a hole in the wall selling an eclectic but practical range of goods. If you’re short of shampoo, body lotion, cigarettes, rum, beer or you’ve got a headache and need a painkiller, the local sari-sari store is the answer, especially in areas without supermarkets. All items are sold in the smallest quantities possible: shampoo comes in packets half the size of a credit card, medicine can be bought by the pill and cigarettes are sold individually. Buy a soft drink or beer and you may be perplexed to see the store holder pour it into a plastic bag, from which you’re expected to drink it through a straw. This is so they can keep the bottle and return it for the deposit of a few centavos. Most sari-sari stores are fiercely familial, their names – the Three Sisters, the Four Brothers or Emily and Jon-Jon’s – reflecting their ownership.
The sari-sari store is also held dear by Filipinos as an unofficial community centre. Many sari-sari stores, especially in the provinces, have crude sitting areas outside, encouraging folk to linger in the shade and gossip or talk basketball and cockfighting.
Prostitution and sex tourism
The Philippines, like some other Southeast Asian countries, has an unfortunate reputation for prostitution and sex tourism. It’s a huge industry domestically with an estimated 800,000 men, women and, sadly, children working in the trade. The country’s international image as a sex destination was largely a result of the US military presence here during and after World War II when “go go” or “girlie” bars flourished around the bases at Clark and Subic Bay.
While it’s illegal to sell or procure sex, the trade still operates under the guise of entertainment: sex workers are employed as singers, dancers, waitresses or “guest relations officers” in clubs and bars where they are expected to leave with any client who pays a fee. Then there’s what are euphemistically dubbed “freelancers”, prostitutes that independently cruise bars looking for paying customers.
According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (wwww.catw-ap.org), some fifteen thousand Australian men a year visit Angeles, north of Manila, on sex tours; plenty of Americans, Brits and Europeans join them, while Koreans, Taiwanese and Chinese have developed their own networks, usually based on karaoke bars and restaurants. Manila, Cebu City, Subic Bay and Pasay City are also major sex destinations.
Child prostitution
Child Protection in the Philippines (wcpu-net.org.ph) estimates that almost half the prostitutes in the Philippines are underage, many of them street children lured from the provinces by the promise of work or simply food and water. If you suspect someone of being a paedophile or engaging in any abusive behaviour towards minors, call hotline t1-6-3 or check www.bantaybata163.com.
“Mail-order brides”
Though you will often see older Western men accompanied by young, attractive Filipina women, don’t assume all of these are prostitutes; the situation is confused further by the legal and equally popular phenomenon of mail-order brides (most now arranged by online dating sites) – plenty of the men you’ll see have been matched with their Filipina “girlfriend” and intend to marry them, however dubious this might seem.
Public holidays
- January 1 New Year’s Day
- February 25 Anniversary of the EDSA revolution
- March/April (variable) Maundy Thursday, Good Friday
- April 9 Bataan Day
- May 1 Labor Day
- June 12 Independence Day
- August 21 Ninoy Aquino Day
- August 29 National Heroes Day
- August (variable) Eid ’l Fitr, the end of Ramadan
- November 1 All Saints’ Day
- December 25 Christmas Day; the following day is also a holiday
- December 30 Rizal Day, in honour of José Rizal