What is tambay and why do Filipinos “don’t need anything” (7 photos)

Are you familiar with the Filipino concept of tambay? You probably know what I'm talking about if you've ever lived among Filipinos. It's a typical Filipino hakuna matata, the art of "hanging out" anywhere with pleasure, even around the corner of a vegetable stand.





Filipinos just hang out on the ground and branches

How Filipinos live

With their mother's milk, from the first grade of school, they get used to "tambay". Tambey is the ability to sit down with friends and just sit and chat anywhere: under a big tree on the grass, on the ground behind the school, by the river. You don't need drinks or a picnic for this. You only need yourself and a couple of people.

So they sit and chat, what's wrong with that, you say? In our country, women can get into a fight on the street or men can go to a pub to chat. No! Because women chat in their spare time.



Three men brought chairs to the bricks and the transformer...

Tambay, however, legitimately takes up most of the lives of Filipinos. We need sleep, food, and the Filipinos need sleep, food, and TAMBEY.

By the way, this is another reason why gossip is so popular in the Philippines. Everyone loves to sit and chat. But what about if you are constantly on Tambey and do not watch TV or have not read anything since yesterday? Of course, about mutual friends.





Schoolchildren learn to tambey after school from childhood

In the Philippines, someone else's personal life is not "someone else's business", but almost always - common information. And no one gets offended because he does tambay himself.

The most tambay place in the country

In every corner of the Philippines there are sari-sari shops. This is a special little shop near the house where everything is sold. Something like our grocery stores in the 90s: they are small, private, focused on everyday household needs - from food to shampoo.



A very cute shop near the house

And sari-sari is the headquarters of tambay. Here locals gather to shop and can stay for hours. And the owner of this store becomes the "head" of this tambey pride, he tells the news to everyone who missed a couple of days of tambey, to keep people informed.

Living on Philippine time

This is what the Japanese sometimes joke about, because they used to be very shocked that the Filipinos don't care about time. They can come to the store and get stuck there for three hours, not rushing to any business or meetings.



Some magazines write that the tambey culture is due to the poverty of the population, they have nowhere else to go than to hang out at home. But they choose it, not the phone or TV!

And if the tambey starts in the evening, there is a 50% chance that someone will pull out a karaoke machine or turn on a microphone. In the Philippines, you don't need to be able to sing to sing. Everyone here sings badly, and that's okay. The main thing is to sing with soul, it will make everyone happy. I once heard this singing on video, and my ears bled for two days. But while they were singing, I smiled, they were so happy with life!

Is it good to hang around somewhere near a store for several hours a day, sweat, sing songs and gossip? You will be surprised, but yes. It turns out that thanks to the tambey culture, people managed to remain socialized, even when the world was overwhelmed by the smartphone culture.



Is this a tambay with a fancy Starbucks coffee? But you still sit barefoot on the side of the road and CHILISH

While the Japanese suffer from social isolation, the Chinese are too lazy to try to make friends with others and they communicate with chatbots, the Filipinos chat perfectly and are happy with each other. They managed to avoid the Asian curse. The funniest thing is that many have even started doing online broadcasts of their tambay. You can see who is at the store from home to go hang out with them.

I personally am terribly jealous of how the Filipinos can afford to just be. I can only spend one day with my friends, if it goes on for several days in a row, I'll be consumed by guilt that I'm not reading a book, not doing anything productive, and just "hanging out".



But there's a problem, street gangs can openly gather anywhere, and how can the police know that they're not just hanging out!?