I was looking through some old photos of my younger days when I lived in the Philippines and in a couple of photos I noticed I was wearing T-Shirts made in the Philippines. Back in those days if I wasn’t in uniform my fashion consisted of mostly blue jeans and t-shirts with some saying or a place I’d been on the front. One I had was from my stay at the Hyatt Regency Baguio which  was destroyed by an earthquake a couple years after I stayed there. And to think that my room was on the 13th floor! Another which was my favorite shirt had a picture of a Nipa Hut on it and simply said “Philippines Bahay Kubo” I kept that shirt for years and hope to find another someday much larger than the one I had then.

The point of this post is an observation that may or may not be right but in my opinion this is how I see it. In the Philippines I can usually pick out the tourist in a crowd not by the color of the skin but by the logo or saying on the front. If the front shows a particular place in the Philippines it usually means that person does not live in the Philippines. I have many such shirts mostly from the Hundred Islands area where my wife’s province is. This is because I was sold many of them by one of the cutest little t-shirt sellers on the pier one day. She just kept shoving them at me and flashing that cute smile and my pockets emptied and I had a wardrobe for the next year. Anyway back to what I was saying, even in the states I have been to public places where Filipino T-Shirts are being worn and you’d think that you were in Manila but actually you are about 8,000 miles away. I know what you are thinking and no it’s not just my family members. But I noticed more Filipinos wearing shirts with state side logos than Filipino logos when I’m there. I’m sure these people are just as proud as the tourists of being in the Philippines but prefer to wear different types of clothing. Anyway the foreign logo t-shirts are probably produced in the Philippines also. I’ll just close in saying if you see me on the street and you want to sell me a t-shirt especially one with “Bahay Kubo” make sure you can give me the correct change.