What about safety in the Philippines? Are the Philippines a dangerous country?
There are a lot of questions about safety in the Philippines and how dangerous or safe it might be to stay and live there.
In fact, in more than 10 years living in the Philippines I was not even once worried or concerned about my safety.
However, before I went there for the first time in the early nineties I heard a lot of storries about foreigners beeing cheated, stunned and robbed in the Philippines. So on my first visits I was always on alert about what could happen to me.
But as I said: Nothing ever happened to me. At least not from the crime site.
Just follow a few simple rules to live safely in the Philippines:
Do not get involved with drugs
Do not get involved in any kind of business where you are a competition to the local people.
Do not try to cheat Filipinos in business' or any deals. Specially not if there is a large amount of money involved.
Natural disasters are another topic
Natural disasters such as taifuns and earthquakes are another story in the Philippines. Both can destroy everything you have built up over years in no time.
In 2013 I was myself affected by the strong earthquake in Bohol that cost the live of more than 250 people in a radius of about 30 km. We were living only 10 km from the epi center of the quake which caused us the leave the Philippines only two days later.
Only a few weeks later one of the strongest Taifuns ever (Jolanda) hit the Philippines and destroyed the city of Tacloban in Leyte and killed thousands of people.
Dangerous places in the Philippines
I guess there are a few places in the Philippines which I would not choose to stay: Leyte (because of the taifuns), Zamboanga and Zulu (Sulu) Islands (because of the terrorists (Abu Sayaf)) or any big city (because of the crime rate). However, take this advice as my personal opinion.
There are a lot of foreigners who stay at these places and they are quite happy to do so...
