1. A lack of personal privacy in the bathroom
Quite simply, personal privacy in the bathroom does not seem to be an issue.
In our first accommodation, the bedroom and bathroom were fairly open plan. There was no door. There was no door between the bedroom and living area either, but there was a screen. There wasn’t even a screen between the bathroom and bedroom. Now, this was a very old cottage, so we thought that perhaps the modernisations had been sensitive to tradition and perhaps doors were too modern.
However, on several visits to public facilities I noticed that there were no locks on the doors. At least there were doors.
In our second accommodation we encountered a similar layout, there was no door between the bathroom and the bedroom. This time there was a screen, but it was fairly feeble (even though the frame was metal). And when I tried to use it, it tumbled onto the bed. Luckily neither Mr H or Little Miss H were on that part of the bed at the time.
2. There were so few young people around
Whilst in Portugal we stayed predominantly in rural areas. One morning Idecided to go for a walk before breakfast – there were lots of prettyspring flowers around so I thought I’d try to get some photos.
Whilst on the walk, I was having a bit of a nosey over walls into some of the other quintas (small farms) round about. There was nobody else around. After living in the Philippines for 18 months this really struck me. There were always people around in the Philippines, no matter what time of day you were wandering around. And generally there were always lots of young people.
In Portugal we saw very few young people. Is this because the young people have moved away to the cities (or to other countries) to find work? Or is it just because it is an old population? Is it because the Philippines is a developing country with a typically young population? Whatever the reason, it did just surprise me.
