When I have been travelling around the Philippines, people automatically assume I am an American. I’m white, or Caucasian, in racial terms and I don’t really know how this relates to nationality.

My travels in the Philippines have seen me meet a whole host of American racial sub-groups from Hispanic, Asian and African backgrounds – they are all American. Being an American is a nationality, not every American is white, although to be fair, whites are around 60% of the population. I haven’t bothered to learn Tagalog, but it isn’t difficult to pick up the term Americano when people are chatting in local language. It works for me, why bother explaining to locals that I am from Australia if they don’t ask.

Let’s face it, most people don’t care either way and they clearly can’t pick an American, English, Australian or New Zealand accent. What is ironic for me, the average Filipino has more of an American accent than me – I am not even close. I enjoy my time in the Philippines, so I care little of the perception of nationality whilst I am there. I’m white, that’s pretty obvious What annoys me, I guess, is locals thinking I am paying with US dollars and not Australian dollars, that’s where a disparity exists.

The purchasing power of the Australian dollar is significantly less than the US dollar these days, at time of writing the New Zealand dollar didn’t fare too bad against the Australian dollar at 1.09 but that is still well short of the 0.76 of the purchasing power of the mighty USD. When I am negotiating prices with a currency of around three quarters of the value of American dollars, then this matter is important to me. Most people couldn’t pick the difference between a New Zealand and Australian accent, most in the region could distinguish a English accent either and I would mind paying in British pounds too.