After Lolo died, I decided to stay here in the Philippines, since the business compound contained both his old house where I could live and the apartment above the business office for his son's family.
Widows are often lonely, but here I not only have family, and there is help to do the cooking and cleaning.
Retirement in the Philippines is attractive and there is a retirement visa.
Often Filipinos like my husband who worked overseas come back to retire, and many US Military men have Filipino wives from when they were stationed here and met them here, so decide to move here to retire to her home town where they have family.
But there are places with a lot of retirees from overseas that cater to foreigners-- not just Yanks but Europeans and Asians (e.g. Japan and Korea). So there is a social life for them.
When I first arrived, I learned some Tagalog, because there weren't a lot of people here who were bilingual, however over the last 20 years I found that most of the clerks etc. do understand English so alas my Tagalog fluency has withered because I rarely use it.
That last part if the problem a lot of people talking about retirement overseas ignores: unless you have a Filipino spouse, it can be lonely.
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