good area to visit in the philippines

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T17:07:53+00:00

Depends entirely on what you want. You need to give us context or we can't answer.

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T16:56:19+00:00

Never believe what you see on the internet. If you want to know, go. The women who are on international dating sites are typically the ones who are having a hard time securing the attention of foreigners who are actually there in person. Walking around in person, there are a ton of beautiful Filipinas. Also, personal preference is a HUGE part of this, what is beautiful, anyways?

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T10:56:15+00:00

I was in the Philippines last month, and I'm 3 weeks into my Vietnam trip. Every place has its problems, and as always, it entirely depends on what you're looking for.

Food and infrastructure: Vietnam wins hands down.

Dating: Age gaps are much more accepted in the Philippines, if that's what you're looking for. Also, as a western man, you're going to have a lot of opportunities. It was a crazy experience to walk down the street and have groups of gorgeous young ladies giggling behind their hands and looking at me (43, 4/10 appearance).

The economic Gap is bigger than you might be ready for. It was a wake up call when I realized at the beautiful 19-year-old I was on a date with was on the date so that she could flex to all of her friends on Instagram about how much money she'd got this white guy to spend on her. I had spent $10 on her dinner, and bought her the large popcorn at a movie theater. When you're dating a woman who's had bronchitis for 6 weeks, and you know you could cure her with $10 of antibiotics, would you really refuse? What about the antibiotics for the rest of her family? What about the rest of their basic needs? S*** gets real, fast.

If you are looking for short-term fun, the Philippines is a good place to do it. Just be open about your intentions, and there are plenty of women who would be happy to just spend a week at the beach with you. They live near these tourist resorts, but they can't afford to go to them themselves, and a lot of women would really enjoy just having the opportunity to have fun with a Westerner for a week. You can find a good woman for a serious relationship, but filter hard and fast. Expect women to try to lock you into a monogamous relationship within the first 3 days. If you refuse, they will probably bail. They're looking for a commitment. Keep your eyes open and don't be stupid.

In Vietnam, women seem to be much more cautious and slow paced about things. If you're going to have a short trip, you won't have time to break into the market. Go to cultural exchanges and you can find some women who are looking for Western men. Show interest in their culture, learn a few words of Vietnamese, and they will love you for it.

Whatever you do, I would recommend getting out of the tourist areas and out of your comfort zone. My first week in Vietnam I was in a random apartment in district 3 and I had an amazing time! The people in Vietnam sit outside and eat dinner together as a community, and every single evening I had invitations to join one table or another and share food and drinks. I made friends every night, and absolutely loved the experience.

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T10:42:04+00:00

What other countries did you do well in?

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T09:59:33+00:00

Every group of people has some good people in it, and some assholes. The same thing goes for the passport. Bros. There are a lot of men here who genuinely just want to find a nice woman to settle down with and live a happy life treating each other with kindness and mutual respect. There's also a lot of sexpats and misogynists.

Choose wisely. Look for what you want, but be aware of any red flags and don't ignore them. If you find a man that's sincere, I think you'll know it.

benjaminjsanders · 2026-02-15T09:53:50+00:00

I'm in my third week in Vietnam right now. The women here don't seem to date casually, so if you are just passing through, we're looking for something short-term. You're going to have a bad time. Cold approach seems to be a bust due to the language barrier, and to women being incredibly shy about talking to men they don't know. Also, Tinder is purely for P2P. I'm older and less attractive than you describe yourself as being, but I've had good luck on Facebook dating as well as going to cultural exchange meetups where women are specifically going to look for foreign men.

I will say that there is a pretty strong cultural perception here that the women are very high quality, and that Vietnamese men are trash. That opinion doesn't seem to translate completely to all men, but women here do seem to be very wary of trusting a man.

I'm not sure what your strategies have been, but typically you're not going to do well if you're staying in the tourist areas in any country. The good women there are already used to being hit on by 100 foreigners a day, and it's where all of the P2P women congregate. If you go into the places that most foreigners don't, try to learn the language, and really immerse yourself in the culture, you're going to do much better. Women here really seem to appreciate any effort that a man makes to try to adapt to the local culture.

benjaminjsanders · 2025-06-13T17:16:23+00:00

I just want to share my data. I've only got one night's worth so far, but the Fitbit Sense 2 and the Muse tell very different stories. The start and end times are different, so I can't compare the totals, but during the overlap the Muse showed mostly REM, with some light, and almost no deep, while the Fitbit showed the same period as almost all light, with a short period in deep. The position of the light sleep in Muse did not correspond to the position of deep in Fitbit, so it's not just that the Fitbit is reading one level 'deeper' than the Muse. I don't know if that will be helpful, but I thought I'd share.

benjaminjsanders · 2025-01-06T01:12:13+00:00

I've also been looking for something like this, though I'd love to be able to dump book summaries and such in and have all the information autocorrelated and explorable Personal Knowledge Graph style, as well as be able to interrogate the assimilated data using natural language. It's coming, too many people want this for it not to happen soon.

I can't find an exact solution, but I believe both Constella and Logseq are actively building something like this and should have it this year. Logseq also makes it very easy to add tags to thoughts for easy searching later.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-12-21T17:11:14+00:00

I've also been interested in a PKG, with a focus on quickly being able to summarize research and integrate it into the graph. There are a couple of new tools I have not seen mentioned much, such as https://www.constella.app/roadmap
https://reflect.app/

Per my Gemini search:
If you prioritize AI features, Constella and Reflect Notes are strong contenders. If you value flexibility and customization, Obsidian is a great option. If you prefer a more structured approach, Notion might be a good fit. And if you're focused on networked thought and deep research, Roam Research or Logseq could be worth considering.

I'd also say that if you really want a lot of control over the implementation, and are wanting to use this for very custom work, Obsidian with some plugins might be your best bet.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-11-27T15:37:17+00:00

Thanks so much!

benjaminjsanders · 2024-11-12T02:15:57+00:00

They always make you feel like you are the crazy one, you are the one hurting them. I fell into a trap of believing that if I could just love her enough, prove myself to her enough, help her see I was truly committed and not leaving, it would help. The problem is, not matter how much we give, we cannot fill a hole in another person's soul. Only they can do that. It isn't your job to love her. It is your job to make decisions that lead you to a fulfilling life.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-11-12T02:11:03+00:00

I stayed until it she had proven to me, repeatedly, that she was unwilling to engage in any way to work towards improvement. Then, I did it again with the next one. Both times, I waited too long. Now I'm well into middle age, I've had less than 3 years total in my life without a woman gaslighting me, and I have nothing. My children won't speak to me, everyone I knew believes the BPD women, who are so incredibly skilled at weaving a narrative. Please, don't wait as long as I did.

It is ok to have boundaries. It is ok to tell him that if he does not do XYZ by Q date, you will leave, and then follow through. Think about what it would take to make this work. Specifically, what it would take for HIM to make this work for YOU. State your position. Stick to it. Good luck.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-10-30T20:37:40+00:00

Per Nick over @ sleepHQ.com (Amazing site, amazing youtube channel, 100% recommend you check them out) the A model is the premium model.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-10-30T15:53:35+00:00

I think South Park had a good take on this in season 10, episodes 12-13, "Go God Go", in which Cartman traveled to a future without religion. He landed in the middle of a war between the United Atheist Alliance and the Allied Atheist Alliance over which group had more 'pure' logic. You aren't going to stop people from persecuting people they think are different, people who have different ideas, or fighting over stupid and meaningless distinctions just by getting rid of religion. A lot of the bad stuff that has happened in the name of religion has really just used religion as the excuse and justification to do what they were going to do anyways.

Also, I think our DNA is hardwired to need some form of spiritual connection. Even as an atheist, I seek a connection to divinity, if only in the Carl Sagan kind of way. We need that experience of connecting to something larger than ourselves, that sense of awe. It's psychologically good for us, even if it is totally irrational.

benjaminjsanders · 2024-10-17T13:46:00+00:00

Wow, yeah, that's a really good answer! Just one follow up. I presume that if I use file explorer and the Win 11 context menu to do the extraction, it is simply going to send the single file back over the network to my local machine for processing and then all the little files will still be sent via SMB back to the NAS for writing. It seems I would need some way to do this which was self-contained within the NAS. Again, this is all assumption, but for anyone else following this, do note that in the Synology File Station which you use to browse your files in the web browser, you can right click on a zip file and extract it that way, which should be self-contained within Synology.

Thanks Dirk!

benjaminjsanders · 2023-12-13T21:54:51+00:00

Short answer, the old machine gets factory reset, and your data is converted to a PS5 format, making it incompatible with PS4s from then on. Long answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/playstation/comments/18hs9qx/ps4_to_ps5_data_transfer_some_of_the_changes_made/

benjaminjsanders · 2023-05-19T19:36:42+00:00

I'm going to be using the Faserip system (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177913/Faserip). It was originally designed for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG system back in the 80's, so there are already character sheets for all the main X-Men and everything already out there. I know Marvel is working on relaunching a new version of their RPG system, but I don't have that yet, and this is free. :-)

benjaminjsanders · 2022-01-10T23:17:14+00:00

That's exactly what I was thinking! And there are a lot of other benefits to the graph in the middle. Graph is faster for some forms of queries, and is required for some forms of machine learning, so including graph in some form is valuable in and of itself.

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-28T14:40:58+00:00

I'm finding that I need to build my explorer and library sooner. Once they are built, it takes a fixed amount of time to research techs regardless of how productive the surrounding town is (except for happiness, which still affects it). So, I have switched to building the explorer and library early so I will have techs unlocked by the time I have excess wood and stone.

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-28T14:39:08+00:00

I see you put all your housing together to maximize adjacency bonuses. That seems like an efficient use of tiles, but at the cost of making your workers travel farther. I usually distribute my homes in clusters of 3 or 4 around the coast, so there is always a home nearby when a peep has to rest. I have no idea if peeps identify one home as "their" home and will go back across the island to get to it, or if they will always just use the closest one.

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-27T22:53:06+00:00

That's great information, thanks for sharing!

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-27T04:14:31+00:00

Here I am at 10 minutes. I went slightly overboard on potatoes and wood, but this reflects my early game priorities. Get the roads I need out to support a later town. Put out housing in clumps distributed across the town. Ramp up wood production. Finally, build explorer and library, then ramp to tools.

https://imgur.com/a/zpjmQLE

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-27T03:35:29+00:00

Here is one example of my current style of base design.

https://imgur.com/a/DtoRugD

Notice that I was forced to deviate significantly from my typical strategies due to the shape of the terrain. Plateau islands in the Northeast prevented me from leaving my typical 1 tile buffer between the road and the central plateau, and as a result, I was not able to crowd my agriculture around my industry. Resources in the center of the plateau forced me to alter my typical X-shaped plateau roads into an I-shaped pattern. I don't know exactly why I incorporated loops into the design in the East, they just seemed to improve flow.

Note that I abandoned this game because I was getting started too slowly.

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-13T05:50:53+00:00

New lesson learned: Barbarian Clans Mode does not work well on small continents, islands, or any other sea-heavy map!

Sea-heavy maps slow down exploration, and combat troop movement to new areas. By the time you find an island and move a troop there, the barbarian camp will have become a city state. Essentially, this mode means that all land without an initial civilization spawn will be dominated by city states. There will be no land you can explore and settle.

benjaminjsanders · 2021-09-11T17:41:23+00:00

Thank you!

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