Photos et lettres des Philippines, de France et d'ailleurs



Here is a shorter version, a little revised, of an article written in 2010 and which was in English the most successful on my blog with almost 11,000 readers while in French there were only 850 persons interested which I cannot explain.

I started writing it after I had my lunch in Lab-as restaurant where the pianist played the following melody:

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing

This is the song's title after the eponym film's soundtrack but is above all a strong memory of my childhood because I was 11 years old when I saw the screening and heard the music for the first time at the movie theater in my home town and I was moved to tears by this love story.

The 1955 movie’s screenplay was inspired by the Han Suyin’s autobiographical novel published in 1952, 'A Many-splendored Thing'.
Even today 65 years later it remains one of my favorite romantic melodies. But even though I love it very much, in my French opinion the two most beautiful love songs ever are in chronological order, 'l'hymne à l'amour’ (Ode to love) written and performed by Edith Piaf in 1949 with a music composed by Marguerite Monnot then ' Ne me quitte pas' (Do not leave me) composed, written and performed by Jacques Brel in 1959.

In the Philippines where I live at least six months a year since 2001, romanticism is natural and it is not so long ago that suitors serenaded their love ones. It is still a country of romance stories where these ageing westerner men with a bruised heart are seeking love and a second or even a last chance in life.

Nevertheless, I am realistic and can still not believe in love at first sight between a beautiful girl of 20-25 years and a sixty or seventy-year-old man even in great shape. In fact, I don't remember having ever met a single, beautiful, young and educated woman from a good family falling in love with an old potbellied, bald foreigner. This patrician girl will choose a young man of her condition and let this lifeline to single mothers, separated women and girls without money or qualifications wishing to help their families. To do so they won't hesitate to marry a much older man, which is not so frowned upon by the Philippines society as it is in Western countries.

There is probably not passion when marrying an old guy, though in some cases a real loving relationship will ensue. Without necessarily being greedy, they are just pragmatic. He has more to offer than a bulge in his pants and they find with him respect, dignity, security and economic stability. Meanwhile, the man will be happy to have beside him a younger woman full of vitality to be a company and warm his bed at night. Because their partners are elderly, these ladies also think that they are easier to 'control' sexually than the cheating Filipinos husbands. In the Philippines the separations are so numerous whereas divorce, being not allowed by the law, an annulment is very difficult and expensive to obtain.
In addition, a study of U.S. Immigration has found that Americans who married an Asian woman had a success rate of 80% against 50% with a born American girl, so why not after all?

Of course, not all of these young ladies or old gentlemen are beyond reproach.

Ladies first, here they often think that their guys being from abroad have inexhaustible money and readily mistake their companion for an ATM. It does not come to their mind that many are just small pensioners with low incomes. Ladies, the real rich are not in the Philippines but in Florida, St. Barthelemy, the Côte d'Azur, the Costa Brava, the Seychelles or elsewhere. Moreover, this fact finally admitted, you do not need to console yourself in taking a young Filipino lover who will not need Viagra to be able to satisfy you.

Then, the gentlemen, the 'Foreigners' as they are commonly named in the Philippines, often of a certain age, are supposed to provide comfort and security to their soulmate. In Dumaguete they are mainly Americans and Germans then followed by the other English-speaking men. Back of the pack, there are the Norwegians, French, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, Japanese, and Koreans and so on.

Certainly, many of them are honest often separated or divorced looking for a new life; some can be called 'Sugar Daddy'. They either settle in the Philippines or go home with their partners in their respective countries.

About the rest, as you may have guessed already, not all are nice fellows, far from it, they are the liars and game players whose purpose is to have sex with as many as gullible girls as possible during their two or three-weeks’ vacation. A few Americans will even give them grades based on their sexual performances.

Next, they are the DOM or (Dirty Old Men), here to 'buy' fresh meat and very young meat in some cases. I think that still nowadays, virginity can be bought in Manila or Cebu around 5 to 600 € of which only a small portion will go to the lady. Amateurs are, among many others, often Japanese. The pleasure with pain is not a prerogative of the Marquis de Sade who may have a Japanese equivalent.

Last but it is not an exhaustive list, are the weak and the cowards who enjoy a higher purchasing power to exercise authority over their wives or even abuse them. Their spouses or girlfriends have no access to bank account or credit card, no driver's license or means of transport. For their needs they depend on the goodwill of their master who furthermore won't hesitate to openly cheat on them.

After almost twenty years spent in Dumaguete, I tried as a joke to give a term or a definition to the main ethnic groups regarding their relationships with Filipina women.

Of course, it is a prank not to be taken seriously!

The Americans, the largest community. They are as diverse as their great country; many are decent, interesting and educated people but so more are rednecks. For the latter the most important cultural event of Dumaguete in the past years was the opening of a Mc Donald's restaurant. They all have in common the hatred of their ex-wives probably due to the significant amount of their alimony. A good point for them, they are rather less alcoholic than Europeans and Australians.

The Germans and other Teutonic tribes, second in number. They are authoritarian with their wives, loud when drunk and many of my generation are not yet freed of racism inherited from their fathers and may look down on Filipinos as another kind of niggers.

The Swiss. Whether German or French-speaking, many despite their high purchasing power are said to be stingy (koripot in Visayas dialect).

The Australians. They are rude but friendly and nice guys when they are not drunk.

The Norwegians. These are people looking toward the sea and fleeing their endless winters. They are pretty decent, when they get drunk, do so peacefully. They are as sectarian as the French but they speak by far a better English...

The French. According to locals, they are pretty decent and romantic but also a bit stingy and cannot help but raise their voice when they talk about politics, something they never agree on. Is it to make up for the size of their peters that they have such a big mouth? I don’t. think so as the Americans say of them 'French are pricks'. Many other foreigners also think that French are snobbish and pretentious.

The Japanese. They still feel guilty for the war crimes committed in the Philippines during World War II. They like their partner to take great care of them, are a little macho and sometimes into games like bondage, submission, pain etc. According to many Manila bar girls, the small size of their penis is compensated by the thickness of their wallet.

The Koreans. They are haughty and contemptuous with the Filipinos but they invest a lot in the country. They stay mostly between themselves but a few marry a Filipina girl.

The Iranians. In Dumaguete in 2010, they were mostly students in English speaking universities as forbidden to travel in USA or UK. They were said by their classmates to be arrogant and dirty. Some of them married a Filipina not to return to the paradise of the mullahs anymore. However, without falling into anti-Islamist stereotypes, I pitied those of their spouses who followed them in Iran. I think that nowadays there are much fewer than ten years ago.

The Filipinos-Chinese (Chinoys). They are established for one, two generations or more in the Philippines where they own many businesses, shops and banks, they are hardworking and thrifty, and reproduce between themselves though I have a few examples of mixed marriages. In their stores the old owner ladies look like having an orgasm every time then open the cash register.

The Filipinos. Honor to whom honor is due. They say of themselves that they took the worst among their former colonizers, Spaniards and Americans. Husbands are often seen by their wives as irresponsible, drinkers, gamblers and womanizers. Don't we say that when a Filipino makes 1000 pesos he will spend 1500 while a Chinese will save 500.

Many young Pinoys (Filipinos) are still reluctant to use condoms therefore after they make their sweetheart pregnant at night behind a coconut tree, they run away from their responsibly thus making one more single mother looking for a foreigner husband.

Well I stop my rantings here but one last thing, can you guess who of these men are the most virile? Well according to each of them individually, they all have the strongest manly strength regardless of their age and nationality! Congratulations and thanks to the street peddlers of the Dumaguete Boulevard who are selling their counterfeit Chinese Viagra to them.

Now finally let us have a few nice love stories of happy couples:

There was this Norwegian who was in the same hotel as me. The poor was severely disabled physically though not older than 30. To imagine him you have to think of the Hunchback of 'Notre Dame de Paris' played by Anthony Quinn though my friend was less affected. His battered body was home, in my opinion, of an above average intelligence. How nature can be cruel!
One day he came to sit at my table in the restaurant opposite the pension house and introduced me to his fiancée. She was from Bayawan in the mountains about 100 kilometers away, she was about 23-25 years old and if not really beautiful, was still cute.
I saw him several times and eventually one day he confided to me that between the two of them, it was love in its purest form. I refrained from smiling as I respected his feelings and I was right., five years later they were still together and happily married.

The second story is that of Remy, he was 65 and had never been married and had been around the world all his life. Someday an Englishman, who recited texts by Sartre in the original version, introduced him to his 30-year-old maid, Marilyn. They married and he became a father for the first time at 67 years of a beautiful baby boy named Adrien, whose I am one of the godfathers. Sadly, he lost his life by drowning shortly after, while, ironically, we all thought that alcohol would kill him and not seawater. Today his widow lives in Paris with his son and earns his living as a domestic helper. strong and great woman must I add.

The third is that of Roland, who is now 87 years old and lives on top of a hill with 250 steps to climb before entering his house. Retired from the French railroad company, it took him ten years to build his boat and sailed on the seven seas for seven years without even knowing a word of English.
During his journey, he stopped in the Bay of Tambobo in the Philippines to repair some damage and no longer returned to sea after meeting Annabelle, now his wife to whom he preferred to teach French to communicate rather than learning English.

I still have so many nice stories to talk about in the Philippines and France as well between foreign husbands and Filipina wives but I will stop here with a last quote:

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing

PS. You may think that I forgot the Britons tribes, how could I ignore our worst friends often cunning enough to outsmart the Frogs on international political and commercial scale.

They are not numerous in Negros Oriental as they may have enough former colonies to escape the fog and rain of their country. However, I met a few in Dumaguete Brits and Scots as well, not to be mistaken as the latter don’t like the former.

I still don’t know well how is their relation with the Filipinas but a guy of my age was friendly even offering me a glass of wine in a restaurant because we both loved rugby. Later he told me that he supported the Brexit saying that the UK would be better off without Europe then asked me if his opinion wouldn’t affect our friendship, of course I replied no.
I haven’t met him since and I guess he is in UK due to the COVID 19 pandemic