Well, as I said, prove me wrong

Regarding the two people seem to have picked up most on...

The health - well my experience has been visiting someone in what was I'm told a private hospital. The nearest I could describe the place, was a council run 60's built youth club building. I'm sure they were all efficient and qualified, but the NHS it wasn't. We really are spoilt in this country, with our local hospital being new, full of staff and state of the art........and all paid for through our taxes (ie the NHS is not free, it's worth it paid by taxes).
I also had to visit the local clinic when taken ill with food poisoning, it's just that what I saw, I'd be scared of being ill over there for anything other than minor matters.
Again, maybe we're just spoiled here. Our local doctors surgery, the last three I've been registered to have been so clean and modern.

Now the food. Well out there, we eat what we pull from the sea.......with rice. It's ok. Wife is a brill cook and won't cook stuff she knows I won't eat. Fish there too is so unbelievably cheap, this is great.
Contrast when we go out to meet Filipino friends, and I know already I'll be sat there craving an egg sandwich. It doesn't matter who is hosting, or if it's outside caterers, there will be always some fatty pork floating in some sort of watery sauce, there will be something which looks like the inside of a chicken carcase scraped out and fried up (Maybe you know what I'm describing), there will be something black and fishy I'm warned not to eat (I think it's fried up fish guts). The puddings are worse. There will be what look like cupcakes but are made from rice, taste like gloop vaguely flavoured with sugar. There will be something which looks like purple polyfiller, and something else which looks at first glance like caramel blancmange, but when tasted......no it isn't.

Last time we were in Manila, they went to a night market, and bought to eat chicken intestines on sticks. It's like bush tucker trial.
Why is the food so fatty? Everything has lumps of fat in it, which we've been told for years over here is highly unhealthy.

Now obviously there are worse places, and yes, obviously you wouldn't want to retire to Africa or probably most of Central America. Comes down to who our partners are, and yes - it's a two way street

I'm not saying I wouldn't move out there, because I'd follow her wherever she wanted to go, and that really is that. I'd just have reservations.

Slightly changing the subject - only slightly - in the Philippines, except in a couple of towns people probably really wouldn't want to live in, there isn't the expat support network. Contrast this to what I know exists in Thailand, would that bother anyone? Do you really need the expat thing?