Been living in the PI for 7 years now: AAB, gotta disagree with you on the lodging. There's ass-tons of decently priced, nice places to stay.
Like Konda, totally agree with you on the cashiers. Really comes down to the cultural thing of this country has been conquered by damn near every major country on earth. They've never ONCE successfully repelled an invading force. So it's damn near genetic now that they just take a beating and smile. They NEVER FUCKING complain about anything. So the result is HORRIBLE FUCKING SERVICE. EVERYWHERE. Why? There's no motivation to provide better service!
Ultimately for me the WORST part of the philippines is the internet connectivity. The ISP's suck hairy donkey balls. I had to pay $150/month for a whopping 5mb/s. PLDT, the country's biggest telco, well, fuck it, if you want to know:
http://www.marcwomack.com/fuck-pldt.