In order avail of this, I had to submit the following:

We submitted all of the above at the 8th Floor of the Department of Finance building located at the Central Bank Compound next to Harrison Plaza. When you arrive, mention that your destination is the “Mabuhay Lane”. And before I forget, have at least 3 copies of all the documents I mentioned and bring all the originals if possible, especially your passport and birth certificate.

Initially, we hired the services of a Customs Broker but it turned out that they were incompetent in handling this part of the process so I took the initiative to process it myself. When we first visited DOF, we found out that we were missing so much of the requirements that the officer even scolded our broker. The broker did not properly do their homework and our visit was then wasted! Well, looking back at it now I am glad I accompanied the broker. The letters and affidavit they prepared for me had many important missing information, typographical and stupid mistakes putting in the wrong country of origin! However, for the customs part, I am leaving this to them and I hope they wouldn’t make the same sloppy job as they did for the DOF Exemption. They did mention to me that this wasn’t in their regular service offering so I guess I can overlook this for now. However, I am utterly frustrated for their attitude in handling it in general. I had to follow them up daily otherwise they would not really call me up and inform me of what documents were missing or needed. That’s one thing I am warning all of you to make sure when you hire your broker that they are reliable or maybe have some good references.
So in the end, I was lucky to be able to get my letter of approval on the same day. I submitted it at around 10AM and was able to pick it up around 1:30PM. But I had to watch them like a hawk and be present most of the time. Otherwise, you’ll never know. I had to do this because I didn’t want to leave both my passports there. The next step would be to submit this to the Customs officers at the Port. I left the documents today and they said they will work on it on Monday. Our goods arrived five days ago and she said that they have not yet stripped the goods yet. We only start paying for warehouse storage after the goods are stripped. So anyway, I’m crossing my fingers that everything will work out well. Stay tuned for the next part of the story!

• Phase 0 Preparation (details of these will be discussed in succeeding posts)

This has already started now. We need to research the best kind of visa we will use for our long stay. Also, we just found out that we could not officially sublet our apartment. According to our landlord we should “not let them know” if we planned to do it because it is officially not allowed. We’re starting to let our friends and colleagues know about our plans to see if anyone also want to sublet our apartment.

• Phase 1 (sometime in April or May)

Scouting visit to the Philippines. This will be around 2-3 weeks.
Here we will try to see if my husband can work remotely there for his clients. He needs a place, where he can have at least a spacious desk to work on with a computer and a good broadband connection so he can call his colleagues here via VOIP. Then, we would also look for possible places where we can stay.
Also, we arrange to open peso bank accounts. We will also meet and network with my old colleagues and referrals from my family members.
We now decide afterwards if we will continue with the long stay in August.

• Phase 2 (After the trip)

At this time, we are totally convinced that the prospects are good and we are comfortable with the idea of living there then we would most probably end the lease of our apartment and start planning to get our stuff to storage or directly to the Philippines. We start our paperwork for our long stay in the Philippines.

• Phase 3 (after 3 months)

The plan is for me to have a sabbatical for around 6 months then later explore my personal business opportunities. I will Assist my hubby in opening a company, calling government offices, networking with people, finding our first hired free-lance programmer.
My Dutch husband then learns the culture and business environment, possibly the language, making sure the communication with client/partners in NL is effective. Start the outsourcing company with 1 free-lance programmer. Meet and network with people in Philippines.
At this phase we would see if the oursourcing business is viable and growing. If the results are positive (more work coming from NL), we would be expanding the company by hiring an additional programmer.

At six months, if everything work out as planned, long-term residence is considered along with finding a new house and office space.

Again, in summary, we see that we would definitely need some help on the following:

1. An office/desk space for my husband that has high-speed internet connection (asap)
2. A place to live temporarily while we are looking for our own place
3. Assistance in the form of leads, advise, contact referrals in the government or businesses that would help us in the building and growing of the business.
4. Advise or referrals in finding our own temporary residence for the first six months (such as a 1/2 bedroom apartment with available highspeed internet, good running water and near a business district).