Retire In The Philippines Now

One of the best things about living in a place where the weather is warm, especially if you like theme parks, are the parks staying open almost year round. You don’t have to wait for the snow to melt to ride your favorite roller coaster or water slide. So it goes with theme parks in the Philippines and my favorite, Enchanted Kingdom.

Enchanted Kingdom, located in Santa Rosa City, Laguna is about 16 miles (29 kilometers) from Manila. It covers an area of 41 acres and is managed by Enchanted Kingdom Inc. Enchanted Kingdom has about 30 rides including 2 roller coasters and 2 water rides.
Some of the attractions include the Space Shuttle Max which is the premium roller coaster, a river rafting ride called the Rio Grande, and my favorite Dodgem Bumper Cars. In the park there is also a nice 4-D theater, actually a couple of them, and a Laser tag arena. If you get tired you can stop at the Lake Spa and get a massage.

Of course, there are differences between U.S. theme parks and Philippine theme parks such as food offerings and the cleaniness of restrooms but these differences make your trip to Enchanted Kingdom a little more special. The prices are much more affordable here compared to stateside theme parks so it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to take your family there.

All in all, I would recommend this theme park as a place to visit while in the Philippines. My only complaint compared to the U.S. parks is that you never know if your favorite attraction will be operating on the day you go. I’ve been there times where a couple of the most popular rides have been down, but that is less than 5% of the time and you can just find another favorite. Go to Enchanted Kingdom and enjoy a day at one of the Philippines best theme parks.

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One of my favorite places to visit close to my home in Binan is the Nuvali area of Santa Rosa City in Laguna. The City Of Santa Rosa is one of the best cities to live in Laguna Province of the Philippines. It’s nickname is “The Investment Capital of South Luzon” and it is about 40km south of Manila along the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX). It is actually a suburb of Metro Manila with a population of around 267,000 people although it could have been bigger had it not split with the city of Binan, where I reside. Even though, Santa Rosa is the 4th largest city in Laguna behind Calamba, San Pedro, and Binan.

A few years ago Santa Rosa was mostly known for being the home of a Coca-Cola plant and Toyota facility but more recently it has become more famous for places like the Enchanted Kingdom, a theme park, as well as the Nuvali technological park and several new residential areas.

What I liked about Nuvali is the location of the park which has a lake which you and your family can take boat rides on. Or you can relax at Starbucks or one of the nearby restaurants and watch the workers from the nearby call centers enjoying a sunny afternoon. This place is a growing metro area but is still small enough that you don’t have to worry about pollution or traffic. They have a very environment friendly attitude and it shows with the cleanliness all around. This is definitely one place you should check into as a retirement area. There are new housing developments being constructed as I write that are very modern and inexpensive. I have included a video and links to sites about Nuvali that you can check out. I am in the process of editing a video of a recent trip I made there with my family and will be posting it on YouTube soon.

Helpful Links

Nuvali Evoliving

Santa Rosa Magazine

City of Santa Rosa Website - under construction as of 3/9/2010 but does contain helpful phone numbers and email addresses

Most of you know I retired from the rat race which is called corporate America and am attempting to make my living online. Working online has provided me with freedom to do things I have never been free to fully enjoy such as vacations, and time spent with family among other pleasures. Besides the freedom to do these things ,working online has released me from other nasty things like dealing with rude people and office politics. That is until the last couple of days. My websites have been hit by a hateful serial spammer who has attempted to intrude on my comments and spew hateful language towards me. But unlike in an office in the rat race, where I can’t plug my ears 24 hours a day, I have tools to filter this stuff.

I call this stuff spam although others would describe spam differently. In fact Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia describes spam as ” the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networking spam, and file sharing network spam.” My definition is much simpler and it is unwanted emails or comments the common thread being UNWANTED. That is why when I advertise on this site I only advertise with things that I have used or think that the readers would be interested in. Is there a way to prevent automated spam submssions or ways to stop spam or at least get rid of spam email or correspondence from reaching you accounts?

 One of the best ways to prevent spam include free wordpress plugins if you have a wordpress site. I personally use the Akismet Plugin which is free for personal use. It does the job and is the best anti spam program I have used. It is certainly better than some anti-spam email software I have used. Some of the software I have tried to prevent spam emails, including the email spam feautres included in major email providers, have not done a very good of job of either filtering unwanted emails or letting me look at wanted emails. I can’t afford to lose an email with an earnings report or such. I’m still looking for that type of email program so suggestions are welcome at this time. Just don’t spam me!
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Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental province, is known as the “City of Smiles” and recently was voted the “Best Place to Live in the Philippines” in a survey by MoneySense Magazine. Adding to the reputation as the “City of Smiles” is the MassKara Festival, a week -long festival held yearly in the city. It is held every third weekend of October nearest October 19th which is the city’s Charter Anniversary.

First held in the year 1980, the festival didn’t happen at a good time for smiles because this was a period of crisis and mourning for the residents of the city. First, the province relied on sugar cane as the main agricultural crop, and the price of sugar was at an all time low. Secondly, on April 22nd of that year a collision between the vessel Don Juan and the tanker Tacloban City claimed the lives of 700 people. Many of the victims were Negrenses including those belonging to prominent families from Bacolod City. In the midst of these tragic events it was decided to uphold the city’s name as the City of Smiles and have a festival of smiles. The festival was held with the purpose of declaring that no matter how tough the times were, Bacolod City would in the end triumph.

The festival named from a combination of the word “mass” which means many people and the Spanish word cara meaning “face” features a street dance competition with colorfully dressed dancers. There is also a beauty pageant, food festivals, musical concerts and other events to make this one of the most visited festivals in the Philippines. Please watch the video below to get an idea of what the festival is like.

As many of you know the Philippines could be considered the country of Festivals. Every barangay and province has at least one Fiesta and usually many more festivals throughout the year. But one festival being held on July 23-25, 2009 is like no other. The Philippine Real Estate Festival is being held at the World Trade Center, Roxas Blvd and the corner of Buendia Street in Pasay City.

When Filipinos have festivals they go all out and even though this is a Philippine Real Estate festival you can expect the same. If you are in the Philippines and you are a first time buyer or you may want to invest in real estate, this is the place to be. This festival will give potential buyers a look at all the real estate listings and provide excellent advice from experts in the construction and architecture sectors as well. The real estate market in the Philippines is booming right now with more opportunities than I’ve ever seen. We own two homes right now and are thinking about investing in a couple of condos in different hot areas. If you are in the Manila area this would be a good place to visit as the final day will include a foreclosed property auction and a chance to win a house and lot and other valuable prizes. All seminars and events of the festival are free of charge. I refer you to the Foreclosure Philippines website for more information.

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Don’t let anyone fool you, traffic is what makes you money on your blog and traffic only comes when you provide good content. If you have good content or articles as they are known your blog will become popular and you can present whatever you want to present to the world. After you get the steady traffic they will buy what you offer for sale if you are trying to make money. But how do you get good content without spending all day researching and reading new material. First off, you need to write from your heart and be passionate about your subject. Secondly you seek out help and ideas or other sources for your material and this is what the post today is about. I have found a tool that can take one article and help you extract many more articles out of it. This tool is called Mass Article Control.

Mass Article Control will help you to quit struggling to write articles and help you submit them to sites to get traffic and make money using new technology that cost the developers thousands of dollars to develop. Anytime technology can be developed to help you get more done by working less it is something you should check out. Go ahead over to the website and learn more about Mass Article Control by CLICKING HERE

Prior to 1964 the United States and the Philippines shared July 4th as Independence Day. Of course, the U.S. was celebrating its Declaration of Independence from England , but what was the Philippines celebrating on that day?

Many thought that the Philippine Independence Day should be considered as July 4, 1946 when the Treaty of Manila was signed. This treaty signed in Manila provided for the recognition of the independence of the Republic of the Philippines and the relinquishment of American sovereignty over the Philippine Islands.

Historians and Philippine nationalists believed the true Independence Day for the Philippines should be June 12th 1898 when General Emilio Aquinaldo and his Filipino revolutionary forces proclaimed the sovereignty and independence of the Philippine Islands from Spain. On August 4, 1964 President Macapagal signed Republic Act No. 4166 designating June 12th as Philippine Independence Day. Prior to that June 12th had been observed as Flag Day.

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Zest Airways Logo

Zest Airways is an airline that started out as Asian Spirit based in Pasay City, Manila in the Philippines. In its original form as Asian Spirit it began in September 1995 by three friends who contributed $1 million each to start up the Airline Employees Cooperative. The three friends invited 36 of their friends, mostly Philippine Airlines employees to run Asian Spirit as a salary-to-equity swap deal. Beginning in 1996 Asian Spirit started operations with only two second hand Dash 7 aircraft servicing a commercial route with two flights a day from Manila to Malay serving the resort town of Boracay, making it the first scheduled airline to serve that town. Later on that year it introduced new routes to secondary airports. In 1997 it switched from a cooperative company to a corporate set up as Asian Spirit Inc. In 2008 Asian Spirit was sold to AMY Holdings, company controlled by Alfredo M. Yao. After taking over Yao expressed interest in merging Asian Spirit with South East Asian Airlines but the deal didn’t go through. In September of 2008 Asian Spirit officially became Zest Airways. The possible name change could reflect the allusion to the flagship business of AMY Holdings juice maker Zest-O. (Source: Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia)

Currently Zest Air operates 7 aircraft, two Airbus A320’s with the capacity of carrying 162 passengers each, and five MA 60 regional turboprop aircraft with the capacity of 52 passengers per aircraft. Zest Air now flies to 18 Philippine destinations and will eventually expand to international flights in Southeast Asia. For more information on Zest Airways such as schedules, destinations and prices please visit their website Zest Airways.

Here is list of Philippine Embassy and Consulates in the U.S. and territories. If you have additions please email admin@retireinphilippinesnow.com

United States

Philippines Embassy  Washington D.C. (202) 467-9300

Philippine Consulate

Agana Guam (671) 646-4620

Chicago, IL (312) 332-6458

Honolulu, HI (808) 595-6316

Los Angeles, CA (213) 639-0980

New York (212) 764-1330

Saipan (670) 234-1848

San Francisco, CA (415) 433-6666

Atlanta, GA (404) 239-5747

Miami, FL (954) 492-9211

Majuro 602-9-3490

Remember all Philippine embassies and consulates are normally closed on Philippine AND U.S. holidays. 

Learn How to Retire to Tropical Paradise

The climate in the Philippines would be described as a tropical marine climate. The Philippines has two seasons a rainy season and a dry season. During the rainy season from May to October monsoons bring heavy rains to most of the country and during the  months of December to February the monsoons bring more of a cooler and drier air to the Philippines. Annual rainfall in the Philippines is anywhere from 965 millimeters in protected valleys to over 4,000 millimeters elsewhere.

From March to May most of the country experiences hot and dusty weather except for the highlands and mountains. The average temperature in May, the warmest month is 28 degrees C.

Annual Average Temperature in the Philippines 26.6 degrees C

Coolest Month January Avg temperature is 25 degrees C

Warmest month May Avg temeprature is 28 degrees C

Avg annual rainfall is 965 to 4064 millimeters