Manila travel guide — what to see, how to get around

Destinations › Asia › Manila

Manila is the one Southeast Asian capital you can reach from Toronto without changing planes — Philippine Airlines flies YYZ to Ninoy Aquino International nonstop, and Toronto Pearson's route table lists no other nonstop service to a Southeast Asian city. What you land in is a city of 16th-century Spanish walls, the oldest Chinatown on earth (Binondo, established 1594), and traffic that will shape your itinerary more than any guidebook will.

Getting there

How to reach Manila

Manila is the exception to the rule about Southeast Asia. Philippine Airlines flies Toronto Pearson to Manila NONSTOP — one of the very few YYZ–SE Asia services that doesn't require a change, and the only nonstop from Toronto to a Southeast Asian city. If the fare or timing doesn't work, the realistic one-stops out of YYZ are Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong, EVA Air via Taipei, Korean Air via Seoul Incheon, or Air Canada via Tokyo Narita or Haneda. You arrive at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL), which has three working terminals — T1, T2 and T3 — after the old Terminal 4 closed in November 2024 and was demolished. Now the honest part: there is NO airport rail link. LRT Line 1's Ninoy Aquino Avenue station opened in November 2024 as part of the Cavite Extension and sits near Terminal 1, but the Department of Transportation has confirmed there is no direct link into the terminals, citing right-of-way constraints — you cannot walk it with bags. Jeepneys and UV Express vans run from that station toward the airport, but with luggage that realistically leaves Grab, the accredited airport taxi ranks at each terminal, or a road transfer to PITX, the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange, which has its own LRT-1 station and is where provincial buses meet the rail network. A free inter-terminal shuttle bus connects the NAIA terminals to one another.

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Getting around

Once you're there

Metro Manila's rail is three separate lines that don't interchange cleanly: LRT Line 1 (Fernando Poe Jr. in the north down to Dr. Santos, including the Cavite Extension stations Redemptorist–Aseana, MIA Road, PITX, Ninoy Aquino Avenue and Dr. Santos that opened in November 2024), LRT Line 2, and MRT Line 3. The stored-value card is the Beep card — a reloadable contactless card that works on LRT-1, LRT-2 and MRT-3, plus BGC Bus, select Metro Manila bus lines, and the CAVITEX and NLEX toll roads. Buy and reload it at rail and bus stations, FamilyMart, Bayad Centers, SM Bills Payment Centers, and Villarica and Tambunting pawnshops; NFC phone users can top up via the BPI Mobile or Coins.ph apps. Above ground it's the EDSA Carousel busway, jeepneys, UV Express vans, tricycles for the last block, and Grab — which is how most visitors actually get around.

Don't miss

The best of Manila

Intramuros

The 0.67 km² Spanish walled city, and the reason to come. San Agustín Church, completed in 1607, is the oldest existing building in Manila and a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the 'Baroque Churches of the Philippines' listing. Fort Santiago holds the Rizal Shrine, where José Rizal was imprisoned before his 1896 execution — bronze footprints set into the ground trace his final walk to the firing ground. Also inside: Manila Cathedral, Casa Manila, and Baluarte de San Diego, the oldest bastion in the walls, shaped like an ace of spades.

National Museum Complex

Three museums on Padre Burgos Avenue at Rizal Park in Ermita — the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Anthropology, and the National Museum of Natural History. Admission is free, permanently, and as of 2025 they open daily rather than closing on Mondays. Genuinely world-class and the best-value half day in the city.

Binondo

Founded in 1594 by Spanish governor Luis Pérez Dasmariñas as a settlement for Chinese immigrants — the oldest Chinatown in the world. Ongpin Street is the spine: tea houses, dim sum, hawker stalls, and the Binondo Church where Andrés Bonifacio married in 1895. Carriedo station on LRT-1 drops you at the edge of it. Come hungry and walk.

Manila American Cemetery

In Fort Bonifacio, Taguig, maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. 17,206 graves — 16,636 American and 570 Philippine — the largest number of graves of any cemetery for US personnel killed in World War II, plus the Tablets of the Missing. Open daily to the public, closing only on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Silent, enormous, and the clearest reminder of what the Pacific war cost this city.

Manila in pictures

Manila

Where to base yourself

Neighbourhoods of Manila

Makati

The main business district and the default answer for most visitors: the best-maintained streets in the core metro, the Ayala Triangle Gardens, the Greenbelt and Glorietta malls, and the Salcedo and Legazpi weekend markets in the village grid behind them. It is the safest-feeling and most walkable central base, with the widest range of hotels. Poblacion, on its northern edge, is the food and bar pocket and runs loud. What you give up is old Manila — this is a corporate district, and getting out of it in traffic is slow.

Bonifacio Global City

A master-planned district in Taguig with something no other part of Metro Manila has: wide, continuous, unobstructed sidewalks, proper crossings, parks and clean public space. If anyone in your party uses a wheelchair or a stroller, this is where a day works without a fight. The trade-off is character — it is polished and could be anywhere — and it has no rail station of its own, so every trip out is a car in traffic or a bus link to the MRT-3 stations on EDSA.

Intramuros and Ermita

The Spanish walled city and the historic quarter beside it: Fort Santiago, San Agustin, the cathedral, Rizal Park and the National Museum complex, with Manila Bay and its sunset at the end of the road. Base here if history is the point of the trip and you want to walk to it. Be clear-eyed though — much of Ermita and Malate is run down, and this is the part of the metro where you are most exposed to street crime, so it pays to be deliberate about where you walk after dark.

Pasay and the Bay Area

The strip near the airport, built around the Mall of Asia complex, the bay reclamation and the casino resorts. Nobody comes to Manila for it, but it is the sensible choice for the night before a dawn departure or the night you land, because it puts you minutes from the NAIA terminals instead of an hour of traffic away. Worth planning deliberately as your first and last night if you are travelling with someone elderly.

What to eat

Eating in Manila

Filipino home cooking at a turo-turo

Turo-turo means point-point: you point at what you want from a steam table. This is where to meet adobo, meat braised down in vinegar, soy and garlic; sinigang, a sour tamarind soup that is the national comfort food; and kare-kare, oxtail in a thick peanut sauce eaten with bagoong, fermented shrimp paste, stirred in to your own taste. The Filipino chains in every mall do the same dishes reliably if a canteen feels like a leap. For lechon, the whole spit-roasted pig, La Loma in Quezon City is the district historically known for it.

Binondo

Widely described as the oldest Chinatown in the world, established in the 1590s, and a food crawl rather than a meal. Ongpin Street is the spine: hopia pastries, siopao buns, hand-pulled noodles, fresh lumpia, dumpling houses and old bakeries, with Binondo Church at one end and the Art Deco remains of Escolta nearby. Go hungry, buy small things from several places and keep walking.

Merienda and street food

Filipinos eat between meals as a matter of course, and the afternoon merienda is where the street food lives. Isaw is grilled chicken or pork intestine on a stick; kwek-kwek is quail eggs in bright orange batter; betamax is congealed pork blood grilled in cubes. In the mornings a roaming vendor calls taho through the streets — warm silken tofu with brown sugar syrup and sago pearls, served into a cup. University districts and busy corners are where the carts cluster.

Halo-halo and kakanin

Halo-halo means mix-mix and that is the instruction: shaved ice, evaporated milk, sweet beans, jackfruit, leche flan, purple ube jam and a scoop of ube ice cream, all of which you stir into a mess before eating. It is the correct response to the heat. Kakanin are the rice cakes — bibingka baked over coals and puto bumbong steamed in bamboo tubes are sold outside churches through the Christmas season around the Simbang Gabi dawn masses, which is the one time of year to make a point of finding them.

If you only have 48 hours

Two days in Manila

1

Day 1, morning

Intramuros on foot, inside the walls: Fort Santiago and the Rizal Shrine, San Agustin Church, which is UNESCO-listed and is generally cited as the only building in the walled city left standing after the 1945 battle, and Manila Cathedral. Everything is within a few blocks. The streets are cobbled, so if walking is difficult, hire a kalesa horse carriage or a bamboo bambike at the gate and agree the price before you get in.

2

Day 1, midday

Walk north out of Intramuros and across the Pasig on Jones Bridge into Binondo — about twenty minutes, or a very short Grab if the heat has already won. Eat your way along Ongpin Street and loop back past the Escolta buildings.

3

Day 1, late afternoon

Rizal Park and the National Museum complex on its edge, where the Museum of Fine Arts, Anthropology and Natural History sit within a few minutes of each other and admission is free. Finish on the Baywalk for the Manila Bay sunset, which is the thing the city is genuinely famous for. LRT-1 to United Nations station serves this area.

4

Day 2, morning

Grab across to Makati and allow a full hour for it, because you are crossing the metro. Ayala Museum and the Ayala Triangle Gardens, and if your day lands on a weekend, the Salcedo market on Saturday or the Legazpi market on Sunday in the village streets behind.

5

Day 2, afternoon

On to Bonifacio Global City, either on the BGC Bus or a short ride from Makati. This is the one district where you can put the phone away and just walk: street art, the Mind Museum if you have children, and blocks laid out for pedestrians.

6

Day 2, late afternoon

The Manila American Cemetery sits right beside BGC in Taguig — more than seventeen thousand graves on open lawns, the most of any American cemetery for personnel killed in the Second World War, and free to enter. It is quiet, sobering and about ten minutes from where you already are. Check the closing time before you set out.

Worth a day

Day trips from Manila

Tagaytay and Taal

A ridge town about two hours south, high enough to be noticeably cooler, looking down over Taal Lake and the volcano island in the middle of it. Bulalo, a beef shank and marrow soup, is the thing to eat while you look at it. Buses run from the coach terminals along Taft Avenue and Buendia in Pasay. Boat trips out to the volcano island have been suspended at various points because of eruption activity and PHIVOLCS alert levels, so plan the trip around the ridge view and treat any boat as a bonus.

Corregidor

The fortress island at the mouth of Manila Bay, and the most substantial day trip from the city: the Malinta Tunnel, the ruined Mile-Long Barracks, the gun batteries and the Pacific War Memorial, all left as the fighting finished them. Ferries have run from the Manila Bay terminal in Pasay as an organised day tour with the island transport included. Sailings depend on the weather and the service has been suspended for stretches in the past, so confirm it is operating before you build a day around it.

Pampanga

The culinary province, about two hours north up the NLEX expressway by bus or car. Sisig was invented here, the food is the reason to go, and the San Fernando Giant Lantern Festival in December is one of the genuine spectacles of the Philippine calendar. The same trip north puts you within reach of the four-by-four runs up to the Mount Pinatubo crater, which leave from Capas in neighbouring Tarlac.

Travelling with family

Bringing parents, or kids

Manila is the hardest of these three cities to bring an older parent to, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. Plan it properly and it works; plan it like a European city break and it will defeat you by day two. Start with the rail, because the picture is uneven. There are three urban lines — LRT-1, LRT-2 and MRT-3 — they interchange badly with each other, and they do not reach most of the places you will actually want to go. LRT-2 is the exception and was deliberately built to answer complaints about the lack of universal access on the earlier lines: all its stations have lifts between concourse and platform, though not every station has one on both sides of the road, so you can arrive at the right station on the wrong side and find yourself stuck. LRT-1 and MRT-3 are older elevated lines reached by long flights of stairs, and MRT-3 in particular runs so crowded at peak that the queue backs down the staircase. Do not plan to move a frail parent through MRT-3. The streets are the bigger problem. Outside BGC and the better parts of Makati, sidewalks are narrow, broken, blocked by parked vehicles and vendors, or simply not there, and crossing a major road like EDSA means a footbridge with stairs. Intramuros, which you will want to see, is cobblestone throughout — charming and genuinely punishing on hips and on wheels. The kalesa carriages and the rented bambikes at the gate exist for exactly this and are the right call, not a defeat. And the traffic is among the worst in the world: two commitments in one day at opposite ends of the metro is an unrealistic plan, and it is the traffic rather than any staircase that will finish an eighty-year-old off. Heat compounds it — hot and humid all year, worst from March to May before the rains, and the wet season from roughly June to November brings typhoons that close things at no notice. Now the genuine advantages, because they are real. The Philippines treats elderly people and children as a structural priority, not just a social one: there are dedicated senior citizen and persons-with-disability lanes at malls, banks, pharmacies and government counters, and staff will wave a visibly elderly visitor into them. The legally mandated senior discount attaches to Philippine-issued senior ID, so a visiting Canadian parent will not usually get the price break, but the priority queue is a courtesy that is extended anyway and it saves a great deal of standing. The malls are vast, genuinely cold, and equipped with clean toilets and nursing rooms, and the big ones generally keep wheelchairs on loan at the concierge or customer service desk — ask at SM Mall of Asia, Greenbelt or Megamall. Use them as your afternoon base without embarrassment. The single biggest advantage over Jakarta is language. English is everywhere and near-universal, so an older relative separated from the group can ask literally anyone for help and be understood. Finally, the airport: NAIA is congested, its terminals are separate buildings, and moving between them means going out into landside traffic. Build a long buffer, and arrange a pickup in advance rather than making an elderly traveller negotiate a taxi queue at two in the morning. Manila runs twelve hours ahead of Toronto in summer, a straight flip of the clock, so give them a recovery day before anything is scheduled.

Before you go

Practical basics

Money and cards

The Philippine peso. Cards work in malls, hotels and chains, but jeepneys, tricycles, markets, street food and small eateries are cash only, and drivers rarely carry change, so break large notes at a mall and keep small ones. GCash and Maya are the QR wallets everyone local pays with, and both effectively require a Philippine mobile number, so do not plan on going cashless as a visitor.

Tipping

More expected here than in Malaysia or Indonesia, and this catches people out. Restaurants often add a service charge, and where they do, that covers it — leaving the loose change on top is common but not required. Where there is no service charge, around a tenth of the bill is the normal gesture. Tipping hotel porters, housekeeping and helpful drivers is standard practice, and Grab has a tip function built into the app.

Power and plugs

This is the one to read twice. The Philippines uses Types A and B, the same flat blades as Canada, so your plug slides straight in with no adapter — Type C round-pin sockets also turn up — and the supply is 220 volts, which you will also see quoted as 230, at 60 hertz, roughly double Canada's 120. There is no adapter in the way to make you stop and think. Phone and laptop chargers are dual voltage and completely fine. A Canadian hair dryer, curling iron, electric shaver or travel kettle rated for 120 volts only will burn out, sometimes dramatically, the moment you switch it on. Check every device for a printed 100 to 240 volt range before it goes in the wall.

Tap water

Do not drink it. The utilities treat water to standard, but the distribution network and older building plumbing are not reliable, and Filipino households drink bottled or refilled water as a matter of course. Canada's advice for the Philippines is the standard boil it, cook it, peel it or leave it, and it specifically flags cholera and typhoid risk. Bottled water is cheap and universal. Ice in malls, hotels and established restaurants is commercially made and generally fine; ice from a street cart is not worth the gamble.

Language

Filipino and English are both official, and English is genuinely widespread rather than nominally so — signage, menus, government forms, receipts and customer service all default to it. This is by some distance the easiest of the three cities for an English speaker, and the easiest for an older relative travelling semi-independently. Taglish, the constant switching between the two, is normal, and nobody will think less of you for speaking only English.

Safety

Canada advises exercising a high degree of caution across the Philippines. In Metro Manila the specifics from the official advice are worth acting on. Petty crime, pickpocketing and bag snatching happen in crowds and in shopping malls, so carry little and keep it in front of you. ATM skimming is common — the advisory notes illegal electronic devices attached to card readers to capture PINs — so use machines inside bank branches or malls, prefer well-lit public locations and cover the keypad. And drink and food spiking is explicitly flagged: criminals have befriended tourists, then drugged and robbed them, so decline snacks, drinks, gum and cigarettes from new acquaintances and never leave a glass unattended. On transport, the advisory says most taxi services are safe but extortion happens, so avoid street hails, use a metered taxi from a reliable company, hotel transport or a rideshare app, and note the plate number.

When to go

Timing your trip

PAGASA classes Manila as Type I climate: two pronounced seasons, dry from November to April and wet the rest of the year. The window you want is the amihan, the northeast monsoon, roughly November to February — cool and dry, with January the coolest month. The habagat, the southwest monsoon, runs about June to October and is the wet half; critically, it does not need a named storm to wreck a day, because a habagat surge on its own floods Metro Manila's streets. Dangerous typhoons run July through October and that is the peak risk period — if you're going then, build slack into your connections. April and May are local 'summer': schools are out between academic years, domestic travel spikes, and May is the warmest month of the year. So: November–February is the clear pick, March–April is hot but dry, and July–October you're gambling.

Do it on a budget

Smart-money tips

The National Museum Complex at Rizal Park — Fine Arts, Anthropology and Natural History — has had free admission permanently since 2016, and as of 2025 it opens daily instead of closing on Mondays.
Where the Beep card earns its keep is coverage and reload network: the same card works across LRT-1, LRT-2 and MRT-3 plus BGC Bus, select Metro Manila bus lines and the CAVITEX and NLEX tolls, and it reloads at FamilyMart, Bayad Centers, SM Bills Payment Centers and Villarica/Tambunting pawnshops, not just at stations. NFC phone users can top up through the BPI Mobile or Coins.ph apps.
Intramuros itself is a public district — the walls, plazas and streets cost nothing to walk. Only the individual sites inside (Fort Santiago and the Rizal Shrine, Casa Manila, Baluarte de San Diego) are ticketed by the Intramuros Administration, so you can cover most of the walled city without buying anything.

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FAQ

Manila — common questions

How do I get to Manila?

Manila is the exception to the rule about Southeast Asia. Philippine Airlines flies Toronto Pearson to Manila NONSTOP — one of the very few YYZ–SE Asia services that doesn't require a change, and the only nonstop from Toronto to a Southeast Asian city. If the fare or timing doesn't work, the realistic one-stops out of YYZ are Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong, EVA Air via Taipei, Korean Air via Seoul Incheon, or Air Canada via Tokyo Narita or Haneda. You arrive at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL), which has three working terminals — T1, T2 and T3 — after the old Terminal 4 closed in November 2024 and was demolished. Now the honest part: there is NO airport rail link. LRT Line 1's Ninoy Aquino Avenue station opened in November 2024 as part of the Cavite Extension and sits near Terminal 1, but the Department of Transportation has confirmed there is no direct link into the terminals, citing right-of-way constraints — you cannot walk it with bags. Jeepneys and UV Express vans run from that station toward the airport, but with luggage that realistically leaves Grab, the accredited airport taxi ranks at each terminal, or a road transfer to PITX, the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange, which has its own LRT-1 station and is where provincial buses meet the rail network. A free inter-terminal shuttle bus connects the NAIA terminals to one another.

How do I get around Manila?

Metro Manila's rail is three separate lines that don't interchange cleanly: LRT Line 1 (Fernando Poe Jr. in the north down to Dr. Santos, including the Cavite Extension stations Redemptorist–Aseana, MIA Road, PITX, Ninoy Aquino Avenue and Dr. Santos that opened in November 2024), LRT Line 2, and MRT Line 3. The stored-value card is the Beep card — a reloadable contactless card that works on LRT-1, LRT-2 and MRT-3, plus BGC Bus, select Metro Manila bus lines, and the CAVITEX and NLEX toll roads. Buy and reload it at rail and bus stations, FamilyMart, Bayad Centers, SM Bills Payment Centers, and Villarica and Tambunting pawnshops; NFC phone users can top up via the BPI Mobile or Coins.ph apps. Above ground it's the EDSA Carousel busway, jeepneys, UV Express vans, tricycles for the last block, and Grab — which is how most visitors actually get around.

When is the best time to visit Manila?

PAGASA classes Manila as Type I climate: two pronounced seasons, dry from November to April and wet the rest of the year. The window you want is the amihan, the northeast monsoon, roughly November to February — cool and dry, with January the coolest month. The habagat, the southwest monsoon, runs about June to October and is the wet half; critically, it does not need a named storm to wreck a day, because a habagat surge on its own floods Metro Manila's streets. Dangerous typhoons run July through October and that is the peak risk period — if you're going then, build slack into your connections. April and May are local 'summer': schools are out between academic years, domestic travel spikes, and May is the warmest month of the year. So: November–February is the clear pick, March–April is hot but dry, and July–October you're gambling.