Cultural Experience

During the program. I learned a lot of cultures in Philipines which were habits, environmental responsibility, public transportation they used, the vocabularies and how they call each other.

HABITS

As what i observed, in Philipines. They dont have the rule which hand they used for handshaking. I found a lot of them use the left hand. But in Indonesia, we only use the right hand to shake another person hands due to the religion domination’s belief. Another habit especially in Iriga city. All the stores were closed at 21.00. I asked one of my buddies, ami Patrick, he told me the reason why the stores are always closed in early night. It has been happened since Spanish colonized Philipines and they went around regularly to native people house/stores in the late night. Then Philipino initiative to close the stores early to prevent Spanish came to their houses/stores.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

Since the first time i arrived in Iriga, every stores both modern and traditional market do not provide any kind of plastic bag. They used the paper bag/eco bag instead. That was amazed me since Indonesia is still struggling eco bag but we can still find the plastic in some stores whereas in Philipines, the plastic are absence already.

Public Transportation

In Philipines, especially Iriga, i saw a lot of people tend to use public transportation than private one. The public transportations i noticed during my stay at Iriga were Tricycle and Jeepney. Tricycle is a motorcycle that is modified with three wheels. In Indonesia we also has three wheels public transportation that we call as ‘becak’. But what make it really different aside of the model of how they look like. I thought tricycle were really prevent the traffic jam since it can bring up to eight people in one/two way travel. Whereas becak affords 2-3 people in way. While Jeepney is a car with the cart modification behind the driver which afford more than 20 people in way.

Vocabularies and How People Call the Others

I remember some words which have the same both pronunciation and the meaning. For example “basa” in Bicol means wet while in Indonesia “basah” is also wet. I was amazed how Philipino give the good manner to call peer, older, or even younger people. They always put ‘Po’ before they call the people. It shows how they respect each other. Then based what i saw and heard, they called older brother as ‘kuya’ while older sister as ‘ateh’.