The Apartment and Costs of Living in the Philippines

Our apartment in Butuan is moderately high-end relative to the dwellings of most residents in this town. There are nicer places, but this suits our needs and purpose and is INEXPENSIVE. The rent is 6000 pesos per month (about $138 per month.).

Our apartment is at the far end of the upper floor of the yellow building.

The kitchen is adequate as is the single burner stove we purchased (it's like campstove). We purchased an efficient non-frost free refrigerator/freezer.

There are two bedrooms of the same size...SMALL. Each room has a handy built in closet.

We also bought a small GE window AC unit for our small bedroom (purchased it from Mady who found it inadequate for her internet cafe). The small unit is more than adequate for this small space and runs on LOW all day at the middle temperature setting. At night we turn it down a notch when the room gets a little chilly.  Kian got very hot during mid to late afternoons, even with fans blowing right on him while he was laying on the bed. Kian would sleep a lot or lay lethargically in the bed. Eme often gave him a cooling bath in the afternoon. Now Kian is like a little Energizer Bunny since AC has cooled and dried the bedroom. His sleep is deeper and more restful...waking up smiling every day.

The bathroom is very basic by US standards.  More familiar "Americanized" bathrooms with typical flushing toilets and showers do exist here. However, most filipinos use big bucket filled with cool water (no need for hot water here...or you'll be sweating right out of the shower), and smaller bucket with a handle (like a plastic saucepan) to scoop water from the big bucket and dump over their head and rinse off. I showed once with the hand-held shower Eme had installed only for me...but the water pressure is not adequate because our water pressure comes primarily from a big blue barrel on a metal tower -- which unfortunately is only a little bit higher than our apartment, so there is not enough pressure head. If I lived here and built a house...I'd have a  tower taller than the house and two barrels (one shiny stainless steel for cooler water, and one painted black for some warmer water for an evening shower). I'm not sure there is a need for a more sophisticated panel-type solar water heater because mostly you want to jump in a cool swimming pool, not take a hot shower.

Flushing the toilet means using the white pail to

pour water in the toilet. Works well actually.

This is our water supply. It is filled by a slower feed from below.

It is also the source of pressure for our faucet and shower...

There's not enough pressure for a shower.

If I lived here full-time I'd rent a nicer furnished place for a whopping 15,000 pesos per month (about $345). A very nice house with a sizable lot could be rented for under $550 per month. A maid would run about $30 per month. BUT..electricity is more expensive here than in the USA, so very quickly the savings gets eaten up if you try to cool a large home with AC. You can live MUCH cheaper in the Philippines than in the USA, but you have to be careful and watch your spending (particularly if the currency exchange between dollars and pesos has not become intuitive in your head).  Spending pesos feels like spending Monopoly money. But buying gasoline or paying for electricity is significantly more expensive than in USA.

The only real cost savings per living in Philippines are lower rents and lower costs of labor. Home Depot or Lowe's would go out of business so fast here...and this is why such big box DIY centers don't exist.  In USA costs of labor have gone up so much in the past few decades that more and more people started learning how to do basic remodelling, plumbing, electrical, etc. for themselves.  The entire DIY revolution, to my mind, has been driven by labor costs going up and up. I don't have much simpathy if an over-charging plumber or contractor who finds himself competing with cheaper foreign labor. If they want an income like an engineer...study hard in high school and go to college and get a degree in Engineering (As a high-school science teacher I see most students opting out of such a challenge...but they expect to live well anyway).  A plumber charged my mom $600 to install a new faucet in her bathroom, broke some tile, and did a little pipe soldering...mom did the drywall work. Here the entire job would cost me well under $100, and 80% of the cost would be for the new faucet! (so if fancy faucet is not a priority, the job gets even cheaper!).

Some Examples for comparison:

Example 1:
The AC unit required an electician to install a magnetic interrupt switch to protect the unit during sometimes rapidly fluctuating brownouts, a 240V high current outlet, and about half a meter of wire. The nice man visited us on a Saturday morning, tested the wire hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom to see if it was live (it was) and then made a list of items we needed to buy so he could finish the job (this is typical). So we went to the hardward store and bought all the items, and included a hammer, saw, nails, and some wood so we could frame the AC unit in the window. We sent a text message to the nice man and he came back right away and got to work. His installation of the magnetic switch, outlet and tacking down the wiring is great...very neat. But he was not finished. He helped lift the AC into place, measure and cut the wood, and we nailed in a nice frame around it and covered the window with heavy plastic to reduce air leaks.  Of course we offered him snacks and Coca Cola (it's customary to provide snacks and beverages for workers). He'd been here a total of about 1 and a half hours. So I asked "Pila?" (how much?). He paused and said "500". Five-hundred pesos is about $11.50. I paid about  2,300 pesos for the magnetic switch, outlet, wire, nails, wood, hammer, and a saw (about $53).

Example 2: Read my post about getting a haircut.

Example 3: We bought a modest, locally-handcrafted, wooden platform bed a few days ago. We brought it home on top of a tricycle.The metal one included with the apartment had metal bars about 6 inches apart instead of a flat platform. I didn't like feeling the bars in my sleep. We failed to consider the bed might not fit up the stairs to the apartment (the metal one comes apart easily).

The tricycle driver and a carpenter already working on a job for our landlord tried all angles to get it to fit. No way would it go up the stairs. So, the carpenter offered to take the legs off the bed after he was finished with his other job. About an hour later he took it apart in approximately 20 minutes. Then we moved the pieces upstairs where he went to work reassembling it in about 20 minutes, carefully checking for level and sturdiness (good thing we had nails leftover from the AC job).

When he was packing up his tools I asked "pila?"  He looked down shyly, then said to Eme "Whatever he thinks is fair". He really is shy about asking because he does not speak the language, but also he knows there is a chance I'll offer more than he would have asked for (depends..some foreigners really try to exploit the local labor). He could always counter if my offer was inordinately low. He has a young family and it was already past dinner time and dark outside....I said "300" ($6.89). This was not like taking apart a piece of IKEA furniture and putting it back together. This was a finished bed, not intended to be disassembled.  When he was finished I could not tell it had ever been taken apart. All together, including paying the tricycle driver and the carpenter, I have about $43 in the bed.