In the Philippines, all education starting at Kinder #1 (there is a Kinder #2) through High School requires tuition. (US grade 10.)
Many poor families in the provinces cannot afford to educate their kids.
The public schools have the lowest tuition and the poorest quality in teaching and over crowding.
Private religious schools are in general the most expensive (can be ten times as expensive) and the best in quality.
College education is cheap compared with the US. There is tuition by quarter and fees to take exams throughout the year. Still compared to a US college education it is pennies to the dollar.
The exchange rate between Philippine Pesos and the US Dollar has fluctuated in the last four years from 49:1, to 42:1.
The is no equal employment protection in the Philippines. You can advertise for an attractive, single female, 21 to 25 years of age. And you can fire her without cause later to avoid ever having to pay unemployment insurance. You can simply refuse to hire woman over 30 years of age and many do just that. Woman are the most vulnerable in the society.
There is no divorce in the Philippines unless you are Muslim. Annulments are costly and very hard to get. Even after a judge rules in your favor, it may take a bribe of many tens of thousands of pesos via a subordinate for the judge to hand over the signed order.
Then it may take the sheriff a year to serve papers on the husband unless there is a bribe... etc ad nauseam.
Many woman marry and then the man leaves for another woman. She is probably unable to get an annulment and therefore unable to marry, including a foreigner. She is essentially screwed.
There is a huge difference between the mores and practices of the affluent in the big cities, who have maid and servants and are very conservative in all things, and the entrepreneurial, what ever it takes attitude of many in the provinces where not only do they not have the maids, they don't have money to put their kids through 6th grade. (Think of the South before the civil war and the difference between landed gentry and the dirty poor. That exists today in the Philippines.)
The time zone for all the Philippines is +8 and there is no Daylight Savings Time. In NY during DST, the difference is exactly 12 hours.