I'm not the one you asked, but what I like isn't really about PHP itself, but the fact that I can get dirt cheap hosting with PHP and MySQL. Every time I want to create a small "app" that makes some manual task easier it's very useful to create something I can access from the internet.

Python is really useful for stuff like that too, but (in my experience) not as easy and cheap to use as an web app.

For example I go to dinner with some friends every month and we always forget who's turn it is to choose and book a restaurant. So I just made this PHP page that shows the current and next 2 months with a name. So we always use that to see who's turn it is.