John, your friend when in Philippines should use a Smart sim and you use Lebara in UK then your friend can text you for less than p2 and you can call with your Lebara very cheaply and the signal should be ok.

Tiger suggested Skype. This is fine, but in some parts of the Philippines it's difficult to get a good enough signal. For instance, we can't Skype my wife's family in Siquijor and sometimes there's no cellphone signal either - unless the family go higher up the mountain near where they live!