Explore Philippines

Manila

The frantic, fascinating capital spreads across seventeen cities and municipalities on Manila Bay, with Intramuros — a walled Spanish colonial city founded in 1571 — at its historic heart. Rizal Park, the National Museum district, and the rooftop bars of BGC make for a city of jarring but compelling contrasts.

Cebu City

The oldest Spanish settlement in the Philippines anchors the central Visayas and serves as the main gateway to the diving and island-hopping of Mactan, Malapascua, and Moalboal. Magellan's Cross, planted in 1521, still stands in a small chapel beside the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño.

Palawan (Puerto Princesa)

Puerto Princesa is the jumping-off point for the UNESCO-listed underground river at Sabang, navigable by boat through cathedral-scale caverns. The broader Palawan island chain encompasses Honda Bay, El Nido's limestone cliffs, and Coron's world-class wreck diving.

El Nido

Razor-edged karst towers jut from turquoise lagoons in one of Southeast Asia's most dramatic seascapes, with island-hopping tours winding through the Bacuit Archipelago's hidden beaches and emerald coves. The sunsets from the clifftop bars above town are arguably the Philippines' finest.

Boracay

White Beach's four kilometres of powder-white sand and calm shallow water made Boracay the country's most famous resort island, with a reputation for lively nightlife and reliable wind sports. A 2018 environmental rehabilitation brought tighter controls that significantly improved water quality.

Bohol

Bohol's twin draws are the otherworldly Chocolate Hills — over 1,200 perfectly conical mounds that turn chocolate-brown in the dry season — and the world's smallest primate, the Philippine tarsier. The Loboc River cruise through jungle-fringed banks is a leisurely classic.

Siargao

Cloud 9 — a hollow, barrelling right-hand reef break off General Luna — put Siargao on the global surfing map, and the island has since evolved into a barefoot-chic destination with coconut-palm roads, lagoon tours, and islet-hopping to Naked Island and Guyam. The vibe remains laid-back even as infrastructure has rapidly improved.

Coron

Coron's fleet of Japanese warships — sunk during a 1944 US air raid — forms one of the world's richest wreck-diving destinations, thick with corals, lionfish, and giant sea fans. Between dives, the limestone karst lakes of Kayangan and Barracuda offer surreal freshwater swimming.

Davao City

The largest city in Mindanao and the gateway to Mount Apo, the Philippines' highest peak, Davao has built a reputation as one of the country's safest and most liveable cities. It is the durian capital of the Philippines and home to the Philippine Eagle Center.

Vigan

Vigan's Calle Crisologo is the best-preserved Spanish colonial street in Asia, its cobblestones lined with bahay na bato townhouses that have barely changed since the 18th century. The city's UNESCO World Heritage status protects a living heritage district still animated by calesas and ancestral homes turned boutique hotels.

Baguio City

Perched at 1,500 metres in the Cordillera mountains, Baguio offers cool respite from lowland heat and a distinct highland culture shaped by Igorot indigenous communities. Burnham Park, the Session Road weekend market, and proximity to the Benguet rice terrace villages make it a perennial favourite.

Batangas

Two hours south of Manila, Batangas Province offers dive sites at Anilao rated among the world's best for macro photography and the iconic view of Taal Volcano — an active volcanic island sitting inside a lake inside an older caldera. Island-hopping in Batangas Bay and the heritage churches of Taal town round out the region.

Sagada

The mountain town in Mountain Province is famous for hanging coffins suspended on limestone cliffs, an ancient Kankanaey burial practice that fascinates on guided treks. Sumaguing Cave, Bomod-ok Falls, and the amphitheatre sunrise at Kiltepan viewpoint make the winding drive up more than worthwhile.

Batanes Islands

The northernmost province of the Philippines feels like another country: Ivatan stone houses built to withstand typhoons, rolling hills reminiscent of Ireland, and a pace of life unchanged for centuries. The boat-house villages of Sabtang Island are among the most atmospheric in the whole archipelago.

Iloilo City

The gracious capital of Iloilo Province blends Spanish-era heritage churches, a thriving food scene built on local dishes like pancit molo and La Paz batchoy, and easy access to the beaches of nearby Guimaras Island. The Dinagyang Festival each January is one of the Philippines' most spectacular celebrations.

Camiguin Island

Camiguin packs more volcanoes per square kilometre than anywhere on earth, with the active Mount Hibok-Hibok looming over cold springs, a sunken cemetery visible through the water, and a white island sandbar that appears at low tide. The island's small scale means you can explore it end-to-end in a day.

Dumaguete City

The 'city of gentle people' on Negros Oriental's east coast is the hub for some of the Visayas' finest diving — Apo Island's protected marine sanctuary offers near-guaranteed sea turtle encounters just 30 minutes offshore. Rizal Boulevard's bayside promenade, lined with restaurants and the university's American-colonial campus, is one of the country's most pleasant evening walks.

Tagaytay

Sitting on the ridge above Taal Lake just 60 kilometres from Manila, Tagaytay is the capital's most accessible cool-climate escape, its misty views of the volcano drawing weekenders to landmark restaurants serving steaming bowls of bulalo. The short boat trip to Taal Volcano Island rewards with a hike into a still-active crater.

Bacolod City

The 'City of Smiles' on the western coast of Negros is synonymous with its MassKara Festival — a sea of smiling masks and street dancing each October that fills the streets with colour and music. The ruins of the Lacson mansion and the Negros Museum anchor a surprisingly deep cultural scene built on sugar-plantation heritage.

Zamboanga City

Zamboanga's colourful vintas — outrigger sailboats painted in vivid stripes — and the Fort Pilar historic shrine make it one of Mindanao's most photogenic cities. Its Chavacano language, a Spanish-based creole spoken nowhere else on earth, is a living reminder of over three centuries of colonial history.

Carved into the mountains of Ifugao Province over 2,000 years ago, these breathtaking terraces represent an unbroken living tradition of wet-rice cultivation passed down through Ifugao oral epics and customary law. Banaue, Batad, and Hapao are the most celebrated clusters, fed by an ancient irrigation system drawing water from the forest above.

Four churches built by Spanish friars between the late 16th and 18th centuries — San Agustín in Manila, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción in Santa María, San Agustín in Paoay, and Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Miag-ao — represent a uniquely Filipino synthesis of European baroque with local Austronesian decorative traditions. Paoay's earthquake-baroque buttresses and Miag-ao's fortress-like facade are the most visually striking.

Vigan is the best-preserved example of a planned Spanish colonial town in Asia, its grid of bahay na bato houses built with Chinese-cut brick, Filipino hardwood, and Spanish tile surviving the 20th century's development pressures in remarkable condition. Calle Crisologo, where horse-drawn calesas still clatter over cobblestones in the evening, is one of the most atmospheric streets in Southeast Asia.

Rising from the deep waters of the Sulu Sea, Tubbataha is a remote atoll system accessible only by liveaboard dive boat from Puerto Princesa during a brief March–June window. Its two atolls host an extraordinary density of marine life — reef sharks, manta rays, spawning grouper aggregations, and nesting seabirds — in some of the least-disturbed waters in the Coral Triangle.

The Puerto Princesa Underground River threads through a mountain limestone karst landscape before emptying directly into the South China Sea, its 8.2-kilometre navigable section forming one of the world's longest underground rivers. Guided boat tours pass enormous stalactite-draped chambers inhabited by millions of swiftlets and cave-dwelling monitor lizards.

This isolated mountain range on the Davao Oriental coast of Mindanao shelters a mosaic of ecosystems from mangroves to pygmy forests at its 1,637-metre summit, protecting endemic flora including carnivorous pitcher plants found nowhere else. The sanctuary is critical habitat for the Philippine Eagle, the country's national bird and one of the world's largest raptors.