Editorial Policy

How we research and write

A post starts with a real question — usually one a reader asked, or one we could not find a straight answer to ourselves. Then we work out the answer properly before we write a word of it.

For recipes that means cooking the dish. Not adapting somebody else’s method and changing three adjectives, but standing at a stove with a timer. That is how we know a sauce needs 45 minutes rather than 20, and how we can tell you what it should look like when it is ready instead of just how long to wait. When we suggest a substitution — cane vinegar swapped for rice vinegar with a pinch of sugar, say — it is because we have cooked the dish both ways and can describe how the second one differs.

For travel it means the route. Which terminal, which boat, roughly what the tricycle driver will ask for at the port. Where we have not been somewhere first-hand, we say so in the piece itself, near the claim, in plain words. A guide built from official timetables and reader reports is still useful — it is just a different thing from a guide built from a trip, and you deserve to know which one you are reading.

How we handle prices and costs

Money numbers are the easiest thing on a website to get wrong, because they are correct for about a fortnight and then quietly rot. So we treat them carefully.

Every cost we publish is an indicative range, compiled in a stated month. A range tells you what to budget. It does not tell you what you will pay. Near any cost table you will see a line like this one:

Indicative costs compiled July 2026. Fares, fees and rates change often — confirm current prices before you book or send money.

What we will never write is that we “checked these prices” on a particular date, or anything else that implies a live feed. We do not run one. Nobody at this size does, whatever their pages claim. Treat our numbers as a starting point for your own budget, then confirm with the ferry operator, the airline, or the remittance provider before you commit.

Our rule against invented material

This is the line we care about most, so it gets its own heading.

• No fabricated statistics. We do not write “83% of OFWs say…” unless there is a real published source, and if there is, we name it and link it. A number with no source behind it is decoration pretending to be evidence.
• No invented experts. No “financial adviser Maria” who does not exist. No composite characters presented as real people.
• No fake testimonials. No invented reader quotes, no manufactured reviews.
• No fictional bylines. Everything publishes as AsianPinay Editorial. We would rather have one honest byline than a masthead of stock-photo personas.

Limits on health, skin and money content

We write about skincare for morena skin — warm brown skin tones — because the mainstream advice often ignores how it actually behaves in sun and heat. But that is general information, not a diagnosis. We do not claim any product treats a medical condition. If something on your skin is painful, spreading, changing, or simply not improving, see a dermatologist rather than a blog. We do not promote skin-whitening, and we will not run posts framed around becoming lighter.

Money posts work the same way. We show the arithmetic on clearly stated example figures — on a ₱50,000 transfer at a 1.5% exchange margin plus a ₱150 fee, that is ₱900 lost to the margin and ₱1,050 all in — so you can redo the sum with your own numbers. What we are not doing is telling you what to do with your savings.

This is general information, not financial advice. Fees and rates change — check with your provider before you send.

Corrections and updates

We will get things wrong. A fare will be stale, a step will not survive contact with a different stove, a Filipino word will be spelled badly. When it happens we want to know.

1. Tell us what is wrong

   Email [email protected] with the page link and the specific line. “The tricycle fare in the Coron post is out of date” is far more useful than “your prices are wrong”.

2. We check it

   Against a source, or by cooking or doing the thing again. If you are right, we say so when we reply.

3. We fix it in the open

   Material corrections — anything that changes the advice, a cost, a safety point, or a fact — get fixed and noted on the page, dated. We do not quietly rewrite a claim and pretend the old one never ran. Typos and broken links we simply fix.

Separately from corrections, posts carry an Updated date. That date changes when we revisit the content — refreshed cost ranges, a new route, a clarified step. It does not change because we swapped a comma. If you see a recent Updated date, something real about the page has moved.

Affiliate links and money from this site

Plainly: this site currently uses no affiliate links. Nothing you click here pays us a commission today, and no recommendation on the site has been influenced by a payment.

If that ever changes, here is the commitment. Any affiliate or sponsored relationship will be disclosed clearly on the page carrying it, near the link and not buried in a footer. It will never change what we recommend or the order we recommend it in. And we will not accept a paid placement written to look like an ordinary post. If we cannot say something honestly, we would rather not run it.

How we use AI tools

We would rather tell you than have you wonder. Drafting and editing tools, including AI ones, may be used in producing what you read here — the same way a spellchecker or a research assistant gets used. What does not change is who is responsible. A human sets the standards for every piece, decides what goes in it, checks the claims against sources, tests the recipes, and is accountable for what publishes.

No post goes up unread. Nothing gets published because software produced it and it looked plausible. If a claim cannot be traced to a source or to something we did ourselves, it comes out.

Standards by content type

The general rules above take a specific shape in each hub, and it is fair for readers to know the shape. Recipes (Kusina): every recipe carries its substitution section and its troubleshooting section — a recipe that only works within reach of a Philippine wet market is half-written by our standard — and where regional versions of a dish differ, we present the variants as equals rather than refereeing whose family is right. Travel (Lakbay): peso figures are checked against operators and official fee schedules at writing time and dated in the text; we accept no comped stays or tours; and known ethical controversies at a destination are covered in the guide itself, not left for readers to discover afterwards. Money (OFW Life): we explain mechanisms and comparisons rather than crowning providers whose pricing changes monthly, and any figure set by a government body — customs allowances, programme dividend rates — is routed to the official source rather than frozen into our text. Culture (Kultura): traditions and beliefs are explained through what they do for the people who keep them; mockery and exoticising are both banned, and pamahiin are presented as culture, not science. Beauty (Ganda at Buhay): mechanism before product, ingredient list before brand, and no affiliate consideration in what gets recommended or in what order.

Our sourcing hierarchy

When guides state facts, sources rank in this order: official bodies first (government agencies, regulators, the operators of a service themselves), first-hand verification second (a price list photographed, a route actually priced), established reference publications third — and other blogs effectively never, because unverified figures copied between blogs are how the same wrong number ends up everywhere. Where a claim rests on a source that can move — a fee schedule, a dividend declaration, a customs allowance — the text says when it was checked, so the reader knows the fact’s age as well as its content. A guide that cannot meet this standard for a claim drops the claim rather than hedging it into the text anyway.

Reader questions and submissions

Most of this site began as reader questions, and the pipeline still runs on them. When you send a question through the contact route, three things are true: we may answer it as a full guide without needing anything further from you; we will not publish your name or any identifying detail unless you explicitly ask us to credit you; and if the question involves personal circumstances — a specific debt, a medical situation, a legal dispute — we will point you toward proper professional help rather than pretend a blog is the right instrument. Corrections submitted the same way get priority over everything else in the queue, per the process above.

Contact

Questions about how we work, corrections, or a topic you want covered: [email protected]. You can also read more about who we are, our privacy policy, and our terms of use.