1. These are things you will not have to worry about if you are staying in a motel. However if you go out to visit your potential brides family or decide to attend a fiesta you should be aware of this.The Philippines is still considered a third world country even though we do have modern facilities here. Most of the population is poor by western standards. We buy our drinking water because the well water is not safe to drink. Even the city water that most do drink in the cities I do not drink because of heavy chlorination in it. Water is very inexpensive to buy and there are water filter stations all over the city. The other thing is whats known as the Filipino toilet. most all Filipino household have this kind of toilet which consists of just the bowl its self. There is usually no running water so there is no need for a tank. They use a large bucket filled with water with a smaller pail used for flushing. Toilet paper is optional so do not count on it. Many use the soap and water method rather than buying toilet paper at all. This is also how you will find most public restrooms. A word of advice. If your out all day. Bring your own TP.
2. I have seen other sites that tout how their women speak excellent English. Most educated people in this country do speak and understand quite a bit of English. However even though they are taught English from grade school they mainly speak their native language when they communicate with each other. What I am trying to get across is being patient with their understanding of you and you of them. The fact is they are taught basic English skills and will not know many of the slang terms we use. Its like comparing the English language from Great Britain to English in the US. The language is mostly the same but we have to work at understanding each other when we first encounter someone from Great Britain. The same applies here. My wife speaks excellent English, Japanese plus 2 dialects of the Filipino language. However there have been times when she said she understood me and she thought she did but she did not understand 1 word in the statement and that was the word thatave the statement its meaning. Then it turned into a much larger misunderstanding. My point is to be patient and double check her understanding of your more important conversations. This will save you from a lot of potential arguments down the road.
3. We live in the tropics. Come prepared for that. Those men that come from any where closer to equatorial areas will be more used to the climate here. I lived in Michigan when I lived in the states so it has been a little bit of an adjustment for me. I enjoy the 80-90 degree weather but being out in the direct sun I would not recommend without a bunch of sun screen. Bring plenty of that if you intend on being out in the sun a lot.
The chances of you coming here during Typhoon season is 50-50. Typhoon season is just like hurricane season in the US. However the difference is we live on an island and there is not much land to slow these storms down so when they hit its eventful to say the least. We are lucky to be in somewhat of a protected area and very rarely have been hit by the eye of a storm but we do get our share of the rain from the tail ends of these storms. The majority of these storms stay off to the north and we are spared the brutal part of them. I was here for the typhoon Frank that hit here in 2008. That typhoon was what they call a 100 year storm because in my father in laws entire life he does not remember being directly hit by a typhoon on the island and he is almost 70 yrs old. I have since found out that we have been hit by much smaller storms and that was the reason not too many people remember them. They did not cause but half the destruction of typhoon Frank.
4. Take a word of advise and DO NOT FALL IN LOVE ONLINE. Keep your options open. You may easily have feelings for any number of the women we introduce you to. You really must wait until you meet these women face to face before you make any sort of life changing decisions. We do everything possible to insure these women are nice, educated and respectable but we cant be constantly by their side to double check. The choice is absolutely yours but we have found that most times the person one thinks will be that special one. (The one they fall in love with online) is not the person they end up choosing in the end.
5. Do not be misled by pictures. Make sure you see them in a web cam. Most times the pictures that women have of themselves were taken by them self. Most of which are not flattering if you know what I mean. I have always believed that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the plain facts are that even some of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses can look like death warmed over without the professional makeup. Keep an open mind on this. As you can see my wife is quite beautiful but when we first met online the pictures she used were not very attractive. We do take a major of the first pictures we have of these girls so we do the best we can to catch the natural look but in all honesty I am not a pro. We will also be posting any pictures that the women send us after they have been accepted to the site. I'm sure that most all of them will have access to a web cam when you talk with them online and you will see their true look there.
6. I really do not want to be discouraging to anyone who really wants to find their true love but. Having said that one needs to be realistic about getting a potential bride back to the states or home country. There are many requirements for someone who wants to bring a foreign wife or family back to their native country. I am most familiar with the requirements of the US so I will explain those for now. However we do provide visa services with any package tour so we do have other countries requirements on file. To put it simply you need to prove that you will be able to support your new bride. The US government does not want her to end up being a burden on the state so you have to guarantee her support. In short you should bring in at least $ 20000.00 a year before taxes. There is a formula that use and its 125% of poverty level income for the size of your family. What that means is if you have a family of 4 including you your wife and 2 kids of yours from a previous marriage then that number would go up to around $ 25000.00 per year before taxes. It depends on where you live also.
7. Refrain from sending any of these women money. As I said earlier the majority of the population is poor so even though these girls hold good jobs does not mean they could not use extra money for them or their family. Its tempting to do because a dollar goes really far here and you would not need to send very much to help them out. However if you start sending one money you might feel informed and it can easily turn into a snowball affect. As any caring husband would do to help out his family if you find someone special, get married and then want to help their family then by all means help but do not feel obliged to when you are first getting to know them.
For example an English friend of mine who met and married his wife in England has a large family here in Iloilo. The majority of this extended family lived next to a river not far from here. When typhoon Frank came through in 2008 the whole family was literally washed away. Luckily no one died but they literally had only the cloths on their backs left. My friend decided to buy them a plot of land that was further away from the river to insure that would not happen again and they all live there now. About 25 people if I remember correctly. Of course they were all very thankful and I met them all when they were working on his house when he needed some construction done. Some refused to be paid for the work because of the gesture he had done for them, even though they needed the money. Of course he forced them to take it anyway.