Get More Bang For Your Buck in Asia Ebook

This ebook details how I live on around $1k/month in the Philippines and around South East Asia. Whether you’re on a short trip or making a permanent move, this should help you out with budgeting and getting more bang for your buck – with chapters on apartments, banking, food, and of course girls.

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If you don’t have a Kindle there’s an Amazon app to read ebooks on PC or mobile. For my loyal blog readers, here’s a free chapter below. The rest is on Amazon for $2.99.


Get More Bang For Your Buck In Asia

Chapter 4: ‘Entertainment’

Anyone who has read my blog knows that when I say ‘entertainment’ I mean girls. I don’t really do anything other than work online, watch TV, go get food, roam a mall, and have a girl over.

That is it, so that is the extent of my entertainment costs. Luckily most actual entertainment options are pretty cheap in Asia so you can still have a low entertainment budget and do things.

A movie will be about $3 in Angeles City and $4 or $5 at a nicer theater in Cebu. Things like nature parks, ziplines, and other outdoor activities are all really cheap also.

If you want to go to those places or take a date there it won’t be that costly for you. Though the more touristy of a spot it is the higher the prices will be. One place I found really cool was the ‘Snake House’ in Sihanoukville.

I love snakes and crocodiles and they had lots of very venomous snakes there. Cobras, Puff Adders, I had seen them on so many nature documentaries and it was cool to see them in person. Great value for $3.

But this is my book and my ‘entertainment’ so lets switch the discussion to what I spend my money on. If you are some feminist who bought this off Amazon…. hi :).

First lets get the cities where I mostly go on ‘dates’ and not with working girls out of the way – Cebu and Manila. I am not saying I will never go with a working girl there, but I mostly try to focus on non pros.

You wanna know what is awesome? When the restaurant that most girls want to eat at is a cheap fast food place. Can you imagine asking a girl in the western world where she wants to eat and having her say McDonald’s?

get-more-bang-for-your-buck-in-asiaWell in the Philippines girls will want to eat at their version of McDonald’s which is Jollibee. I remember when I first was trying to meet girls off dating sites and I was trying to impress this girl in Subic.

I was offering to take her to a really nice Mexican place that would have cost 3x as much as Jollibee. I could tell she didn’t seem to thrilled about it and asked where she wanted to go. She said Jollibee. And 90% of girls since have said Jollibee.

Of course I love this, but at first I felt like offering a girl Jollibee was going to give off the impression that I was a cheap bastard (like I am.) Now I realize that they don’t care, they love Jollibee.

The way I phrase this is to say something like: ‘How about I get us some dinner, do you want me to go to xxxx, Jolilbee, or xxxx.’ They almost always say Jollibee.

That way I am not looking like a cheap bastard, and the girl will get what she wants as will I. A win win all around.

Another plus about getting a condo in a good location is that girls will know where it is so you can meet them nearby and sometimes avoid paying a taxi. Most girls have no problem taking a jeep as long as they know the route, they have been taking jeeps all their lives.

There are some stuck up girls that won’t take a jeep, and then you just gotta pay their taxi, luckily they are cheap. I generally just try and have the girl meet at my condo, but most guys want to meet them out first.

Being centrally located will give you nice meeting spots and you have an easy excuse to go back to your apartment to ‘charge your phone’ or ‘check an email’ which a girl will say OK to as long as you seem safe.

You can even take girls out for drinks here and not have it get to costly, though in Manila lots of the clubs have covers. And again drinks are always overpriced so this will hurt your entertainment budget some.

But overall dates are quite cheap. The times that I am going with working girls are when the entertainment budget gets higher, but you also don’t need to rent as nice of a condo to ‘show off’ to working girls.

In a city like Angeles, Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh, or Pattaya you are going to be going with working girls. If you are anti hookers then don’t even bother with those places. But (most) hookers in Asia are not the drugged out skanks you see in the ghettos in western world cities. Have an open mind, I bet you end up going with some.

The easiest way to keep your hooker budget down is to not go into girly bars and barfine girls. There are so many freelancers around that there is no reason to do it, unless you find some stunningly beautiful girl in a girly bar. That is not likely to happen though.

In Angeles City you can easily get a freelancer for 1000 pesos or less. A barfine will cost you something like 2500 and usually you should give a tip of up to 500 pesos. Better be a damn hot girl if I am paying 3x.

The only time I ever barfined a girl in the Philippines is when I first arrived to Asia and was moving to Cambodia the next day. She was very hot, exactly my type, and I wanted to get one really hot Pinay in before I left.

When I moved back and lived there for 3 years I paid no barfines. The highest amounts I paid were 1800 to a freelancer in Manila, 1700 to a freelancer in Cebu, and everything else was 1000 pesos or less.

A guy on a vacation may want to go to a girly bar and pay 3k to a really hot girl because he doesn’t have much time, and there is a real sense of urgency. When you live here there is no sense of urgency.

Those two freelancers that I gave over 1k to were very hot and I was happy to pay them more. But unless a girl is a standout I see no reason to overpay. I can find something tomorrow or the next day.

And every city I have lived in I have ended up with some girls who became regular visitors that would come for 500 pesos for a quick BJ. To me this is the best way to do it.

Have a new girl over, when she ticks all your boxes and you know you want to see her again be nice and kind to her and then explain that you can’t afford to pay 1000 each time, but if she can just stop by for 20 minutes you will give her 500.

Most girls see the value in this, a guaranteed 500 for 20 minutes is better than spending all night at some bar to go with a random stranger for 1000. One of my 500 girls regularly asked for 2k or more at J-Ave in Cebu, so don’t think that these are bottom of the barrel girls just because they eventually agree to come cheaply.

Pay the higher price at first, be someone they feel safe with, and then you can get a cheaper price.


There’s another 7400 words in the full ebook!  I’ll be constantly updating it with more money saving tips.

6 Responses

  1. frank says:

    So true. My pinay girl likes mcdo (McDonald’s) I order a value meal and she only eats my fries, she’s on a diet doesn’t want to get over 80 lbs. She’s great and skinny.

    I’m a reptile lover too.. I feel a kinship to reptiles. You catch any interesting geckos? I’m looking for the tokay gecko.

  2. kick2dante says:

    naw ive never caught any, i was staying at a place in cebu that had some huge lizards living in the trees but i just let them be

  3. Blue says:

    Hi Dante,

    I went through your Kindle book making notes along the way. Great info by the way 🙂 I have a few follow-up questions. I’m sorry if this is asking too much…feel free to only answer a couple if you’d like. 🙂
    1-You mentioned the $450 Cebu apartment including electric and water.
    a-Were you using AC as from what I’ve read that should lead to a much higher cost? Ideally, if you can describe what your ‘cooling’ solution was that kept electric costs low?
    b-According to numbeo and the few sites I come across for renting units in Cebu City, the price for a given furinished apartment in Cebu City seems to be in the $400s without electric/water (for month-to-month). I know you mention checking out forums, but are there any particular buildings you could point to or websites for finding a place to rent month-to-month in Cebu City the range you mention?
    2-You mention living in a hotel in Angeles for $300/mth. Which hotel was that? Does it have good internet?
    3-You mention opening a dollar account in the Philippines. Any particular bank recommendation/s?
    4-You mention the costs of maintaining visa status in Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand; and describe what has to be done for Cambodia and Thailand. But could you clarify what one has to do to keep staying in the Philippines (at least say for an initial period of several months while trying it out)?
    5-You talk about the internet being crappy in Cebu City, but you also mention having gotten the cheapest package. So is it just a matter of paying for some sort of ‘premium’ package (that’s say in $70/mth range) to get fast reliable internet — or is not available altogether?
    6-Did you experience a problem of ‘brownouts’ in Cebu City? If so, how frequent/long?

    Much thanks!

  4. kick2dante says:

    thanks for reading and for the kind words, sorry i dont really like to name the places i stay, im paranoid like that :p

    i dont use much AC, only set it up to be on for an hour or two before bed, buy a few fans that can help, ive lived here so long i am used to the hot weather now

    kind of hard to name places in cebu cuz there arent many options, i know you can get some decent deals if you are willing to sign a long term lease at la guardia flats in IT park

    my place in angeles was pretty trashy, you should look in the area near Tiger Hotel and behind ABC Hotel, there is a big bottling factory here so you know you are in the right place, lots of rentals here in the 16k a month range that are much nicer then where i was staying, and its still a good location walking distance to fields (this is near infinity condo, but that place is super overpriced)

    BDO works well for dollar, BPI should be fine, it can be frustrating trying to open an account, one branch may not let you while the next might, so if one BDO shoots you down walk down the street to the next

    for phils you get one month free on arrival, then can extend another month, from that point you have to get an ACR card and can extend for 1, 2, or 6 months…… it is quite easy overall, no visa runs for 3 years, immigration trips take an hour or two

    yes there are more expensive packages but they wont be $70, mine was 999 pesos for the cheapest, you can get twice as fast for 1299 pesos and then faster then that for maybe 1600-2000, PLDT is ok, after using that internet for a year it was pretty dang reliable and you should be fine with it

    brownouts aren’t an issue in cebu, at least not right in the city, i lived there close to a year and a half think power went out three times total and never stayed out more than an hour-ish, angeles had them a little more frequently

  5. Blue says:

    Thank you Dante for the thorough response. Much appreciated.

  6. kick2dante says:

    not a problem at all 🙂

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