Bamboo in the Philippines
Written on Mar 17, 2026
Bamboo grows in locations worldwide, but the only place I've seen it with my own eyes is here in the Philippines. There are many types, but I've only seen the type used for construction.
In some places, it grows where people want it to grow and in some places, where they don't want it to grow. It's one of the fastest growing plants in the world. Although it's a member of the grass family, it can sometimes behave a lot like a weed.
In most Filipino languages, people call it "kawayan". People use it to build fences, floors, beds, chairs, tables, chicken coops, and other things I can't even imagine without thinking for a while.
Chairs, Chicken Coops and Fences
One of my sisters-in-law was married to a man who was skilled in constructing items from bamboo. He passed away a few years ago, but I saw him build both chairs for people and coops for raising chickens with it.
A Filipino couple used to live down the street from us, and they built their fence entirely out of bamboo, using other materials to hold it together. I saw the husband replacing a section once. They were just renting the house, and when they moved away, someone removed the fence.
Floors and Beds
My wife, Josie, lived with one of her aunts in the Batangas province while she was going through high school. When she lived there, the flooring was made of bamboo. The flooring in that house is now cement, covered with ceramic tiles.
We visited her aunt after we moved to the Philippines in 2006. It was on the last day of May, when a fiesta took place in that area. Josie and I slept on a bamboo bed. There was neither a mattress nor a cushion on it, so I didn't sleep long. In a place where people sleep on cement floors, her aunt probably didn't think anything of it.
Is Bamboo Cheap?
The Filipinos that live around us in Olongapo seem to think only poor people use bamboo for anything. That could be true, but it's the wrong way of thinking. I consider it inexpensive, not cheap. When properly treated, it'll last far longer than numerous other types of wood in the tropical climate of the Philippines.
I told Josie I wanted a large bed frame and a headboard made of bamboo, and she said she didn't want something so cheap inside our house. We threw out the first bed we had in the master bedroom after just two years, and I'm certain it would still be there if it had been made of bamboo.