The Market in Moalboal

Let me first start off by saying sorry for posting the smaller photos on the blog. Internet connection here is really slow and I used my nice SLR camera on most of these photos (meaning the file size is quite large). The download time on each photo is averaging about 15 minutes for the small size blog photos and I know you want to see lots of photos....the good news is if you double click on the photo you can see it at triple the size.

Beth, this first photo is for you…sorry it isn’t better, I couldn’t capture the creepy creeperton hotel in all its glory…this photo is looking down on it from the trail (hotel is the green roofed building on the right).


On our way home from Kawalsan Falls, we stopped at the market in Moalboal because David needed some new slippers (aka flip flops). David found his slippers for under a dollar at the first market stall, but they were nice enough to show me some of the other stalls.

In the photo above, you can see they have all sorts of things they sell, from slippers, to school uniforms. Vance pointed out how resourceful these people were. They make so many of their household materials from old cans, glass, scrap metal, etc. For example take a look at the kerosene lanterns someone had made.

This next photo is a very common stove for many of the poor people in the province (in the country). Vance explained to me that there were really just two classes, rich and poor in this country, and not much of a middle class (although it is starting to develop). This is one of many types of stoves you might find in the dirty kitchen, that’s a stove placed outside in the yard for use with wood fire (a BBQ of sorts). He said that many people would also have a small, one burner gas stove inside, much like you would use on a backpacking trip.


As you can see, you really can buy anything, and the kitchen sink in the market. The kitchen sinks in the bottom of this photo are pretty common place in most Filipino homes.

This next photo is a home near the market. Vance said this is an old Spanish style home and it would be owned by someone in the upper poor class, a person with a stable income that would be able to maintain payment for that house. He said a Filipino teacher would be able to afford living in that house, only if they inherited it from someone in the family because they wouldn’t be able to afford the price of a down payment on it. In case you were wondering, a Filipino teacher makes about $250 a month.

If you want to buy land, it cost about $12 - $20 a square meter in the province land and in the city is about $300 a square meter. Most people live on 5x7 meter lots. A larger majority of people can’t afford the price of land and home ownership so they rent. A teacher would need to save up 4 months of their salary ($1000) to buy the cheapest, beater car…this is why many people take the tricycles, buses, jeepneys and hable hables to get places. This is an upclose look at a hable hable. You can see how they modify with extra seats and foot stands.

This is the school grounds in Moalboal. Vance tells me that 50% of the population in the Philippines is under the age of 15. The schools are bursting at the seams, but very few new classes or teachers are added. It is not unusual for one teacher to have 60-70 kids in a single classroom, sitting three to a desk. The city Mandeaue, north of Naga (a city smaller than Vancouver, WA) added 5,000 new students with no new classrooms or new teachers! I can’t even imagine!

We also picked up some fruit while we were at the market. How could we resist?

After we returned from the market, we had dinner and had a quiet evening at the resort. The next morning, we had breakfast and went to the dive shop to rent some snorkel gear. It cost 150 pesos (a little over $3) for the mask, snorkel, and fins. Sorry, I don’t have any great photos for you of all the cool fish I saw out in the ocean. I don’t have an underwater camera. But I will tell you some of the highlights of what we saw. We saw some beautiful clown fish, angel fish, parrot fish, swordfish, a whole bunch of other fish I don’t know the names of, a black and white sea snake, and the best of all, a sea turtle!

We came in for meals (the above photo is from lunch at La Tegolla...who knew Italian food in the Philippines was so good?), but pretty much went snorkeling the remainder of our daylight hours in Moalboal. It was so beautiful….I guess that wasn’t always the case. Dynamite fishing was pretty common about 30 years ago and it just destroyed the coral, but much of that coral has come back now, making a great place for the fish to hang out.

For those of you who dive, pretty much every hotel along Moalboal offers diving excursions. Pescador Island is just across from our resort and many divers say that is some of the best diving they’ve done in the Philippines. Here’s a banka (boat) going out for a dive!