Welcome to the Wonderful World of the Philippines.

Hello from Colin and Gina Smith in Balingasag, near Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Southern Philippines.

I have been setting up my Blog site this morning. It has taken a while mainly because I have a slow connection and my own inexperience with the medium. I have a slow connection but I have a connection!

We live in a rural community in the Southern Philippines and the closest land line is about 2 miles away and for quite a few months it looked as though an Internet connection at home was just not possible. A local cell phone company, Smart, have a system which involves setting up a special antenna at home to connect to their tower, and we tried this but we are too far from the tower and the signal is blocked by tall Coconut trees between us and the tower! (So said the man who came to install)

Back to going to local Internet Cafes with my trusty Laptop to connect- Ugh! The local town of Balingasag has several such places but they are full of Kids playing noisy “Kill Em Dead” games, not exactly the environment I find conducive to happy email writing and web browsing.

One of the frustrations of not having my own Internet connection was the lack of my own email address and I had to rely on Hotmail or Yahoo. I find these web based email systems frustrating mainly because they don’t down load into my ‘Outlook’ Inbox folder. Offline, no emails, unless I copied and saved them into another system, which doesnt have the ability to browse and reply. Then one day I discovered that ‘Gmail’ allowed me to configure it to download to Outlook… this was a major step forward in my Cyber Happiness.

We like travelling through the 7000 plus Islands of the Philippines and we visited a beautiful Island, Busuanga, in the Palawan group. (The most Westerly Islands of the Philippines). We met an English Guy, Mike, who manages a 5 star resort there. He has an “Air Card” in his Laptop that allows him to get online from his remote resort. That might work for us we thought!!

It wasn’t easy to get information about this system. There are no effective Yellow Pages in the Philippines, and it reminds me just how useful they are when seeking information. (I will comment more on that “Information Black Hole” in later posts, it is one of the characteristics of this land) Eventually I was able to get the information I needed by searching the net. It’s a system called “WeRoam” run by PLDT (Philippines Long Distance Telephones).

We had to visit the neighbouring Island of Cebu to be able to purchase the kit, which consists of an AirCard by “Sierra” to slot into the side of my Benq Laptop and a sim card from Smart, which fits inside the Aircard. A very helpful tech. at the shop set it all up and we were online! Hurrah! But would it work at home??

We set it up at home and found if we placed it in exactly the right place alongside a window facing the tower, we connect! Much Cheering.

The signal was weak and inconsistent and the download speeds slow, I mean so slow dial up seems positively fast, but it worked!

After a few weeks we couldn’t get online for 3 days… I spoke to a knowledgeable man at theSmart office in our closest City, Cagayan de Oro, an hour away by car (I have since found that Smart is part of the PLDT group and we could have bought the system from them in Cagayan. I had actually asked there and was answered with polite, but negative replies…part of that “Black Hole” I suppose) and he said they had been making upgrades to their system… and you know now it has settled down the system is much better and faster. Thank you Mr Smart.

The great benefit of this system is it will work almost anywhere in the Philippines (Why the little Antenna of the AirCard will connect to the same tower the big specialised Antenna we tried before couldn’t and from exactly the same place- From an inferior position actually because we had the big antenna up on a 30 foot pole- is one of those mysteries of life) I am glad it does though because the ability to connect anywhere I take my Laptop is a tremendous advantage. The second thing is the very modest monthly cost of approx $25 is for unlimited downloads and unlimited time access. I know similar systems sold in Australia are on a download/time limit and any excess use is very expensive.

So I continue to wonder at the amazing World Wide Web and how I can communicate with the World for so little cost from my office set among Coconut trees and Banana Plantations.

So greetings from the Southern Philippines and I hope you will explore this incredible place called the Philippines with me through Philippine Pearl.

Your Comments are always welcome. It prevents the feeling that I am speaking to myself!

Colin in Cagayan de Great Place to Live.

(Its Cagayan de Oro really, Oro means Gold by the way, but de…. always seems such a great way to add a topical comment)