Decko Tum reaches one million facebook followers

There are no malls here. No fiber internet. No film crews. Just an island barangay at the edge of the archipelago, where the boats dock when the tide allows and most meals come from the sea.

But just days ago, from this quiet, remote village in southern Balabac, Yenyen Eddai, known online as Decko Tum, crossed a threshold that few Palaweños ever reach, one million followers on Facebook.

Her videos are stripped-down and unhurried. No flashy edits. No background music. Just seafood, coconut milk, and the sounds of real life, birds calling, waves in the distance, the soft thud of a fish hitting the cutting board.

She films in a modest kitchen with a concrete floor, using a gas stove and a single tank. The light is natural. The food is always local. Crab, squid, stingray, and needlefish fill her posts, along with island delicacies like tinagtag and katil, all prepared in the Obian Muslim tradition she grew up with.

To the unfamiliar viewer, the videos may seem slow. But that’s the rhythm of life in Marabon, a fishing community where time is measured not by minutes but by tides.

And while her Facebook audience climbs past a million, her TikTok, more informal, more fragmented, has also drawn nearly 200,000 followers, each video uploaded through slow mobile data and quiet persistence.

Balabac sits at the far end of Palawan, closer to Sabah than to Manila. Most people in the Philippines may never step foot there. But through Beyang’s videos, it has quietly entered their feed.

One million followers later, nothing much has changed. She’s still cooking on the same stove. Still using the same chopping board, still rinsing fish with sea water sometimes, still in the same kitchen.

And through it all, she’s stayed where she started, at home in Marabon.