Philippines

Concrete roads extremely common

Thailand: Thailand drives left + Thai script; Philippines drives right with English signage.

Drives on the right (unlike Indonesia/Malaysia/Thailand)

Cambodia: Khmer script → Cambodia.

Laos: Lao script → Laos.

Taiwan: Traditional Chinese → Taiwan.

Vietnam: Vietnamese diacritics → Vietnam.

Plates white with black text; many older 2002-series plates with a green tint

Octagonal metal poles common; often a single insulator atop a vertical side bar

Bangladesh: Bengali script → Bangladesh.

Malaysia: Left-hand traffic + BERHENTI signs → Malaysia.

Middle lines yellow or white - often combined yellow+white (no other East-Asian country does this); yellow lines have a distinct orange tint

The combined yellow+white middle line is not common in any other East/Southeast-Asian country - outside the region, always confirm with other clues.

Tall square yellow km stones

Chevrons red on white; signposts often painted red, orange or yellow

Tuk-tuks/tricycles everywhere - often more common than cars

English on signs everywhere - the only major SE-Asian country where that's the norm (Filipino official)

Gen3: white car with visible black roof; sometimes a silvery grey car

Bhutan: Dzongkha script + Himalayan valleys → Bhutan.

Grain spread out on roads to dry

Vietnam: Vietnamese diacritics + conical hats → Vietnam.

Black/white pole boxes with 3-letter municipality abbreviations (all-3 = municipality, or 2 municipality + 1 province; e.g. GMI/GMU = Gamu, Isabela) - not standardised, variants exist

Tuk-tuk/tricycle designs vary by region (infographic by AeroGelo)

Province names on many signs - but not shown on the map → memorise them (Davao de Oro = ex-Compostela Valley); landlines start 0 + area code (mobiles 09)

Motorcycle plates colour-coded by region - north: coloured strip on TOP, south: on the BOTTOM

Crop metas: corn → N-Luzon + Mindanao; oil palms → Mindanao; sugarcane → Negros & Panay; pineapple → Mindanao; banana plantations → central/southern Mindanao (wild bananas grow everywhere!)

Amakan (woven bamboo) walls: diamond pattern → southern half; diagonal weave ('Sawali') → Palawan + northern half

Chile-style indented square poles → north of Manila + around Bacolod (Negros)

Forested mountains with dry mountainsides + pines (rarely similar on high Mindanao roads); Mountain-Dew-bottle decorations common; kuliglig tractors around Cauayan

Moluccan albizia trees (light trunks, pinnate crowns) - esp. east & central Mindanao; western region is Muslim-majority (rest of PH strongly Christian); square mesh poles on the Zamboanga peninsula

Yellow-black striped concrete guardrails

White guardrails with three recurring black stripes

Ladder poletop (two L-profile bars + many thin connecting wires) - Manila & surroundings; countrywide lookalikes use square bars and ≤2 wires

Similar poletops with SQUARE bars appear countrywide - but they almost never have more than two connecting wires; the true many-wired ladder is Manila-area only.

Chocolate Hills: round grassy hills w/ dark brown soil (central Bohol); NW-Bohol has a Street View car with tape on the back

Volcano spotlights: Arayat - alone in flat farmland; Mayon - near-perfect cone (often cloud-capped), one of the tallest; just south of Mayon: vehicle with thick black bars

Destroyed houses & ruins from the 2017 Marawi siege

Decorated white Bataan Death March memorial waystones (Mariveles/Bagac → San Fernando)

Trans-Palawan highway south of Puerto Princesa: very wide (often 6 lanes) but empty; look for the double electrical wire

Lamp posts yellow with black-striped bottoms

Images & statues of ancient Roman soldiers

Rare cars: black car w/ roof rack → General Santos; orange car w/ visible side mirrors → Corregidor Island