It's choking especially when it takes 2 hours to travel 16 km away from home and in the evening it's miserable as it takes upto 4 hours. You can't be comfortable unless you're always at home.
We feel the pressure especially in the rush hour where workers are going home after a long day of work. You guys are lucky because you have that transport called "Light Rail Transit System" a modern "Train". in our city, we don't have that thing. we only have a small bus called Jeepney. when the rush hour comes, you will see a lot of NBA players, what I mean by that is everyone is jumping on that jeepney when they see it coming. If you are not fast enough, the jeepney would be full as soon as they arrived at the terminal. If it is full, you need to wait for the next one to come. this is one of the pressure we are facing every day. Guess why? it is because of the massive population in our country.
In my observation, most Filipinos do NOT live with a 4 hour jeepney ride every day. Just like in any country, some people choose to live in densely populated areas like metro Manila. They both reap the rewards and suffer the consequences of their choices. For people who live in free countries and who have freedom of movement it's a little bit disingenuous to live in a big city than bitch about overpopulation.
I would say that the problems the country has do not stem primarily from over-population. More from distribution of wealth issues which themselves spring from power balance issues. Corruption has a lot to do with it it appears to me, and more critically, people's tolerance of it. There are other things as well. One of them the 'crab mentality' issue which has been mentioned before on this board. The peeps grab the nearest person to them to drag them down just like crabs, and inevitably that is someone in their own category. Support your fellow citizen in their efforts instead and see what happens to the society.
A bigger issue yet is 'brain drain'. Hopefully with a stronger sense of nationalism more people will stick it out in The Philippines, or at least be more likely to come back eventually. As I see it The Philippines has suffered vast damage from a campaign of 'demoralization' which is a Soviet term for a long running psychological operation to get the population ready for a revolution. Who, if anyone, ran such a putative campaign and for what reason is unknown to me.
If low population density was the key to happiness the Mongolians would be a lot better off than they are.