⌛ Dgte 15-20 Years Ago - Expat views

A lot has changed

When i first came here in 1981 you could drive in town and knew who was at certain stores by the cars parked outside. Maybe less than 50 cars here then and the only people who had them had money and most were beat up old junkers. Land prices on the beach in Mangnao (Private Garden) were 15 peso's a sq/mtr. and between the beach and the hiway 5 peso's sq/mtr. 50 peso's bought you "pecho", hanging rice and a SMB on the boulevard in one of the hundreds of barbecue stands. Bacolod was at least an 8 to 10 hour drive with most the road gravel and missing bridges / river crossings. Only way in those days was the long way round thru San Carlos and Escalante, if planning to go thru Mabini you needed a 4 wheel drive and lots of time to dig out of the holes you were sure to get stuck in. Same thing going via Don Salvador Benedicto. To make a long distance phone call you called the operator and booked a call, if lucky you got called back in 12 hours or so and your call might go thru,, we had three digit phone numbers back then. Other method was to go to the PLDT office in Bais and try there,, sometimes worked sometimes didn't .. Best option was take the boat to Cebu and go to the Sundowner Hotel.. They had the only IDD line in the Visayas.. No cell phones and some enterprising people had ICOM 2-AT radio's and if you found the number you could dial directly into the long distance network via the tower on Mount Talinis.. (don't ask me how i know) If you needed to contact someone outside of Dumaguete or overseas Telegrams were the way to go.. Thats how my company would contact me and then i would take the trip to Cebu to talk to them on the phone. Power was something people just took for granted as not working. Can remember only the very wealthy had aircons as the voltage at nite was just too low to operate them,, turn on all your flourescent lites in the early evening before 5 or there was no way they would lite later on.. This was in the city and not in Dauin.. Had many a candle lite dinner but the romance just wasn't there.. Philippine Airlines had just phased out DC-3"s and had upgraded to the YS-11"s, a Japanese British Aerospace knock off.. Flight times to Manila was 1 hour and 50 minutes give or take.. and never knew if the plane would fly or not depending on weather conditions.. But life was good, slow and easy. Food was local and what you could get mainly in the market, fresh killed meat, fresh veggies etc.. Times had a few imported items like corn flakes and maybe even some spam. Potato's came in a can (kinda like Golf Balls) When the first McDonalds opened in Manila in the University Belt we all made a pilgrimage to get our fangs on a Big Mac , Fries and Apple pie.. Remember the line went around the block and took 3 hours to get our order but wow it was delicious.. Things have changed a lot in 30 years and yes some is good and some is bad..

 

Yes, it was the good old days--