Explore the islands.
What each island and city is really known for — the food, the craft, the heritage — and the carinderias, markets and makers where your spend lands with the people who live there.
Baler
the surf town that taught the Philippines to ride waves, but still wakes up to warm suman and homemade peanut butter before anybody paddles out.
Batanes
the Philippines' stormiest, most honest corner: stone houses built to laugh at typhoons, lobster cheaper than a Manila coffee, and a shop with no cashier because nobody steals.
Catanduanes
the 'Land of the Howling Winds' that takes the Pacific's worst typhoons head-on, then weaves the survivors' abaca into the strongest fiber on earth.
Legazpi
the city that eats its volcano: perfect-coned Mayon out the window, and a table so spicy and coconut-rich it'll make your eyes water before the view does.
Manila
the loud, layered original: 400 years of Spanish stone, the world's oldest Chinatown, and a million carinderias where a coin still buys a full plate.
Romblon
the Marble Capital that carves luxury for the whole country but eats simple: ginataang tulingan, fresh kinilaw, and rice cakes wrapped in banana leaf.
Tablas
Romblon's big, overlooked main island, where the towns run on sweet Odiongan longganisa, banana-leaf rice cakes, and shellfish you pick out of the shell with a pin.
Bacolod
the City of Smiles that grins through every sugar crash: chicken smoke over the reclamation, masked dancers in October, and muscovado in everything sweet.
Bohol
the island that bleeds history (literally: it sealed the country's first blood compact), where the hills turn chocolate-brown in summer, the world's tiniest primate clings to a branch, and grandmothers still stretch sticky kalamay in coconut shells.
Boracay
the white-sand party rock that's still, beneath the beach clubs, the ancestral island of the Ati and a haggle-and-paluto seafood market town.
Caticlan
the busy little Malay port everyone rushes through to reach Boracay, never noticing it's the doorstep to Aklan's Ati-Atihan heartland and pineapple-cloth country.
Cebu
the Queen City that worships a child saint and a roast pig with equal devotion, where Colon is the country's oldest street and the lechon is allegedly the best on Earth (Bourdain said so).
Dumaguete
the 'City of Gentle People' and university town where students, retirees, and academics sip tsokolate at dawn in the public market and grilled tempura by the sea at dusk, all within a stroll of acacia-shaded Rizal Boulevard.
Iloilo
the genteel one: old-money mansions, churchy Spanish street names, and the loudest, richest bowl of soup in the country slurped on a plastic stool inside a wet market.
Siquijor
'Isla del Fuego,' the island the rest of the Philippines whispers about: mystic healers brewing love potions in the hills, coral-stone churches centuries old, and bukayo and budbod sold beside the bottled brews at the Saturday tabu.
Tacloban
the Waray capital that danced through Yolanda and got back up, where MacArthur waded ashore to 'return,' the San Juanico Bridge arcs to Samar, and Calle Zamora's stalls hand-pack binagol into coconut shells just as they did a century ago.
Cagayan de Oro
the City of Golden Friendship, where a 3 a.m. carinderia, a bowl of humba at Cogon, and a box of binaki define hospitality better than any slogan.
Camiguin
the tiny 'island born of fire,' where seven volcanoes guard the sweetest lanzones in the country and even the cemetery is underwater.
Davao
the big, easygoing durian city where a 1980 market carinderia's balbacua never stops bubbling and a Tausug satti house serves you Sulu in the middle of Mindanao.
Iligan
the City of Majestic Waterfalls, where Maranao pastil and sand-roasted Cheding's peanuts share a table with the loudest waterfall in Mindanao.
Siargao
the surf-famous teardrop island that still runs on sayongsong, tuba, and a fisherman's morning catch once you wander off Cloud 9.
Surigao
the gateway-to-the-islands capital where kinilaw is a religion, the catch comes in by stilt-house boat, and sayongsong is the only acceptable pasalubong.
Coron
The Calamianes' shipwreck-and-lagoon paradise where Tagbanua divers still gather sea grapes by hand and the best dinner is whatever was swimming this morning, grilled on a Filipino-owned street.
El Nido
but slip off the bangka and the real town is a morning palengke, a beach grill with plastic tables in the sand, and karinderyas where the catch costs a few hundred pesos.
Puerto Princesa
where the dare is a live mangrove worm, the comfort food is a bowl of Vietnamese soup, and everyone insists their city is the tidiest in the country.