Derrick sent me a driver named Mar, who drives Derrick's crew around during their production trips. Mar turns out to be very knowledgeable and, like most Filipinos, he has a second job. He works as a real estate agent for Ayala Corporation.
I only had two stops on my agenda and since we had a lot of time between my morning stop and my afternoon appointment, he offered to take me to the Laguna TechnoPark in Santa Rosa. He said it's only an hour's drive.
Mar said that the [urban] development is moving southward. To avoid the high cost, congestion, and pollution in Manila, businesses are moving south to Laguna.
The TechnoPark turned out to be a very large commercial development area with factories of mostly foreign manufacturing companies -- automobiles, electronics, semiconductors. The place is walled with guarded gates. And then, inside the complex, each company is again walled with a guarded gate.
Then he took me to residential development, also owned by Ayala. We went through a couple of model homes. The single-family homes with three bedrooms costs about PhP4M, which seemed too expensive until I realized it's less than $80K.
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