The Philippines takes great offense at being compared to monkeys, but if you take a close look at its history and its present, they should not complain.
Before the Western colonizers arrived, there was no state at all on the Philippine archipelago—just a bunch of tribes. When the Spanish came, these people surrendered to the Spanish. When the Americans came, they surrendered to the Americans. When the Japanese came, they surrendered to the Japanese. And when the Americans came back, they surrendered to the Americans all over again.
When the Americans finally refused to keep colonizing them and granted them independence, they actually left the Philippines with a pretty solid economic foundation. But once the Filipinos themselves started running the country, it quickly went from being a top student in Asia to one of the poorest countries on the continent—and it remains so to this day.
Filipino politics is a complete mess. Despite claiming to be a democratic country, in fact, dozens of families of all sizes rule their respective territories. A notoriously corrupt dictator ruled the country for twenty years. The people finally drove him out, and then just as quickly welcomed his son back, who proceeded to carry on the same corruption—only even worse.
Life for ordinary Filipinos is a disaster too. The big cities are filled with slums, the countryside is crawling with insurgents. People dig through garbage for a kind of food they call 'pagpag'. Murders and drugs are everywhere. The president who attempted to declare war on drugs was sent to a foreign court by Filipinos themselves. Child prostitution is everywhere. White old-timers are a common sight in the country—take a guess what they're there for.
Of course, there are still some poor countries in Asia today. But you can see that they either have a glorious history, such as Myanmar, or have today's ambitions, such as North Korea. Only the Philippines is a country without history, without today, and obviously without a future. Their best fate is to wait for the next outsider to step onto their island and surrender.