The Price and Glory of Cheap Alcohol in the Philippines

For anyone moving in to the Philippines from any of its Muslim neighbors, the price of moral "sinning" becomes shockingly cheap.  Everywhere you look, there are prostitutes walking around seeking out potential clients, local bars with little restrictions on smoking indoors or televised lingerie models, or customers, both local and expat, mixing together, heartily laughing away at crude sexual jokes, while dancing to the latest hip-pop hits imported from the US.  Fluent English with American accents are sprinkled with Filipino on the streets, giving the place both a familiar and exotic feel simultaneously.

And all of that happening nightlife and its physically damaging consequences are happening due to, well, the prevalence of ultra-cheap alcohol served up in places that are classy even by high standards of continental Western Europe.  Bars with beautifully decorated Spanish-inspired interior furnishings can be had for anyone who can spare the equivalent of a couple of Euros for a San Miguel, the national beer brand of the country.  Combined with a friendly population highly interested in talking to foreigners about Philippines and beyond, the casual night at the bar is definitely worth those few Euros.

But while cheap alcohol stimulates happiness, and creates a vibrant party scene, it, at the same time, has become a cause and symbol for many of what seems like Philippines' many social problems.  The alcohol-infused elation can only slightly mask the issues that it brings to light.  Whether it is a persistent high birthrate that in a few years will bring the tiny archipelago nation's population to 100 million, or the highly visible inequality that put high-class neighborhoods and slums, literally, physically side-by-side, cheap alcohol cannot escape certain faults and responsibilities.

Indeed, just across the streets from those classy Spanish-inspired bars, graffiti-covered concrete walls blocks off the views of unsightly, hastily built shacks used by Manila's large undocumented, unregistered migrant populations for permanent (or temporary, as many aspire for) shelters.  Half naked kids run around the streets, trying their best to peddle cigarettes, flowers, and other unknown little items to the half-drunk city dwellers coming out of those classy bars.  Whole families, sense of dismay and suffering clearly in their eyes, indigently watch the whole episode.  

And lets just say that those families, with their large numbers of kids, are just curious on-lookers to the presence of cheap alcohol in the bloodstream of their wealthy neighbors/potential clients.  On the contrary, cheap alcohol, served not in classy bars but in ordinary households that are otherwise completely lacking in recreational features, may have created the large families in the first place.  It is a fellow drinker ruthlessly pointed out, "well, when you have nothing to do at home, hat else you gonna do?  You are gonna fool around a bit and stuff just happens."

And as the cheap alcohol starts the whole sensual episode in a physically titillating way, religion will end it in a quickly sobering fashion.  In a strongly Catholic country where the warnings of God are taken literally and in a very serious light, contraception devices/methodologies are not frequently used by the general populace, and the idea of abortion is, if anything, completely offensive and not a viable option.  Plus, maybe, just maybe, a few more kids will bring a bit more revenue for the family in a decade or so that makes alcohol even cheaper for the pocket...

As another Saturday night falls on an alcohol-crazed Manila, the vast gulf between the lives of the wealthy, dancing away to pulsing music in trendy bars in equally trendy clothing, and the poor, consuming equally large amount of alcohol, if not more, in the dark corners of the impromptu, unplanned cities to drown away their socially induced sorrows, is so obviously exposed and highlighted.  It is those cheap bottles of booze that put them in different places and classes, but yet connect them and draws parallels between their lives.

Thus, those inexpensive bottles of spirits, lapped up in convenience stores, in little mom-and-pop shops in the shantytowns, and in the high-end watering holes of the most modern, prestigious shopping malls of the city, separate the social classes, extenuate their divisions, but simultaneously, connect and reconnect every segment of the society, from the bottom to the very top, drawing together shared experiences and commonalities in perceptions despite presence of entirely separate and segregated lives.   It is, to be blunt, a social tool, a mirror of the society, that cannot be easily framed as good or evil...