It is a different culture and value system, unless you isolate yourself. So in that sense it is a nightmare if you aren't able to totally abandon your own culture and value system. Which is very difficult if not impossible to do.

I live here with a combination of isolating myself, cherry picking the best advantages, and to some extent my western culture was eviscerated by being here in the Philippines for half of my life (I will be age 52 in June). For example, I no longer use toilet paper. I always use my hand, water, and soap instead.

Many westerners just come for a vacation and sex tour (but more go to Thailand for that since Philippines is a Catholic country), but the infrastructure is sub-par and the disease welcoming you doesn't discriminate against white people.

You can hook up with a pretty lady here, but most likely she is going to give you a health gift that keeps on giving even after you've left the country.

You can find a good girl who won't give you an STD, but she will drive you nuts with her weird culture and her entire family out to the 5th cousin who will expect everything from you, such as never brushing her teeth. This beautiful lady in the mall started to speak and I forgot about her beauty.

On the positive side, filipinos are happy go lucky and want to have fun all the time. The downside of this is don't expect your gf to help you accomplish much of anything, other than consume your resources on fun all the time. Responsibility and attention to details are not concepts that are practiced here.

You can make some minor tweaks here and there, and perhaps there are some exceptions but what I have written is accurate enough to represent the average reality here.