Philippines · Metro Manila
Plan your Manila trip
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01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Makati CBD
Best for first-time visitors who want convenience and a short walk to dinnerThe financial district and the metro's default base — orderly, secure, dense with malls and restaurants, and central enough that most of your Grab rides start reasonably. Legazpi and Salcedo Villages just behind Ayala Avenue are quieter, leafier and better for eating.
New World Makati Hotel
Puts you inside the walkable core — Greenbelt, Glorietta and dozens of restaurants without ever getting into a car, which in this city is worth paying for.
€€€A serviced apartment in Legazpi Village
Residential streets a few blocks off the main avenue, with the Sunday market on your doorstep and noticeably better value than the towers on Ayala.
€€Bonifacio Global City (BGC)
Best for families, longer stays, and anyone who wants to walk everywhereA planned district on former army land in Taguig, with wide pavements, public art, working crossings and a level of order that feels imported. Easy, pleasant, expensive, and the least representative place in the metro to sleep.
Shangri-La at the Fort, Manila
The one part of the metro where stepping outside for a coffee does not require a plan. Good base for the American Cemetery and the Mind Museum.
€€€€Uptown Parksuites
Newer towers on the northern edge, cheaper per night than the High Street hotels, with kitchens — useful if the heat has you eating in some evenings.
€€€Poblacion, Makati
Best for solo travellers, younger visitors and anyone whose evenings matter more than their morningsScruffy, low-rise, and full of bars, small kitchens and hostels — the metro's nightlife district and its most walkable-at-night pocket. Loud on weekends, and cheap by Makati standards.
A design hostel with a rooftop bar
Poblacion's hostel scene is unusually good and the rooftops are where you will actually meet people. Ask for a room away from the street side.
€A small boutique hotel on a side street
Ten minutes' walk from the CBD's malls, five minutes from the bars, and a fraction of Ayala Avenue pricing.
€€Malate and Ermita
Best for history-first trips and travellers on a tighter budgetThe old tourist belt beside Manila Bay, faded from its heyday but the only base within walking distance of Intramuros, Rizal Park and the National Museum. Cheaper than Makati, rougher around the edges, and more historically interesting.
Bayview Park Hotel Manila
Sunset over Manila Bay from your own window, and a genuinely short ride to Intramuros — which in this city is the whole argument.
€€Malate Pensionne
Malate's old restaurant quarter is still here and still good. Take Grab rather than walking after dark; the area is patchy street by street.
€Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
Intramuros and Fort Santiago
The Spanish walled city of 1571, most of it rebuilt after the 1945 battle that levelled it.
Tip Take a guided walking or bamboo-bike tour rather than wandering alone — with almost every original building gone, the district is mostly invisible history that needs…
San Agustin Church
Completed in 1607, the oldest stone church in the Philippines, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the only structure in Intramuros to survive the…
Tip It is a working church and a very popular wedding venue, especially Saturdays — check the schedule or go on a weekday morning if you want to see the interior properly…
The National Museum complex
Three museums in neoclassical government buildings around Rizal Park — Fine Arts, Anthropology, and Natural History — and admission to all of them is…
Tip Free admission means school groups; go at opening or after three. The Natural History building's spiralling steel Tree of Life atrium is worth the trip on its own even…
Binondo, the world's oldest Chinatown
Established in 1594 for Catholic Chinese settlers and still a working commercial district rather than a themed one.
Tip Do it as a food crawl, ideally with a guide or a list, and order one dish per stop across five or six places.
Rizal Park and the Rizal Monument
The vast open park where José Rizal was executed by firing squad in 1896, an event that helped ignite the revolution against Spain.
Tip Come early on a Sunday morning when the park fills with Manileños exercising, and it stops being a monument and becomes a public square.
Manila American Cemetery, BGC
The largest number of American military graves from the Second World War anywhere outside the United States — more than seventeen thousand — laid out…
Tip It is free, silent, and about ten minutes from BGC's shopping streets, which makes the contrast bracing.
Manila Bay sunset from Roxas Boulevard
The bay faces due west and the sunsets are genuinely, unarguably among the best of any major city — a long orange collapse behind the container…
Tip The water itself is not clean and the reclaimed white-sand stretch is controversial locally; treat this as a sunset, not a beach.
Poblacion after dark
Makati's oldest barangay, now the metro's most concentrated bar district: unmarked speakeasies, Filipino craft-spirit bars pouring lambanog and local…
Tip Start around nine, walk between three or four places rather than committing to one, and take a Grab home rather than walking out to a main road at three in the morning.
Salcedo and Legazpi weekend markets
Two Makati village markets — Salcedo on Saturday, Legazpi on Sunday — where regional Filipino producers, home cooks and a strong contingent of the…
Tip Go before ten, before the heat and the queues. Bring cash and an empty stomach; eating your way across is the point, not shopping.
Day trips from Manila
Tagaytay and Taal Volcano
Two hours south on a good run, and the standard escape from the heat — a ridge town looking down on Taal, a volcano inside a lake inside a much older…
Day tripPampanga
An hour or two north, and the acknowledged culinary province of the Philippines — the birthplace of sisig and the place to eat it properly, alongside…
Day tripCorregidor Island
A tadpole-shaped fortress island guarding the mouth of Manila Bay, reachable by ferry in about an hour.
Day tripVilla Escudero
A working coconut plantation about two and a half hours southeast, best known for a lunch served at bamboo tables set in the shallow current at the…
Day tripEverything to do in Manila
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around, and the traffic
Metro Manila's traffic is not a cliché you can politely work around; it is the governing physical constraint on your entire trip, and every plan you make should be built on top of it rather than in denial of it.
Flights
Compare fares into Manila and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire from Manila
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.