Riverbend Journal

One of the things I plan to do more of when visiting the Philippines this Christmas is to buy more. During my last visit, before my wife had ever been to the United States, she would often veto my desires to purchase a particular object saying that it was too expensive. By her standards, she was right but by my standards, it was dirt cheap. Now that she has seen what the price of some of her native things go for at Pier 1 Imports or like places, I think she will be siding with me more often on this trip. In America, most prices are non-negotiable. You either pay it or you walk away. There are a few exceptions to this rule but not many in low volume purchases. In the Philippines, everything is negotiable. When shopping outside of the regular tourist haunts, very few objects have prices and for a very good reason. This allows the seller to adjust prices according to their perceived notion of the wealth of the buyer. If my native Filipina mother-in-law were to walk into a store, she would...

Going grocery shopping in the Philippines is about as unique of an experience as you can get. Being a westerner, I am used to going into large box like grocery stores full of foods of all kinds stacked neatly on shelves and categorized into aisles. It is the definition of order, which starkly contrasts to the controlled chaos of the Filipino markets. The Filipino market in Baguio is more of a district or several block area in town. Sidewalks crammed filled with smiling natives standing among a sea of baskets and containers holding a wide array of fruits and vegetables. Some look vaguely familiar to ones that I buy in the United States but most look like they were grown out back behind the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. My wife, mother-in-law and her sister, would walk through the sea of produce with nostrils flaring smelling various fruits for ripeness and pinching various things for firmness. I for the most part tried to hang back and act like I was not with them because the venders alway...