My house in Bogo, Cebu, Philippines

Windy and I moved 100km north from Cebu City up to Bogo on August 1st, and we spent a few days sleeping in a spare bedroom at our friend Rusty's house. Then on August 4th we moved into and began renting the right half of a big 2-story side-by-side duplex a short walk from Rusty's house in the barangay Bungtod.

The first floor is an open living-dining-kitchen area, with plenty of space for living and entertaining guests.

This place was constructed not long ago, and from what the local Filipino owners told us, the only person to have rented it before us was a German man who rented it for just one month before moving on.

It's fully furnished, with tables, chairs, couch, outdoor patio furniture and beds, etc in the bedrooms. The only essential things I needed to buy were a big stand fan, a refridgerator, a bottled water dispenser and a gasul cooktop (the local word for propane is "gasul").

There are several different little appliance stores in Bogo. I found the best deals on refridgerators at the store called Imperial which is withing walking distance from the house (as is most everything else). The ref was stickered at over p14,000 but they gave it to me for a cash price of p11,900 plus I think p100 for delivery. Exchange rate is around p46 to $1US. We got the gasul cooktop at the Prince Warehouse store about 1km away, and it cost about p1,000 plus p2,000 for a new 11kg gasul tank and about p400 for a really good quality regulator. The water dispenser with hot water element cost about p1,500

There is a laundry area right off of the kitchen, and you can walk through it to get to our second exterior door. I can't call it the back door because it's right by our front door. As you can see, all of our laundry is hand-washed in the true Filipino tradition.

The downstairs CR ("comfort room", Filipino-speak for "bathroom") is simple, a little underneath-the-stairs space with a toilet and a water tap coming from the wall. It works. The toilets in our two CRs have flushers, which is a luxury here.

As you walk up the stairs, you arrive at the landing of the second floor. There's plenty of open floor space up here as well.

This view in the above photo is from the upstairs landing looking down at the halfway landing and also over at the indoors balcony which overlooks the staircase as well.

This is our waterbed. I will repeat that. We have a waterbed. It's the first one I've ever seen in the Philippines. Windy hated it at first but then became more used to it, although we are both routinely annoyed by not having a regular bed. Imagine sitting on the edge of a waterbed trying to type on your laptop as your butt keeps sinking down and shifting from side to side along with the waves. I've since moved my laptop from up there in the master bedroom to downstairs on the glass round table.

Here's an alternate view of our master beedroom, and now you can see the door in the corner which opens out onto the aforementioned indoor balcony. There's plenty of natural sunlight in this house, making most interior lights unneeded except of course at night. There's a window aircon in this bedroom, and I like using it while we sleep at night although sometimes on rainy nights the outside air is cool enough for just fan use.

Here's the hallway flanking our master bedroom with an outdoor balcony overlooking our courtyard, patio, the little dirt road outside our gate and the big Catholic church which is directly across that little road.

Here's an exterior shot showcasing our little patio/courtyard area with my lovely girlfriend Windy in the background. We use the smaller gate for coming and going, although when I someday get a motorbike and/or scooter we can begin using the bigger gate for keeping them inside our covered carport area.

Windy posing for my camera in front of our gate. Notice the church in the background. My favorite in the foreground and my least favorite in the background.

With the big gate open, this gives a better view from the roadside. Notice the big bottles of water lined up on the right side along the wall. These are delivered for p30 per bottle. We go through approximately one per week, primarily using this clean mineral water for hot instant coffee and also for mixing powdered juices and powdered milk.

A better view of the little road that runs between our house and the church. We like hanging out and relaxing in the chairs on our patio, although I'd much prefer if they were soft cushions instead of hard metal. But hard seating surfaces is one of the first things I became accustomed to during my travels throughout the Philippines.

Here's Windy posing next to the fish tank that resides between our two exterior doors. These fish are really cool, I like having fish. They belong to the owner, but I like watching their antics sometimes when I need to de-stress.

I hope you've enjoyed my little tour of our house here in Bungtod, Bogo, Cebu, Philippines. My plan is to keep the house during the two months I'll be visiting friends and family back in America from November to January. I rent it for p10,000 per month or just a bit over $200US. The owner was cool with only a single month worth of up-front security deposit, which is nice because it's common to have to pay that plus also your last month's rent here and also back in America. Not bad for 200 bucks, right? I'll be getting our first water and electric bills soon, and I'll report on them upon receiving them. I just got our first bill for Globe DSL internet which I've speed tested at 1,700k down and 500k up. It's p1,999/month plus an annoying VAT of about p275. If they didn't have awful DNS issues, the speed of thaty connection would be worth the high cost. But it's a bit of a rip-off with the wild unreliability. Ask all the questions you want and I'll do my best to answer them.