TRAINS, BOATS, PLANES AND BUSES: THE LAKARAN LECTURE SERIES TOURS ITALY

"You wouldn't think it," a Filipina OFW named Alice tells us, referring to her modest attire while holding a mic in a Napoli church hall, "but I was earning P200,000 a day. But I wasn't showy about it; I would just hide all this money away."

- SCOTT GARCEAU

NAPLES, Italy — "You wouldn't think it," a Filipina OFW named Alice tells us, referring to her modest attire while holding a mic in a Napoli church hall, "but I was earning P200,000 a day. But I wasn't showy about it; I would just hide all this money away." Turns out Alice's job was "holding all these international credit cards" for her Makati boss while traveling in Hong Kong. "Yes, I was a smuggler," she laughs, working the crowd like a Netflix standup comic. Seems Alice earned so much from her "job" that she gave away money to priests in Italy, even sent her neighbors' kids through school. "I had so much money, I didn't know what to do with it," she says in Tagalog.

Then one day, "In Hong Kong, on the airport camera, I saw my boss being put in handcuffs, because it turns out one card I gave to him was a lost card. He started yelling, 'Alice! Alice!' So they asked me, 'Are you Alice?' and I said no, because if I'd said yes, they'd put me in handcuffs, too. So my boss said to me, "P*tangina mo!"

Fortunately, the boss had money to bail himself out. And Alice changed her ways. "I confessed to Father at church, 'Father, I think it's better if I just apply for work in Italy.' He said, 'What could you even apply as, a domestic helper?' I said, 'Anything, as long as I can make a clean living!'"