let me quote my good friend ruth and how sensible her thoughts are:

My Reflections of Our Batam Trip - Microsoft Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity
What a good way to start the New Year 2007! 16 Volunteers (including moi) spent 3 days at Batam, Indonesia to build a house for a poor Indonesian Family (husband & wife and 2 kids).

How ironic it is that we Filipinos associate ourselves more to Western culture when in fact we look a lot more and even talk in the same way as Indonesians (Bahasa Indonesia sounds like Tagalog, the alphabets are the same)...even some words are the same although it has a different meaning.

The vegetation in Indonesia (wild grass), the occasional chicken and dogs criss crossing the road. Even the local brown birds (I think we call them maya-maya) is also a common sight in Batam. The way our poor folks in the Philippines carry their baby on their hips...the way some of our elderlies..sit in front of their doors and windows to pass away the time while smoking a cigarette or chit chatting with the neighbor.

The way we oggle at white cacuasians and wonder why they come to a place as remote as this town...

It all reminds me of the Philippines. It reminds me of my Grade 4 History class, my teacher then told us that our ancestors are the Malays and the Indonesians.

We have such terms as Filipino-Chinese, Filipino-Aussie, the Fil-AM (Filipino Americans), but we never say Filipino-Malay or Filipino-Indonesian, to refer to children born out of interracial marriages.

I reckon maybe because our bloodlines are the same and any cross-cultural marriage would not be obvious,as we look the same anyway.

I also reckon that SOuth East Asia (SEA), is predominantly a Malay\Indonesia race anyway. This is how we distinguish ourselves from other Asians (Greater China which includes China, Taiwan, Hongkong, South Korea, Japan & India).

But the only developed nation amongst SEA nations is Singapore (not far behind though is Malaysia). What does the Malay\Indonesian race lack and we are all still called developing countries?

Perhaps, we (Filipinos) need to start associating more with our SEA neighbors and help fuel the economy of SEA developing nations by acknowledging the fact that our bloodlines are predominantly Malay\Indonesian and that our close proximity to each other. We should also revisit the way our past history is closely linked together