Reversal of plan - now thinking of living in the Philippines

Things have certainly moved on since I was last there then. I too was never really interested with the Barretto / subic side of things. There is now doubt that the base has improved in some ways for me (shopping etc) but the influx of arge numbers of resturants that seem to me to on the whole largely empty is a waste to me. I think they where expecting more koreans to be honest. Plus they pulled down the Scuba shack as well. That was our bar for sun downers.

Interesting idea about livinf on a boat in the marina. I don't know what the charges are like though. Regarding typhoons I was on a cable ship (the CS Retriever if you're interested) and we had a typhoon roll right over the top of us. We t put all the knitting out and had the engines on staby. We where ok apart from the gangway getting lifted into the dock!