Our New Place in Cavite

When I returned to the Philippines, we had decided that we no longer wanted to live in an urban area such as Taguig. The condo there was pretty nice, but it was on a very busy street, where the traffic never stopped. That road was less than 2 lanes, but there were always heavy trucks, cement trucks, un-muffled Jeepneys, un-muffled motorcycles and street vendors. Also, we were right next to a place where they washed cars and installed (and tested) car alarms.

We talked about going to Baguio, where Leilani is from and which is about a 12 hour bus ride from Manila, but that is up in the mountains and gets cold. Also, she really didn't want to be so far from her family. We talked it over while I was in the US and decided to look in Cavite, which is the province just south of Manila.

Returning here became an adventure. I tried hard to find something on the internet like "Apartment Finders, " but it was not to be found. I found only one place listed on the web, which is where we wound up.

We stayed in a hotel in Manila for a couple days to get things sorted out, so on the second day we headed out for Cavite to look around. I had the ad I had printed out in hand. The transportation was a bus to the mall nearest General Trias, the town where the house is. The mall is called SM Dasmariñas.

Alot of the transportation here in this area is based on the malls. The buses go from mall to mall, while the Jeepneys go from the malls to the smaller towns and each little town has tricycle motorcycles that go from there to the outlying areas. We got waylaid by a agent on the way to see the house and she took us to see another place that was nicer but the rent was more than twice as much. With the expense of the trip to the US, we just couldn't pull together the money.