When I was in Manila in June of this year, I had my Compaq laptop with me thinking I can just chill in cafes in the city and surf the Internet via WiFi. I was dead wrong. It costs P100 at Starbucks for 60 lame minutes! It’s a shame that everything that I wanted to do in Manila cost me something and it’s not even cheap! Parking in particular was expensive. I dunno. It’s either Manila just got ridiculously expensive or I’m dirt poor. To think I’m not exactly the thrifty type.

Comparatively, Davao City has a long way to go in terms of development. It’s a bit tricky to do business in the city. There’s this thing called the “Davao fad mentality” where businesses thrive only when they’re a few months old and eventually fade away until they close down. It’s different in Manila because every time I hang out in Makati, all the restaurants and bars are packed! Here, restaurants make money only in the weekends. But the cool thing about Davao is that WiFi is free everywhere. I just need to buy a cup of coffee and I’m good to go. I guess one reason for that is there is no B2B WiFi service available here such WiZ and Airborne Access. And I doubt that Davaoenos will ever bite WiFi for pay.

Update: I’m wrong. WiZ is already being used by several establishments but is offered free.

Here’s a list of free WiFi hotspots in Davao City:
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