Pick two island groups, not five. Luzon is where you land: Manila for the museums, the old walled quarter and the food, then north to the Cordillera terraces around Banaue and the Spanish street grid at Vigan, or south into Bicol for volcanoes. Palawan is the postcard, and it is three separate trips rather than one: El Nido and Coron for limestone bays and wrecks, Puerto Princesa for the underground river. The Visayas are the easiest region to move around, because the fast ferries do the work: Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor and Boracay sit close enough to combine without flying. Mindanao is the group most visitors skip, and it is where foreign travel advice matters most: read your own government's before you book anything south of the Visayas. Siargao, off its northeast tip, is the surf island that sits outside most of those warnings.
6 Philippines city guides
Fun fact
The national mapping agency, NAMRIA, raised the official island count from 7,107 to 7,641 in 2017 after radar surveys found more than 500 islands nobody had mapped. Fewer than a fifth of them have names.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityHalf the reasons to come are inland or underwater. The Cordillera rice terraces were carved into mountainsides and are still farmed. Vigan is an intact Spanish colonial townscape. Mayon is a near-perfect volcanic cone you can see from a Bicol breakfast table. Six sites carry UNESCO World Heritage status, and three of them are natural rather than built.
The realityThis is an archipelago the length of Norway with almost no road connecting its parts. Moving between island groups means a flight or an overnight ship, and each move costs the better part of a day. Two weeks covers two groups properly, or five groups badly.
The realityThe cost is comparable once flights between islands are counted, and the country reads differently: three centuries of Spanish rule and half a century of American rule left a Catholic, English-speaking culture with its own food, music and humour. What it does not have is Thailand's overland network, which is the practical difference every itinerary runs into.
The realityStorms are tracked and named days ahead, ferries are suspended before conditions turn, and life continues around them. The season also does not land everywhere at once: while the west sits under the southwest monsoon, the eastern islands are dry, and their own wettest months come at the turn of the year.
The realityThe warnings that exist are specific to western and central Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, and the places most visitors go are not covered by them. The realistic risks in Palawan or the Visayas are a stolen phone, a scooter with no helmet, or a boat that should not have sailed.
How to fit in
- Add po and opo when speaking to anyone older. They are respect particles with no English equivalent, they cost nothing, and leaving them out is what sounds abrupt.
- Use ate for an older woman and kuya for an older man when you do not know a name. It is how strangers, waiters and drivers are addressed, and it lands far better than sir or ma'am.
- Expect to be fed, and eat something. Refusing food outright reads as a rejection of the person offering it. Take a little, say it is good, and mean it.
- Karaoke is a national sport rather than a party trick. If a microphone reaches you, take a turn. Choosing a song nobody knows is the only real mistake.
- This is a Catholic country and the calendar shows it. Holy Week empties the cities and fills every boat and bus, Sunday mass shapes the morning, and Christmas here starts in September.
- Swimwear is for the water. Cover up for the town, the jeepney and the meal, and dress modestly in churches, which are working buildings rather than monuments.
- Pointing is done with the lips or a nod of the head, not a finger, and a raised eyebrow can be a whole answer. Watch for it, because you will be given directions this way.
Famous Filipino faces
José Rizal
Manny Pacquiao
Lea Salonga
Corazon Aquino
Hidilyn Diaz
Carlos Yulo
Andrés Bonifacio
Fernando Amorsolo
Lapulapu
Emilio Aguinaldo
Apolinario Mabini
Gabriela Silang
Manuel L. Quezon
Ramon Magsaysay
Ferdinand Marcos
Efren Reyes
Paeng Nepomuceno
Lino Brocka
Nora Aunor
Ryan Cayabyab
Freddie Aguilar
Nick Joaquin
F. Sionil José
Must-try Filipino food
Adobo
The national default: pork or chicken simmered in vinegar, soy, garlic, bay and peppercorns until it glazes. Every family cooks it differently and every version is the correct one.
Sinigang
A sour soup soured with tamarind, and the dish Filipinos abroad miss most. Pork belly or prawns, with kangkong, radish and long beans in the broth.
Kare-kare
Oxtail and vegetables in a thick peanut sauce, deliberately mild, and served with bagoong shrimp paste on the side to salt each bite yourself.
Lechon
Whole pig roasted over coals until the skin cracks like glass. It is the centre of every celebration, and Cebu's version is seasoned enough to need no sauce.
Sisig
Chopped pork face and belly, fried crisp, dressed with calamansi and chilli and brought to the table on a sizzling plate. Invented in Pampanga, now everywhere.
Pancit
Noodles, in dozens of regional forms, cooked for birthdays because long strands mean long life. Canton is the thick egg noodle, bihon the thin rice one.
Lumpia
Spring rolls, thin and fried by the dozen as lumpiang shanghai, or fresh and unfried with peanut sauce as lumpiang sariwa.
Tinola
Clear chicken and ginger broth with green papaya and chilli leaves. The plain, restorative dish behind all the loud ones.
Chicken inasal
Bacolod's grilled chicken, marinated in calamansi, lemongrass and annatto and basted until the skin turns orange. Eaten with rice and a garlic vinegar dip.
La Paz batchoy
Iloilo's noodle soup: pork offal, crushed chicharon and a raw egg dropped into a broth built on bone marrow. The best argument for landing on Panay.
Bicol express
Pork simmered in coconut milk with a serious quantity of long chillies and shrimp paste. Bicol is the one region that cooks properly hot.
Laing
Dried taro leaves cooked down in coconut milk with chilli and ginger until they collapse into something dark and rich. Also Bicol, also worth the trip.
Kinilaw
Raw fish cured in vinegar and calamansi with ginger, onion and chilli, eaten within minutes of being made. The version to order is whatever the boat brought in.
Bulalo
Beef shank and marrow bones boiled long enough to give up everything, with corn and cabbage. A Batangas and Tagaytay dish, eaten in cool weather.
Vigan longganisa
Short, fat garlic sausages from Ilocos, sharper and less sweet than the versions further south, and the reason to order a breakfast plate in Vigan.
Balut
A fertilised duck egg, boiled and eaten from the shell with salt and vinegar. It is a street snack rather than a dare, and the vendor will show you how.
Isaw
Chicken or pork intestine, cleaned, skewered and grilled over coals with a vinegar dip. The smell of a Philippine street at dusk.
Taho
Warm silken tofu with brown sugar syrup and sago pearls, sold from two buckets on a pole by a vendor who calls his own name down the street each morning.
Kwek-kwek
Quail eggs in orange batter, deep fried and dipped in spiced vinegar. Sold beside the isaw grill and eaten standing up.
Halo-halo
Shaved ice layered with beans, jelly, fruit, leche flan and ube, topped with evaporated milk. The name means mix-mix, which is the instruction.
Leche flan
A dense caramel custard steamed rather than baked, made with egg yolks and condensed milk. Richer than the Spanish original it descends from.
Bibingka
Rice cake baked in a banana leaf over coals, topped with salted egg and cheese, and sold outside churches during the dawn masses before Christmas.
Ube halaya
Purple yam cooked slowly with milk and butter into a thick jam. It is the flavour behind half the desserts here, and it was purple long before that was a trend.
Turon
Saba banana and jackfruit rolled in a wrapper, fried and caramelised in brown sugar. The cheapest good thing on any street.
San Miguel
The lager brewed in Manila since 1890 and drunk everywhere, usually with something grilled and a bowl of vinegar.
Lambanog
Coconut palm spirit, distilled strong and traditionally passed around one glass at a time. Quezon province is its home.
Calamansi juice
The small local citrus, squeezed over ice with sugar. Sharper than lime, and the drink to ask for when the day is at its hottest.
Barako coffee
The strong liberica coffee grown in Batangas and Cavite, brewed dark in a sock filter and drunk sweet.