For girls, church is not only the place to pray for a good husband, but also the place to show yourself off to prospective husbands. It’s a little bit like Bali with all the unmarried girls sitting dressed-up at temple entrances waiting to be noticed. If you want to talk with a potentially permanent lady friend, meet her during or after church. This is a much more solid option than meeting a Philippine woman in one of the numerous bars.  A Cyber café (of which there about 500) might be another good option, but you may have to compete with Cyber chat-partners.

To come back to the property I fell in love with. It was just perfect; it fit my dream of a huge tropical garden: 10,000 sq. meters on a hill overlooking the highway, but not too close; not far from the city and close to the airport.

I live in a municipality of about 30,000 people; small enough to make friends with the mayor. I have a wall all around my property for privacy and security. My house is huge, with huge rooms: like the houses I was used to in the Middle East. There is a gatehouse on the property for one or two families. I still have space to build as much as I want: first thing I built was an original round pool and an airy Japanese Rest House and a lot of paved space to park cars, and a 3-phase Power and an independent water supply with its own bore and water tower. Here are some pictures of it www.imachination.com/orchidpark.

The original owner of the property was Spanish: he was from a Spanish-colonial family and had built the house using large slabs of glazed brick from the inside of glass ovens. The architecture is strong and wide (25x25m), based on unique stone blocks, ready for the occasional typhoons that hit this far south. When I walked into the house I loved the cool dark huge interior right away.

I must tell you about the strangest thing that happened at the moment we signed the deal. There was a loud thunderclap that came out of the clear sky; must have been a meteorite. As an omen it was not bad. We were able to bring in a Mercedes from Europe, we survived the fall of the Marcos regime and brought two lovely children into the world, they are growing up in the most protected and loving environment imaginable: a private tropical garden with a warm pool and lots of children and helpers from nearby families – these are people who have plenty of time for each other. We planted the whole garden with around 400 trees and plants and orchids. We brought in Hawaiian blue grass for the lawns around the house; the rest of the garden was grazed for us by two deer-like Balinese cows and their calves. In this way we also had compost for the young trees. Citrus trees (calamansi) do well in the limestone soil that is prevalent here. We found some citrus trees already planted when we bought the property and then had most of the land planted with them before our larger trees grew bigger. In the beginning, we grew all sorts of crops between the trees: peanuts, corn and even tobacco. The Spanish owner had tried his hand at grapes. Between the calamansi trees we had planted camunggai (drumstick trees). Fast growing and with edible leaves, ideal for fish-soup. Around these trees is the place where we have grown our orchids.

With the first sprays of orchid flowers hanging in awesome splendor from the camunggai trees we decided to name our place Orchid Park. We stayed in this Paradise for 8 years.  Life in the hammock and the pool, the Economist every week, and satellite TV: In this world but not of this world. If you can afford it, a mid-life break of such proportions could be the best decision you ever make, especially if you want to raise a new family.

P.S. Orchid Park is now leased (until July, 2003) to an all-girl costume jewelry manufacturing company, employing about 120 girls.