Pea walks into a provincial Filipino neighborhood unannounced and knocks on doors to ask families what they do for a living, what they do for fun, and what they hope for. The answers show how far provincial life is from the Western picture of leisure, and how ordinary Filipino hospitality makes a visit like this possible at all.
The setup: showing "what most foreigners never see"
- Houses in the provinces sit in a row; she asks permission at each door before going in
- Typical provincial house is built from wood and whatever materials can be found and scavenged nearby
Ate Diana's household
- Nine people live in the house: six adults and three kids (Pea first says five, then corrects herself with a gasp)
- Diana farms ("garden"); her husband does abaca farming and makes abaca rope
- They do have electricity
- What she does for fun: gardening, which is also her job
- Her kids play outside, but when they're not in school they help her farm and weed; all of them go to school
- Her hope for the next five years: that her kids finish their studies. Pea says this is the basic hope and dream of most Filipinos, for their children to have a better future
- Pea's comparison: ask an average Westerner what they do for fun and you hear golf or snow skiing. Filipinos "need to do what they have to do, but not what we want to do." Making a living in the provinces is so hard that there isn't much room for fun
Kuya Dudong's household
- Two kids, ages 6 and 13
- Vegetable farmer; on a good week he makes 500 pesos (about $8 US). Some weeks he makes zero
- Pea explains why: you have to wait until the vegetables are ready to harvest, so it's not a continuous income stream
- Asked what he does in a zero-income week, he answers: "Nothing"
- Asked what his most fun day would be if he could do anything: go to his farm, because tending the farm is the most important thing
- He keeps goats to breed and sell. When Pea asks if they eat them ("Oh, I asked the wrong question"), he says some get eaten and some get sold
- Pea's takeaway: she asked him what he'd do for fun and he said work. "Our culture is very different from yours. You guys live such complicated lives and we Filipinos live a simple life." She allows that maybe it's just that Westerners have more money
Ate Melissa's household
- Four people in the house; she's lived in the area 13 years
- Stay-at-home wife and mom with two kids; her husband is a farmer ("Another farmer? Why am I not surprised?")
- Goes to town once a week
- She and her husband don't go on dates anymore because there's no time
- Her dream date: go to town together, walk side by side and look at the surroundings, maybe go to the mall because the malls are cooler
- Pea asks about holding hands. No. Melissa is a shy Filipina and even married couples like them don't do PDA
Pea's closing points
- "There's no Xbox, no PlayStation, no man cave. And if there was a man cave, it would literally only be a man in a cave"
- She wanted viewers to see "the raw Philippines"
- How she could just show up at strangers' houses: Filipino hospitality. If you ask permission and you're respectful and kind, people say yes, especially in the provinces, where "they treat you as their own"
- Pre-empting the comments: she did ask everyone for permission to post the footage, and they agreed
Outro gag
- Pea as "the farmer's daughter," helping you grow your plans for the Philippines and telling you how to find a good Filipina "so you don't end up with a hoe"
- The traveling salesman returns. "He promised to plow my field." "Um, I don't think that's where the seeds go."
