Opening a Bank Account in the Philippines

It's been several years, since I opened my last bank account in the Philippines. By that time, I think it was in 1997, it was very easy, just a copy of the passport and an address which could even have been the address of the hotel you were staying at, was needed.
In the meantime I was informed that an ACR (Alien Certificate of Registration) was mandatory to open an account, which you had to get and pay for at an immigration office. Now this is no longer true. Just a few days ago, I opened up a new account with the BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands) and this is what they asked for:

• Copy of the passport (or driver licence or ACR)
• 1 picture 1" x 1 "
• Proof of billing for the address (Any official bill will do it: water bill, telephone bill and it does not need to be on you name. Only the address is important)

This was for a Peso Savings Account with ATM Card at the BPI. Other banks may ask different papers.

Radiation in the Philippines?

Do we have to fear radiation in the Philippines after the nuclear disaster in Japan? I know of some expats here who already get nervous and thinking about leaving the country and go home to where ever they came from.
A few days ago a hoax SMS was spread over the Philippines, telling the people that a nuclear fallout would arrive in the Philippines very soon. Authority quickly responded that this was just an hoax and telling the people not not make such jokes about this disaster.
But do we really have to leave the Philippines? In fact, we are about 3500 Km away from the nuclear power plants in Japan and the wind in Japan is constantly blowing towards the Pacific Ocean and away from the Philippines. So there should be no danger in my opinion. But I am closely monitoring the situation in the the news from Taiwan, which is about half way between here and Japan as well as the news from Guam, where our weather basically comes from. Should there be an increase of radiaton at any of this two places, I am also considering about leaving the country earlier than scheduled. Otherwise our scheduled flight out from here is in about 5 weeks time, on April 27th. I hope the situation here in the Philippines stays calm.

Back in the Philippines

It was a looooong journey, our flight back to the Philippines. After all, we were about some 50++ hours without sleep. That's from getting up on wednesday morning German time, flying to Manila in the late evening that day untill our final arrival in Bohol on Friday morning, philippine time. And even there, we had to stay up the whole day untill we could finaly fall asleep on Friday evening.
Now it's almost 2 weeks since we arrived and this time was used to do some repair on the house. We still have problems with the old steel roof, which is leaking on some places and it seems to be more and more difficult to find a good carpenter in the area here.
Last weekend until yesterday an old (rebuilt) spanish Galeone, the "Galeon Andalucia, was here in Bohol for display. It was built for the EXPO in China and is now on tour trough South East Asia. I didn't manage to get on the ship itself, because there were just too many people waiting. I managed however, to take some pictures from outside. See above.