10 Culture Shocks We Experienced in the Philippines!

Oh hello we're back in the hot seat back in the studio welcome to another vlog hope you're doing well yeah comment below if you like lucy's red outfit that's stunning thank you very much comment below if you like georgia's brown outfit brown brown beige and boring brown beige and georgian anyway every so often we like to make videos like this we did one recently um and you guys seem to enjoy them so we've got another one here today the topic is 10 we've got 10 today it's a big one 10 culture shocks we've experienced being here in the philippines and i do like to think that we are connoisseurs of filipino culture wow you go that far now i'd say so i've traveled a lot we've experienced the country in so many different ways even back when we were traveling and from being here during the pandemic i like to think that we've really got to know the country i mean we're never going to actually be filipino but i like to think that i mean people often comment that we're honorary filipinos in how much we know about the country and how much we've explored it so we today thought we would bring you a video that kind of talks through the 10 10 of the things there's probably more that we could think of and we'd love to hear the comments below if you think we've missed any important ones but 10 things that we've found when we first came here were kind of a shock but i guess that we're more used to now in being here exactly we've been inspired recently because on our reaction channel if you haven't seen that it's called juicy reacts it's linked below um we reacted creative name there we reacted to a few videos like this yeah culture shocks of people coming to different countries and things like that um so we thought we can make a video like that let's make our own we got things on our mind that we can talk about yeah there's some that we agreed with from other people so they might be repeated in this video but also some that we haven't heard anyone say yet so we're excited for this one today i've got a little you're sat on my phone sat on the notes i've just written down the little word for each one just so we can remember it okay are you ready i am number one so the first thing that was surprising to us is the faith here not not that there is faith here and not that people are religious more that how many people are religious compared to not religious versus in the uk and more or less from what we've seen everybody is which you don't get in the uk you it's not as it's not as in everyday life in the uk obviously for religious people it is but it's not as widely spread i would say i would say there were way more people in the uk that are not religious at all yeah there's a lot more atheists in the uk and i know that there's christianity is the biggest religion in the philippines but but obviously a lot of other religions exactly the same as in england but i feel like here people are talking about faith a lot more on a day-to-day basis i think growing up in england there would be a lot of different religions within say a school class or your school that you went to but from our personal experiences in our towns i would say half or maybe over half were not religious at all and that's only who we've been around that's the people that we've surrounded ourselves with and people that we know obviously we don't know factually um how correct this is but we've just found that it was very much more apparent here uh everywhere you go there's sort of religious quotes on the back of yeah tricycles and jeepneys you have quotes in the bible we were even in a cafe or restaurant the other day and there was kind of bible quotes on the menu or put up on the wall and even people in the philippines interacting with us online often use religious language even in their comments to us there's a lot more of that than i'd say we've experienced in england now this one a few i mean a few of these things we have mentioned in our vlogs but occasionally we like to sit down and put all these things into one condensed video like this we also know a lot of people who are planning on visiting the philippines watch these types of videos or people who are planning to even move your hands so funny you're like this interesting for those people maybe coming to especially the wide-angle lens okay can you push you back thanks oh so number two is the amount of people in stores and i would say actually yeah working i would actually say this has changed during covid i think there's now a few less people i think stores are now on more skeletal staff but it's still more than in england but skeletal here is still more than in england 2019 walk into adidas seven or eight people in there um very very helpful asking if you need help that someone will stay with you until you've found the products that you want and need and that is right for you or that you've decided to leave the store they'll literally walk you to the store exit yeah in a polite way they're not like seeing you out but we so much so that we got used to this we were surprised at first but we got so used to this that when we went back to the uk once yeah we asked someone working in a shop um shop i can't even say the word shop anymore you always you have a thing with shop you remember your sister you told her and she was like what you were like i can't say it shop i can't say we're in some kind of wellness store we were looking for a particular vitamin or something yeah and there was only one lady working there and we asked her for help she was the one that was also serving at the till and doing the stacking of the shelves so we one person so we asked her and she came over to help us she said yeah that kind of thing is in this area we were like okay and we were kind of looking for one and then we had another question and by the time we turned around she was gone she was back at the till because she had customers to serve and that's normal in the uk she's shown you the thing that you need to look at and she's done her bit and she's gone but in the philippines they would stand next to you yeah until you find the item that you need yeah we literally looked left and we were like this is so rude the woman's left already we weren't finished yeah it's so so normal here more used to the filipino way yeah 100 okay number three is the amount of guns you see on a day-to-day basis you literally walk around beautiful bgc you're sort of taking the site leave this building oh yeah and that you literally walk around beautiful bgc taking in all the sites there's people eating breakfast outside in the sun and then there's just some hench dude there with like a huge machine gun just like morning sir morning ma'am and that would never happen in england unless there was something going wrong or maybe at airports or if there was some sort of emergency where it was needed here it's just very very normal for people to have guns like guards and policemen and women even when you step outside of our building here all our guards down here have guns so yeah you get used to it but at first it's kind of shocking yeah especially on beaches and stuff you're on like beautiful islands and then some guy's got a gun it makes you feel safer i suppose because you know you've got that kind of level of protection but it does take some getting used to when you first get here 25 years growing up in the uk you just never really see a gun so when you first see it it's like oh yeah it takes you back a little maybe if you're american it'd be different because there's a lot more guns in america and like most a lot of people in america have guns themselves yeah so you maybe would be more used to it but for the two british people everything in this video is our personal experiences number four is something we learn about filipino food early on very early on is that you eat with your hands not all of it not all of it if you start just getting sinigang and scooping out with your hand you might get a funny look yeah or like in restaurants and things like that you can do in some restaurants in some restaurants but not all restaurants but if you're eating say you're on an island trip you've got some food laid out it would be very very normal and appropriate to eat with your hands and in england we don't really do this i mean you do a little bit like chips fries finger food fast food you would eat with your hands but definitely not rice no um and definitely not chicken well maybe chicken wings and stuff like that it's so funny because you do do it in england a bit now we're saying it but it's like very only certain foods that you do in england here it's like more more like normal normal food you eat with your hands like you said with rice and stuff when you there's like a technique where you scoop it and then use your thumb to put it into your mouth the i think we've told this story several times in the vlog but i'll tell it a shortened version now we were in el nido on a boat trip there were four british people and i think like eight or nine filipinos and you could really distinguish between the british and filipinos for one thing the the guy on the boat was serving all the food and the four of us were like hello can we have some cutlery please and we sat there with a spoon and fork we were like a week into being in the philippines for the first time yeah if that and then obviously the filipino family were kind of just reaching across and grabbing rice and using their hands to rip off parts of the fish and the prawns and things and we were watching we were like yeah fish you wouldn't really use your hands for fishing no we were watching and we were like oh i think we're doing it wrong like we felt like the aliens yeah we felt like idiots with us trying to use a knife and fork and they encouraged us and they were like put the cutlery down we were like okay we'll use our hands yeah and actually even fork and a spoon is way more common in the philippines than a knife and a fork that's actually one of the points oh sorry well there you go we can skip ahead on that one i do think that eating with your hands makes you appreciate the food more because you feel the texture of it in your hands before in your mouth if that makes sense yeah i quite like it when you eat off a spoon there's only so much like it's off a bit of metal i don't know there's something about it being off your hands that it tastes better i do not know why but i swear it tastes better like imagine eating a slice of pizza with a knife and fork that's not as good as with your hands that's so true it's a different taste i swear yeah true or a burger burger with a knife and fork so sticking with a similar theme number five street food number six street food we don't have really street food in the uk we do in a sense of like gourmet fancy sandwiches or maybe like a burger van at a fun fair or like in london you might see it but it's never there's um borough market in london with a lot of kind of borough market food made on the street but i wouldn't necessarily call it like the asian style street food is unique and it's awesome it's specific dishes in england i find that they might do a street food van serving dishes but in the philippines or in asia really there'll be specific items that you'll only find street food as opposed to just items that are like on the street we went i remember in sabu one of our first trips there we went to kind of street food market and so delicious so many different foods you can try in one place yeah and you just i mean pre-covid you just kind of grab it with your hands like we just said and you just enjoy and indulge and you can try so many different things and the price of this yeah it's cheaper than so so cheap yeah and delicious you just get skewers you get a lot of barbecue sticks and you just say that one that one that one and they grill it fresh for you and then you want a drink so you go to this thing where there's all these different fruit juices and they'll just spoon it into a cup of some ice and then you think oh now i want dessert and there'll be like an ice cream thing or so good it's so good i miss that so so much there was an awesome one in bgc it's sadly closed but there's kind of one now and remember we used to go there every so off every once a week yeah very often so nice they've now done one in the high street in bgc but it's more the restaurants in bgc have got stores but it's more like english yeah way of doing street food now yeah it's kind of more expensive it's a bit more fancy food it's not like the hardcore like fun raw not raw not raw but the real deal you're trying to say genuine genuine street food authentic authentic yeah it's not it's not just like restaurant prices on the street it's like it's i don't know it's different it's different something else that surprised us about philippine culture malls and the opening hours of malls and the culture to go to malls in evenings and especially the coffee shops and cafes and things within shopping malls people would be there long into the evenings where i guess british people would be in pubs imagine you're in england imagine you're sat at home in england and you think hmm i want to buy a white t-shirt because i want to wear a white t-shirt it's 8 p.m and you think oh i have to wait until tomorrow morning at nine o'clock when the shop's open here in the philippines quarter to ten this is still open and that is something that takes some getting used to i feel like there's such more of an evening culture here but saying that often the malls some type some malls won't open till 11 a.m so they actually open later and in england um so if you need something in the morning you're better off in england and all coffee shops and things like that in the uk i would say they close at around four five or six five probably five probably being the most common closing time yeah yeah in the philippines if you want a coffee at 10 p.m you're good the drive-thru near us has always got a queue outside of it even at like 10 p.m at night that was 24 hours before covid was it yeah and there was be like 3 a.m you go and get coffee so cool uh i don't know what number we're on i've kind of lost count but the next one is festivals and the fact that again pre-covid every single weekend in a province there'll be a festival on somewhere it could be illa willow and dinner gang festival cinelog in sabu there's countless festivals even things like the strawberry festival in baguio in saint in trinidad the mango festival in guimaras yeah what else have we got we know more than this there's so many lanzones festival in camigan yes we've been to all of these and they're insane and it's so nice to see a whole town coming together to celebrate pop culture quiz go on uh bacolod's festival is called mascara festival it's not mascara yeah that one we haven't we never been to that one only because we were gonna go the next year because it was at the same time as lanzones and then covid happened so we couldn't but we will one day but yeah there's there's so many different festivals here and the culture of each province is so different and it's celebrated individually that's where you can start to see the micro cultures within the philippines if you come to the philippines for a vacation you'll have an awesome time you'll soak up a bit of the culture but you might have kind of an all-rounded view of the philippines but once you've spent some more time here like we have and you start seeing individual towns and provinces you start getting an idea of actually a lot of these towns and provinces have very different cultures from each other and there's so many individual aspects of each place and the festivals are a real example of that each town or province celebrating something specific about their area really really cool to see that we didn't really have in the uk the next one is i mean you wanted to put this one in the list i kind of disagree with you because it's controversial it's not a culture shock the weather it okay it's not weather isn't necessarily culture but i think hot weather encompasses the whole of the philippines culture because everything is based around the weather in a way well it kind of is think about it like the beaches the outdoor festivals eating food on the street like you can't do that if it's cold and rainy and snowing i'd say the weather was more of a shock than a culture shock but it was definitely shocking for how hot it is and it's so hot at the moment still now we're not people ask at home are you adjusted to it and we kind of tell them we are a little bit but we still avoid going out i mean we went out today in midday sun and it's so so hot bad idea okay the last one is the acceptance of vloggers and people doing online creative things yeah this is so awesome to see businesses online like all these different kind of creative and i say like new things i guess because vlogging's not been around that long but doing things on my social media i think it has now probably coming into like over 10 years yeah but it's not like 100 years old so that's what i'm saying and that makes what we do so much easier and so much more enjoyable and pleasurable to do it here because if we start throwing a camera around and we're vlogging around manila or cebu or wherever we are on a beach an island around the philippines on a road trip in the mountains people seem to like the camera and they'll be willing to be on camera they want to jump in the background and say hi and we feel very confident and comfortable with vlogging in the philippines because it is widely accepted and people are like what's your channel i want to subscribe and i want to check out your videos very supportive and creative as a culture yeah and accepting is the right word totally whereas in the uk i don't know i think a lot of people still don't know and people of a certain age as well don't really know what vlogging is still and they don't understand that it's just the new form of entertainment people either switch on the tv or they switch on youtube and people enjoy watching vloggers these days but people but some people when you're walking around england l if you're walking around the street talking to a camera you'll get a few funny looks uh you we've even had tuts and people getting a little bit annoyed and frustrated filming which is fine it's it's completely fine and we never get bothered by someone telling us to stop filming because it's totally up to them we're not going to be like oh why wouldn't you let me vlog you yeah we're not like that as people but we've rarely had that in the philippines i think a handful of times we've been told to stop filming i mean we accidentally filmed near an embassy we weren't filming we just had a camera near an embassy yeah and we didn't know it looked like we were trying to film it we obviously weren't and we got told to move on um and then a couple of times i think once in bgc some guards said can you stop filming please uh maybe once in a shopping mall we've been told to stop but it's literally a handful of times and the amount we've vlogged here versus the amount of times we've been told to stop vlogging it shows how accepted it is and it's so cool to see because vlogging and online content creation we've said it before i love going online and consuming stuff that my friends have made or that people i admire have made of their real life and their real experiences it's so awesome rather than just being rather than just watching whatever's on on tv what's being fed to you can actually choose what you want to watch who you want to engage with and i think that's so important on social media to consume and watch the content you enjoy because what is the point in wasting your time watching people you wouldn't enjoy so that is the end of this vlog hopefully you guys enjoyed that lucy's already kind of reclining back are we ready we're ready for our sunday netflix session very um so we will see in the next one please give this a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already for plenty more videos to come bye bye guys