Top 10 Things to Do in Manila | One Thing a Day, and Do It Early
Manila has one rule that overrides every list ever written about it: one thing per day, done early. The traffic is not a complaint, it is the constraint, and once you accept it the city gets considerably better.
One thing a day, done early
Manila has one rule that overrides every list ever written about it, including this one.
One thing per day. Travel to it at dawn.
The traffic here is not a complaint, it is the constraint. Australians who have survived Bangkok and Jakarta still get caught out: journeys that look like twenty minutes take two hours at the wrong time of day, routinely rather than exceptionally.
Which means distance stops being a useful measure and the clock becomes everything. Visitors who plan a normal city day with four stops in it spend that day in a car being angry, and then say Manila is terrible.
Manila is not terrible. The plan was. Ask us to build the Philippines trip.
The ten
1. Intramuros at seven in the morning
The best thing in the city and the hour is half the point.
The Spanish held the Philippines for well over three centuries, longer than the British held anything in India, and Intramuros is what remains: real walls you can walk on, in the middle of a modern megacity.
At seven it is cool, empty and quiet. At ten it is heat and coaches. Go on foot, or in a bamboo bicycle-cart with a guide, and it explains the entire country in one walk: the surnames, the churches, the food, the Catholicism. Compare Intramuros tours on Viator.
2. San Agustin Church
Inside Intramuros, and it is the oldest stone church in the country.
It survived the war that flattened almost everything else here, which is the fact that makes it extraordinary rather than merely old. The interior is startling.
3. Fort Santiago, and Rizal's last night
The cell where the national hero José Rizal spent his last night before execution, with his footsteps marked in brass across the ground to the spot where it happened.
You follow them. It is a genuinely affecting twenty minutes and it is the emotional centre of Intramuros.
4. A Binondo food crawl
The single best paid experience in Manila.
Binondo is the world's oldest Chinatown: dense, old and genuinely alive rather than preserved. A guided food crawl through it is where you will eat best in this city by a distance, and it solves the language and the ordering in one purchase. Find Manila food tours on Klook.
5. Sinigang, and understanding the cuisine
Filipino food is not like the rest of South East Asia at all, and that surprises everybody.
There is no chilli heat to speak of. What there is instead is sourness, and salt, and garlic, and vinegar, and a bluntness that people who love Thai food find bewildering for about two days and then cannot stop eating.
Sinigang is the dish that explains it: a sour tamarind soup where the sourness is the point rather than an accent. Start there.
6. Adobo, and every family's version
The national dish: meat braised in vinegar, soy and garlic until it is dark and sharp.
Every family's version is the correct one and they will tell you so.
7. Lechon
A whole roast pig, and the Philippines does it better than anywhere. That is not a controversial statement anywhere in Asia.
8. The National Museum complex
Free, and better than it needs to be, and it is the right answer for the hottest part of the day.
One of the more pleasant surprises in a city that undersells itself relentlessly.
9. Rizal Park
The green lung, and it connects to Intramuros on foot, which in this city is a genuinely useful sentence.
Early morning, again, when it is full of people exercising.
10. Halo-halo
A dessert that appears to be a mistake: shaved ice, evaporated milk, beans, jelly, purple yam, a scoop of ice cream, all in one glass.
It is genuinely wonderful and it makes no sense until you have had one in the heat.
Manila is the door
Two days here, at most, and then go. That is not a criticism; it is what the city is, and our Manila travel guide says the same.
Palawan is the reason: El Nido and Coron are limestone karst, lagoons and water that is genuinely the colour it is in the photographs, and it is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Siargao for surfing. Bohol for the Chocolate Hills and the tarsiers. Cebu as a second hub. Banaue in the north for rice terraces that are two thousand years old and carved into mountains, which almost no Australian visits because it involves a long overnight bus.
The mistake we see constantly: trying to fit three of those into one trip. This is an archipelago. Everything is a flight or a boat from everything else, and the flights go via Manila.
Pick one region. Do it properly. Come back for the next one.
The terminal problem governs your plans
Which brings up the thing that shapes a Manila itinerary more than any sight.
Manila's airport terminals are separate buildings, not concourses. Moving between them means leaving the airport, taking a road, and checking in again, in the traffic described at the top of this page.
So if your island flight leaves early from a terminal you did not arrive at, that is your last day, not the museums. Plan around it. Our Manila hotels page is the one place on this site where we recommend an airport hotel, and this is why.
Ticket the domestic leg with the international one wherever the fares allow, so the airline owns the connection and a late inbound is their problem rather than yours. Our Sydney to Manila page covers it.
One thing to refuse
Do not handle a tarsier, at Bohol or anywhere else, regardless of what is offered.
They are the smallest primates you will ever see, they are stressed by handling in ways that matter, and the good sanctuaries do not permit it. If a place offers it, that tells you what kind of place it is.
The typhoon season is real
December to May is the dry season, and January to March is the best of it.
June to November is the wet season and typhoon season, and that is a genuine planning consideration rather than a disclaimer: typhoons cancel domestic flights and stop boats, and in a country where boats are the transport, that is a cancelled holiday rather than an inconvenience.
Our travel insurance guide explains why that window is one of the few where insurance stops being paperwork.
Booking notes
Prices shown by our partners are live and in your choice of currency, most activities confirm instantly, and free cancellation windows are stated on each listing. Little in Manila needs booking far ahead. The Binondo food crawl and an Intramuros guide are worth arranging a few days out because the good small operators fill.
English is everywhere, widely and genuinely spoken, which makes this one of the easier countries in the region to improvise in. And Filipino hospitality is real rather than performed: it is the thing our clients report back on more than anything else about this country.
Our flights to the Philippines page covers the corridor. Get a free Philippines quote.