Meet Carlo. He is one of the younger residents of the village of Salvacion – a small agricultural village on the slopes of the Mayon Volcano in the Bicol Region of the Philippines. Carlo had just recently graduated from college in Manila. He studied computers. I asked him what he was doing now. Was he on vacation? And he replied that he was looking for a job. He didn’t know how much a computer technician might earn, but he said that the minimum wage in the Bicol Region was P250 per day ($6 US or NT$180). Carlo was one of the hundreds (nay, thousands) of people who called out “Hello!” and “Hey, Joe!” to me as I rode past on my bicycle. The woman running the little shop to our right is his “auntie”. The next woman who showed up was his mother, and we had a good old-fashioned chin wag about the weather and how crazy I must be to be out there in the midday sun on my bicycle. Paul, the man I’d met earlier took the picture for us.

Tags: job, Legazpi, Mayon Volcano, Meet Carlo, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, US