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What you have said is pretty much true for a lot of S.E. Asia. My wife is from a small fishing village in the Philippines. She is probably related to most of the people in the village either through blood or marriage. Her sister was what the locals refer to as a witch doctor but what I would call a herbalist, first-aider, mid-wife. The local religion is Catholic but they also have a reverence for the sea, they look at the ocean as their mother. Also a huge belief in both karma, which is even acknowledged by the local Catholic priest and also a strong belief in the supernatural like ghosts and spirits etc. I have spent a lot of time in her village and it's a great lifestyle if you've got money but it's a hard life without it. It's good to romantisize about how beautiful it could be but the reality is that to survive in the world today you must have a certain amount of money.
My wife says that the big difference between Australia and the Philippines is that in Australia we're rich in money but poor in time and in the Philippines they've got plenty of time but not much money. If somehow I was smart enough to get the pendulum to stop swinging somewhere around half way it'd be ideal.
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