Just on the subject of power outage. My family own a condo in Metro Manila. All the high end condos have generator backup. When the power goes off you can hear the generator kick in. Its like the sound of a distant helicopter. Many beautiful places and people in the Philippines but it has its problems. If you choose emerging market country this goes with the territory.
Ditto with Thailand but at least in Philippines they speak English. And it seems the cost of living is equal to or less than Thailand. Not sure about VISA issues with Americans in Philippines but I'm thinking it's not a huge deal. As long as I can trade with decent Internet, I'm good to go.
Oversubscription is the main issue in the Manila area. Equipment fit for say 1000 people is used by 5000 clients. This mostly affects speed from 7pm to 10:30pm, on some days the connection does lag enough for a few minutes for IB to disconnect me for a few seconds but that problem comes and goes - I suppose they upgrade the equipment every now and again when there's too many clients. I also like wireless tech because it will keep on working when the power goes out, I'm not sure even with an UPS a DSL connection would keep working here and PLDT is known to disconnect your phone line (which is required for DSL) when they connect new clients - they just don't care. It really depends where you are, ironically the smaller towns often have a better quality 3.5G/4G connection because there's no oversubscription. The latency is mostly because of the technology, ping to California right now at 7am is around 240ms, it tends to stay in that area throughout the day. You will get better (sub 200ms) with a DSL connection but never under 100ms. I come from a country with relatively fast and low-latency internet, so my comments should be considered in that context.
The cost of living is not equal to Thailand, Philippines is quite a bit more expensive (especially food, housing, electricity, vacationing) and there are other negatives - Thailand is much more developed, cleaner and seemingly safer. I never felt to be in danger in Thailand, in Philippines I get it all the time. It's partly because of the Americanized culture, glorifying rap, aggressive behavior and general hyper-individualism. The decent people here are nicer though and the educated people speak good English. You can also find almost any produce from anywhere in the world in Makati, it feels like a global city quite often. Cebu is another good area, you can find lots of nice looking beach homes there, parts of the island are exclusively (due to the price) foreigner inhabited. Visa is very easy here and the process is getting better all the time. From what I know, Thailand is horrible when it comes to obtaining a Visa.
Yea Cebu looks nice. I'm not a huge fan of big cities. I appreciate your insight d08. I'm interested to know what you and others are trading?