Metropolitan Manila refers to the 16 cities and one municipality that comprise the Manila National Capital Region (NCR). Metro Manila (as it is more commonly referred to) has a population of over 13 million, though some statistics also include surrounding provinces.
As a visitor, that is an overwhelming amount of cities to choose from. The most logical place to start is in Manila City (one of the 16 cities in Metro Manila). This is the old area with the most historical sites.
I hadn’t been to Manila for 10 years, so staying the old area first was the easiest choice. I then stayed in Makati City, which seems to be the city of choice for digital nomads.
These are my notes of my stay in two cities within a city. I also strayed into two other cities, thus the title of this blog.
For the first half of my trip I stayed in the Malate area. This area is next to Manila Bay, and it’s a walkable area near enough to historic sites and public transport.
I stayed in Malate on my first trip, probably because it was listed in Lonely Planet as the best area for backpackers. Even on my first trip the area felt like it had seen better days. Now there doesn’t feel like there is any traveller scene here at all. It reminded me of Jalan Jaksa in Jakarta, which was the old backpacker street when more people used to overland travel. The backpacker scene of Jalan Jaksa is all but gone now, as most people just fly to Bali. It seems the same in the Philippines, where people just go straight to El Nido or Boracay instead of stopping off in Manila on the way to exploring the rest of the Philippines.
Malate should be the Miami Beach of Southeast Asia. Yes I know, it’s in a bay and not an ocean beach, but Malate reminds me of South Beach in Miami.
Like Miami Beach, Malate has a gridded street layout next to the sea, and there are many old apartment blocks that would great if they were looked after. At least there were many great apartments here, but there weren’t as many as I remembered.
Had those apartments been demolished in the decade I was away? I went by one construction site and I wondered what was here before. Perhaps I felt a presence, because I felt compelled to look it up. This was the home to the Angela Apartments.
Another thing I noticed about Malate was all the advertisements for maritime jobs.
The shipping industry is kept afloat by a massive workforce of oversea Filipino workers. It is estimated that Filipino sea-based workers comprised more than 25 percent of 1.5 million mariners worldwide.
Malate must be the world’s recruiting hub for shipping jobs, and a safehaven for those who are in port.
Next to Malate is the district of Ermita. This is the civic centre of Manila City, and if you had to pick the city centre it would be Rizal Park.
Many national institutions and museums located here, including the grand post office. I was here in December 2022, so I saw it before a fire gutted this building in May 2023.
The US embassy is located in Ermita in a compound by the bay. Next to the embassy is Dolomite Beach. This is an artificial beach that was added after a big clean up on this section of the bay. As I mentioned before, it’s not Miami Beach, but it’s a welcome stretch of open space in a crowded city with few open spaces.
You wouldn’t swim here, but it’s a good spot to watch the sunset.
Intramuros is the historic heart of Manila. If you were only spending a day in Manila then you would come here first.
Intramuros was originally a fort, and parts of the fort wall still remains.
Intramuros feels like an old town in Latin America. You know you are in tourist town when you see horse-drawn carriages, but there are so few tourists here that it is not overwhelming.
Inside Intramuros is a monument to the Battle of Manila. Over 100,000 civilians died and most of Malate, Ermita, and Intramuros was flattened. Manila was one of the many cities that claimed the title of Pearl of the Orient (and some say it still is). This title makes sense when you see what Manila looked like before the war.
“Much of the graceful city was turned to rubble. Large parts of its rich cultural heritage — archives of the Spanish colonial era, records from the Philippine revolution, birth and death certificates, ornate churches, grand libraries and treasured art — were obliterated. Only Warsaw suffered more among Allied capitals in the war.”
There are remnants and reconstructions in Intramuros that offer a glimpse of what once was.
The Manila Cathedral is a reconstruction from 1958.
Binondo is the Chinatown area, and it’s reputedly the oldest Chinatown in the world.
I came here on my first trip and I don’t remember much about it. There is an incredible church in this area which made me wonder why I don’t remember visiting.
I went through my photo archive, and I did see it. It has just been cleaned up since my last visit.
[Binondo Church in 2012.]
This is a great Chinatown to walk around. Some parts reminded me of Hong Kong in its urban density.
Like the other areas of old Manila, Binondo has potential to become something great if some of the old buildings are looked after.
There are some famous food places here that I discovered by the queues. Eng Bee Tin is a famous Chinese deli in Manila.
There was a queue at Shanghai Fried Siopao, so I queued first and asked questions later. The answer was this delicious bun.
The next city I visited was Pasay City. Technichally I went here already as Ninoy Aquino International Airport is in Pasay. If I was to employ the same rules of counting a visited country, then this airport visit doesn’t count.
Keep walking south along the bay from Manila City and you will end up in Pasay City. My walking target was to the Mall of Asia. Walking around Pasay City was like being in another city, which technically I was. The streets are wide and straight, and less cluttered compare to old Manila.
The Philippines is famous for being a major call centre hub of the English-speaking world. I saw the building for Telstra (Australia’s largest telecommunications company).
There are some great modern apartment blocks here as well.
I arrived at the Mall of Asia, which was a good chance to bring down the core body temperature in an air-conditioned environment.
I was right in the middle of the Christmas holiday season, so I had to leave before I went over my daily allowance of hearing Maria Carey.
There is a Shake Shack here, which I have heard about but have never been. People go on about them like it is the greatest burger in the world, so I had to visit.
It was a perfectly satisfactory burger, but I was left wondering if these Shake Shack burger boosters have eaten at other burger places. Had I been tricked into the greatest guerilla marketing campaign in the history of burger chains?
From the Mall of Asia I walked to the nearest metro station at EDSA. This was a 1-hour walk so I stopped at another mall on the way. I was surprised to find Highlands Coffee.
Highlands are the largest cafe chain in Vietnam, but they are owned by Jollibee. I like their Americanos, and they make a better latte than Starbucks. The sight of a Highlands was also making me a bit homesick for Vietnam, so I stopped for a latte.
I came to Pasay City to see the interchange between Taft Avenue and EDSA rail stations. This was for a story for Future Southeast Asia. The two stations are near enough to each other to make a connection, but they are not a true interchange. There is an elevated walkway between the two stations, and it is chaos when two trains have disgorged themselves at the same time.
Quezon City is the largest city by size in Metro Manila, and also the most populous (nearly 3 million people). I sometimes wonder if the cities of Metro Manila should just be districts of one city, then I see the population numbers and the city classification makes more sense.
Despite it’s size I didn’t spend much time in Quezon City. Like Pasay City, my main reason to visit Quezon City was to see the metro interchanges. I was here to see the construction of Unified Grand Central Station, which will eventually be an interchange for 4 train lines.
From here I got the MRT to Araneta Center – Cubao Station. There is an unofficial interchange with Cubao LRT-2 Station, though the interchange involves walking through the Araneta Center mall. There is a steady stream of people walking through the mall that are going between these stations.
[Araneta Center walk to LRT 2.]
I didn’t spend any time beyond the stations of Quezon City. There are some new transit lines under construction that will pass through QC, so my next trip might involve staying here to have a proper look around. Here is what the future Metro Manila transit system will look like.
After staying in Malate I moved camp to Makati. I visited Makati on my first trip to Manila as a day trip to attend a nomad meetup. I was curious to stay longer and see how it felt to base myself here as a nomad.
I stayed in the Poblacion area, which is an old area with many bars. Some publications would probably describe it as seedy, but it felt more lived than staying among the glass towers of modern Makati.
I stayed at a wonderful little hotel called The Clipper House. This is a hotel in a restored Art Deco building that is decorated with aviation posters of that era. This is what I was hoping to find in Malate, and it is too bad Malate has demolished buildings like this.
After being in Makati for a day I realiseed that it has a better cafe scene than Malate. I was near Commune Cafe, so that become my go-to cafe.
Poblacion is a Spanish word for old town, and it is used in the Philippines as such. Poblacion in Makati reminded me in parts of Central America with these little convenience stores and Spanish street names.
The Jesus iconography everywhere also gave me the feeling of a Latin American city.
[Christ on a bike.]
Empanadas are also a thing here, though you know you are in the Philippines with the playful punning of the English language.
This turned out to be a good area as I walked to different areas that I may not have discovered in the shinier parts of Makati. I walked towards the river and found what looked like to be a rehabilitated section of riverfront.
On the other side of the river is Mandaluyong City. I could have crossed the bridge and made it five cities for this trip, but I will save Mandaluyong for another time.
[Mandaluyong City as viewed from Makati City.]
I saw another city in the distance, and the bright lights and big towers were trying to lure me over. I had only just arrived in Makati though, so I stuck to my plan of compartmentalising this trip into selected cities.
[Pasig River – Makati.]
I met a friend who moved to the modern area of Makati, so we met for coffee. Walking around the new parts of Makati felt like walking around in Seoul. The streets are wide and organised, and there is green coverage.
It made me a bit sad that the new urban area of Ho Chi Minh City hasn’t been built yet after decades of trying. This is what Thu Thiem should be looking like by now.
The bummer about Makati is that it has such an irregular street layout. If it had been gridded out like Malate it might be a great city. Instead, these streets just create traffic chaos.
In what is almost the geographical centre of Makati is the Greenbelt. The name makes it sound like a long park that crosses a city, but it is a mall built around a park. I prefer this to the behemoth Mall of Asia.
Malls alway have the same old shops, so I look around to see if there is anything different. A random restaurant here is Propaganda from Ho Chi Minh City.
I saw this billboard for Payoneer, which is a banking service that I have used to pay for outsourced work from the Philippines.
Perhaps my favourite feature of Makati are these elevated walkways. My dream is to have a city completely interconnected with elevated walkways like this, connecting with buildings as they go.
I will come back to Metro Manila to explore more cities and check out the new railway lines, hopefully sooner than 10 years.
James Clark is the founder of Nomadic Notes. He has been a digital nomad since 2003, and Nomadic Notes features trip reports, train travel articles, and where to stay guides. He writes about transport and urban development at Future Southeast Asia. Subscribe to the weekly travel newsletter.
Excellent report on Manila featuring different zones and their vibes. Most visitor guide books recommend just using Manila as a transit hub whilst travelling on to the more popular southern islands. Your idea of incorporating the raised walkways seems a good solution to the disconnect of how it feels there.
Former Manileno here. Really appreciate your review, and impressed at your fortitude! It’s been an unusually hot December, so I wouldn’t want to walk far in Manila unless I had no choice. Next time you visit, I suggest spending a bit more time poking around the Binondo area for dimsum and other Chinese food. Look for Salazar Bakery there. Cheers!
Thanks for that. As an Australian I am probably a bit crazier when it comes to tolerence for walking in the heat, but yes it is taxing when walking for hours on end. I felt like I could have spent a week to explore Binondo, so I will go back on another visit.
I grew up in Malate in the 70s and 80s and it certainly has changed. Many buildings have been torn down and new ones built. Our old house is now a parking lot, haha. Greenbelt used to be a huge belt of green (get it?) in the middle of Makati stretching from Makati Avenue down to Paseo de Roxas. The mall was built around the 1990s.
Oh wow, you have seen the changes! The Greenbelt name now makes sense. Maybe it should have been named the Greenbuckle (belt not included).
Odd to see such a big Telstra building there. I wonder if it’s a call centre…
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Hi, I’m James Clark, and I've been travelling the world since 2003 while running a location independent travel business. Nomadic Notes is a travel blog featuring travel guides and notes from my travels.
