KEY Thread Best Posts in Thread: Driving in the Philippines and Dumaguete

I'm one of those retired, so I can and do adjust my time to avoid rush hours. Motorbike, no car. I actually like driving here vs. USA. Here, you can putt along at 30 - 45km in and around the city and the faster crazy types just buzz around you; no road rage directed towards you. In the USA, if you're not cruising at well beyond hwy speed limits, say 140km/hr, you become the *sshole in their way.

 

Personally, whenever I find myself complaining about people driving like crazy, without or with misleading lights (red head light / white tail light anyone?), I remind myself that this all is the way it is because of a lack of rules or, where there are rules, lack of enforcement.

Which, on the other hand, is one of the things I enjoy here

 

Driving in dumaguete is not so difficult....Just be always patient and push a bit.....mostly the other drivers acting like the people of dumaguete suppose to be....gentle people......Btw motorbike is 100 times more dangerous then using a car......

 

Follow something bigger than you, or follow a cluster of vehicles-let them lead the way instead of you if you find riding to challenging.

 

That's pretty funny and also applies to my current country of residence, Colombia.
Looking forward to spending some time in Dumaguete in the near future.

 

When i see the antics people get up to on the roads in and around Dumaguete it surprises me that there are so few road accidents, the motorbikes coming from the right hand side roads onto the main highway without even looking always amaze me even though i have seen it so many times, another classic is the pedestrians stepping into the road not on a crossing not even looking in the traffic direction and waving one hand at the traffic and walking so slow like they have lost their way.
I think many people here would benefit from an experience i had as a teenager in the UK, my school was in the centre of the city so i had to walk through some busy streets, one day a man around 50 stepped off the pavement and was hit by a car, i don't know if he was drunk,distracted,suicidal or just plain stupid but when looked at him lying unconscious or dead there were no visible marks on him but there was a lot of blood coming from his ears, i don't know if he survived but this experience was a definite game changer for me and i instantly gained 1000% more respect than i had before for road safety.

 

You have 90 days you can drive on a valid foreign license. To convert your drivers license you now need to be able to show that you can legally stay in the country for 12 months, meaning 13A marriage visa retirement visa or I have heard of a case where they accepted a Balikbayan (entering the country with a Filipino spouse) if you go to LTO within a couple days of entering the country but as with so many things, your milage may vary.

Hopefully at some point they will relax the enforcement of driving license law. If you can't convert to a Philippines license I would just drive on my valid foreign license. How is the police to know you have been in the country more than 90 days? I never had anyone but immigration ask for my passport. If I had to do something illegal, I would rather it be driving without a valid license than some kind of conspiracy to get a fraudulent license. That's my take.