This Southeast Asian Country Is On the Brink of a Transformation—and It Has 7,600 Islands With Pristine Beaches, Lush Rainforest, and a Rich History

Top marks for transparency to whoever named the streets on the Philippine island of Siargao. Tourism Road, the main drag in General Luna, the commercial hub, perfectly describes a place some have dubbed the next Bali. Sunburned Westerners clog the thoroughfare, their rented mopeds spewing gray clouds of exhaust. Displays of surfboard-shaped magnets and racks of tie-dyed T-shirts spill from the storefronts. Cocktail bars and tattoo parlors tout cheap specials and easy access to regret.

As I was driven along Tourism Road, I desperately wanted not to be that kind of traveler. I would have slid down in my seat for fear of being seen as one of them, except it was poi;’ntless: I was being ferried around in a minivan emblazoned with my hotel’s name and logo. I was just another American tourist—and not even one cool (or coordinated, or courageous) enough to steer my own moped.

A few miles outside of town, though, the shops, the bars, the traffic, and the shame of Tourism Road vanished, along with nearly all the tourists. Through the van windows, I saw coconut palms, banana trees, and the occasional water buffalo grazing in a field. Then, about a half-hour north of General Luna, I spotted a sign: “house for sale. sea view.”

“Hey, could you pull over?” I asked the driver, Kirk Cabigon. “Just a quick look.”

In the rearview mirror, I saw his skeptical glance. He’d barely stopped on the grassy, overgrown shoulder before I hopped out. “Are you sure?” I heard him say behind me. 

I was already jogging up the path. Around a bend and up a hill, a three-story house appeared. A dog trotted up to me, tail wagging. Nobody else seemed to be home. As I scratched the dog’s ears, I could hear a watery whoosh-whoosh-whoosh and the crash of waves. 

At the top of some steps, I saw the craggy coast plunging into the Philippine Sea’s foamy churn. Tide pools glistened like topaz gemstones set in jagged rock. To the north, an arm of land curled into the ocean, as if trying to gather the waters. As far as I could see, the Pacific stretched eastward, glimmering like a sheet of blue steel. 

“Wow,” Cabigon said, as he caught up with me. 

This is why I’d come to the Philippines: to walk the mysterious path, to meet friendly locals, to glimpse the unexpected—to have an adventure. 

Another reason: redemption.

When I was 18, my dad got a job in Manila. While I attended college in the U.S., I spent every major holiday and a few weeks each summer in the Philippine capital, much of it in full sulk mode. I knew my dad’s expat wages were funding my education, but I resented the on-the-ground reality: in Manila, I couldn’t drive, had no friends, and therefore had no life. I never wanted to be there—and I always wanted my parents to know it. 

A quarter-century on, I felt less self-absorbed, a bit more mature, and ready to return. I wanted to experience the Philippines anew—exploring, chasing beauty, giving the place another, more openhearted chance. Could I see the country for what it was, not what I wanted it to be? I called the T+L A-List travel advisor Tesa Totengco, a New York–based Filipina, who jumped at the chance to design—and accompany me on—an itinerary exploring her homeland.

The 7,600 islands of the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s second most populous country, offer wildly diverse landscapes—pristine beaches, volcanic peaks, lush rainforest—and a rich, complicated history. The culture, marked by centuries of Spanish and American rule, is unique. And while tourism has hit a record high since President Rodrigo Duterte’s strongman regime ended in 2022, the country still lags far behind Thailand and Vietnam in terms of visitors. 

I told Totengco I wanted as full a picture of today’s Philippines as we could get in nine days: old and new, city and countryside, ending with some beach time. In January, we set out on a whirlwind tour, along with Frédéric Lagrange, a Bali-based photographer. 

We began in Manila, where Totengco had arranged a tour of Intramuros, a walled district built by Spanish colonialists. Our guide, Greg Dorris, an American who has lived in the city since 1988, has been praised by Esquire Philippines for “knowing Manila better than most Manileños.” He escorted us through San Agustin Church and Fort Santiago, ushering us from the precolonial era to the 1700s, when treasure-laden Spanish galleons shuttled between the Philippines and Mexico, and onward to the 20th century, when the U.S. (and, during World War II, Japan) governed.

I knew the vague outlines of the Spanish and American eras, but Dorris shared some fascinating tales. For instance, Daniel Burnham, the Beaux Arts–era architect and urban planner who designed New York’s Flatiron Building, also imagined Rizal Park, a sprawling green space originally envisioned as the Philippine equivalent of Washington, D.C.’s National Mall. Creating Rizal Park and its surrounding neighborhoods, though, required destroying Bagumbayan, an area that was once home to Rajah Sulayman, Manila’s ruler when the Spanish arrived. Locals refused to live there, Dorris said. “They regarded it as a ghost town.” Today the area is populated mostly by squatters.

Dorris sensed Lagrange and I were itching to explore. So from Intramuros, we wandered. In Binondo, Manila’s Chinatown, we scarfed down some steamed buns—I shared mine with a street dog—and in neighboring Quiapo, we stopped for sandwiches at a shop called Excelente Chinese Cooked Ham. While we ate, the garrulous proprietor kept ordering her staff to bring extra treats, including pungent buffalo-milk cheese wrapped in banana leaves. She also regaled us with stories, including one about how she’d met her husband (“I was a flight attendant, he was a passenger!”). 

Earlier, an Art Deco building had caught Lagrange’s eye, so we found our way back to it. The First United Building, originally a department store and offices, is now a thriving creative hub. We popped in to the studio of the avant-garde fashion designer Ziv Rei Alexi, who showed us a jacket covered in what appeared to be cracked paint (“inspired by the rawness of concrete,” he said) and a translucent racer-back top (“Margiela 1998”). Next door, we met Arts Serrano, who runs One Zero, the interior-architecture firm behind some of Manila’s trendiest restaurants. “The old and the new merge in this building,” Serrano told us. “It encourages you to play around with ideas. There’s a natural energy that encourages cross-pollination.” 

That intersection of history and innovation came to mind one night at the Peninsula Manila hotel, where we were staying. When my family lived in the Philippines, we went to “the Pen,” as locals call the grande dame of the city’s hotels, on special occasions. It’s even more beautiful than I remembered (it received a facelift just prior to the pandemic) and its buffet just as lavish. About a decade ago, the hotel started a cultural program called the Peninsula Academy to pay tribute to Filipino artists and designers, which is how we ended up visiting the workshop of Lenora Cabili, the visionary behind the fashion brand Filip + Inna. 

Thanks to Filip + Inna, hundreds of artisans from 21 Indigenous communities across the archipelago have a market for their crafts. “These are old Filipino traditions that I wanted to keep alive,” Cabili told us as we walked through the workshop, where women were finishing garments with dazzling embroidery. This isn’t merely an exercise in cultural preservation. Several women who began stitching as girls have gone on to university; one now oversees quality control for the company.

Following a dinner on her workshop’s patio, Cabili invited several artisans to perform tribal dances. She told us that, as a consequence of centuries of Spanish and American colonization, many Filipinos undervalue their own heritage. “Sometimes our culture is so masked by Western culture,” she said. “It needed to be celebrated.”

Every Filipino I’ve known has told me, “Go to the provinces.” It’s their way of saying that, if you want to experience the country’s heart, you have to explore beyond Manila. So Totengco took us to Negros Occidental, her home province, which occupies the western half of the island of Negros, named by the Spanish after the skin color of its Indigenous people. She wanted to show us a side of the country that tourists rarely see. 

In the mid 1800s, vast swaths of the island’s forest were cleared for sugarcane farming; by 1900, sugar had become one of the Philippines’ most lucrative exports. Farmers became wildly wealthy and erected stunning mansions. The sugar industry has faded, but the homes remain. Silay City, in the province’s north, has the most significant collection, though nature has reclaimed many, with kudzu and strangler figs grabbing roof tiles and tearing down walls. 

We stopped at one of the best preserved, Casa A. Gamboa, for lunch with Reena Gamboa, a fifth-generation farmer. Built in 1939 by Gamboa’s grandfather, the mansion marries Art Deco style with bahay kubo architecture, a traditional Filipino house on stilts. It has high ceilings and linear calados—carved-wood door transoms that improve air circulation. 

Over stewed chicken, Malabar spinach, and tiny pickled cucumbers called pipinitos, Gamboa told us how she was still learning new things about her family’s land. (Those pipinitos were discovered on her farm last year, when she was 60, and were a “revelation,” she said.) When World War II arrived, the U.S. Army requisitioned the house. Gamboa heard stories of Douglas MacArthur’s visit, but only got proof recently; near the front steps, a framed photograph shows the general descending them in 1945.

Next, we visited the provincial capital of Bacolod, where Lilia V. Villanueva welcomed us to a 1930s gem called Daku Balay (“Big House”), which was built by her grandfather. With its elegant Art Deco curves and terrazzo floors, the house wouldn’t be out of place in Miami Beach. But the details are unique to the area: floorboards and doors made of native hardwoods; wall reliefs depicting agrarian scenes of sugarcane, water buffalo, and folkloric animals. “Inside, he made sure you don’t forget you’re in the Philippines,” Villanueva said.

War is part of Daku Balay’s story, too: it was once the city’s tallest building, so the Japanese army installed guns on its roof. Villanueva lived in the U.S. for decades before returning in 2012 to restore the run-down home. In New York, she sold Asian antiques; in Bacolod, she tends to one.

Several miles outside Bacolod, we visited a hacienda with an even greater military pedigree. It belonged to the sugar baron Aniceto Lacson, who, along with his cousin, led hundreds of people on a march against Spanish colonizers in 1898. From afar, the troops appeared heavily armed, so the Spaniards surrendered. In truth, the rifles were actually palm fronds shaped to look like guns. The cannons? Rolled-up bamboo mats, painted black. The ruse helped Lacson become president of the short-lived Republic of Negros; during those four months, his home was designated the presidential palace.

With its brick-and-coral façade and wraparound veranda, the Lacson hacienda is an exemplar of bahay na bato—an architectural style that blends Filipino motifs with Spanish and Chinese influences. The house is unoccupied, and nobody was there when we arrived, so I opened the massive door and wandered around. I peeked into the chapel, which had tidy rows of kneelers and an altar crafted by Spanish artisans. I climbed the grand staircase, admiring the floral balusters and lavish fretwork. “Be careful, Jeff!” Totengco shouted from downstairs, as termite-damaged planks creaked underfoot. I imagined all the stories these wood-paneled walls had witnessed: political strategy sessions, family meals, elegant balls. 

When I emerged, Anna Balcells, Lacson’s great-granddaughter, had arrived. “I was born in this house,” she said wistfully. Last year, her family donated the home to the nation, which has promised to restore it.

Not only ancestral homes are being restored and reimagined. So are farmlands. Early one afternoon, we drove to meet Kiko Torno, a former marketing executive who runs 7 Hectares, a fish farm in the town of Saravia that uses regenerative aquaculture—the practice of producing seafood while improving the ecosystem. He cultivates algae, which feed tilapia, which feed barramundi, snapper, and sea bass. Snails inhabit these ponds, too. Oysters help filter the water. “If I keep a healthy supply of algae,” he said, “that’s the main thing.”

Between two fish ponds, in the ample shade of gmelina trees, Torno had set a table for lunch. From an outdoor kitchen emerged a lavish feast: bruschetta topped with mangrove clams; squash soup with snails; fish fritters; sea-bass kinilaw—ceviche’s Filipino cousin—cured with lime and young-coconut vinegar. As we ate, Torno stood nearby, watching proudly. “Pond to table,” he said.

I heard a similar philosophy the next day, when we drove inland to meet Teddy Canete, a third-generation coffee farmer. I hadn’t been sure we’d make it. Canete’s farm sits in the shadow of Mount Kanlaon, an active volcano, and that morning my phone buzzed with a warning: “Beware of possible ash fall.” The volcano was erupting. 

A quarter-mile from Canete’s farm, our van stalled on the steep, half-paved road, so we continued on foot. When we arrived, Canete and his wife, Joy, greeted us with wide smiles and waved off concerns about Kanlaon. Accompanied by their nine rescue dogs, we hiked across the farm and down a ravine where rains had slicked the muddy path—yes, I slid. While sugarcane fields remain, there were also groves of coffee trees, including species like arabica, robusta, and the less-common liberica. Some were 80 years old, others planted recently.

Canete, a member of the Indigenous Panay-Bukidnon tribe, belongs to an agricultural collective that tends 5,000 acres. He has traveled the world to learn sustainable farming practices, including how to intersperse coffee with other trees (banana, rambutan) to prevent soil erosion, reduce disease, and provide extra income. He has shared those lessons back home. “It’s how I help my people,” he said.

How do you say adventure in Tagalog?” I asked Totengco one day.

The question stumped her. Nor could she think of an answer in Hiligaynon, Negros Occidental’s local language. Text messages went flying from friend to friend and, slowly, suggestions trickled in: Maybe iskursiyon? That Spanish-derived Tagalog word felt too small. Lágaw? In Hiligaynon, that means “to roam.” Reena Gamboa offered another option: pag pasimpalad, which can mean “taking a chance” or “trying one’s luck”; it implies an action taken with hope but no certainty.

I carried my question to Siargao, our last stop. This teardrop of an island sits along the country’s eastern fringe, and its proximity to the Philippine Trench, a deep marine canyon, makes for formidable waves. Surfers from around the world began coming in the 1980s and were drawn particularly to Cloud 9, a break near General Luna. But the 170-square-mile island remains relatively unknown—it gets 50,000 foreign visitors each year, about as many people as Disneyland welcomes in a day.

We stayed at Nay Palad Hideaway, which has 10 sumptuous villas scattered across 10 oceanfront acres. On our first night, resort co-owner Herve Lampert, who is from France, joined us for dinner. He recounted how, in December 2021, Typhoon Odette had blown through. Odette killed 405 people across the archipelago and left Nay Palad in ruins. Only some outdoor furniture survived; the staff had ingeniously pushed it into the swimming pools, which saved it from being swept away. “Everything else was gone,” Lampert said. 

Rebuilding Nay Palad took 18 months. As I lounged on my villa’s shaded deck, gazing across a pristine lawn toward the white-sand beach, it was hard to believe that, not long ago, everything before me had been wasteland and debris. Lampert noted that much of the property had been hand-built in the Philippines, including the thatched roofs and woven wall panels. “The craftsmanship here is exemplary,” he said. “When we were building this place, we thought, we have to tell the story of that heritage.” 

On Tourism Road two days later, I grew annoyed as I wrestled with the dissonance between Nay Palad’s celebration of Filipino heritage and what I saw around me. Why the Bob Marley murals and posters? Did people really come all this way for cheap margaritas? I popped in to Rad, a tattoo shop, because I needed to use the bathroom. After thanking the shopkeeper, I told her I was curious—what did travelers ask for most often? She shrugged. “Waves,” she said. “Or a palm tree.” 

We briefly visited Cloud 9 beach, which was crowded with tourists. Cabigon, the driver, told us he and other local surfers typically avoided it. “We go to our secret spots,” he said. We continued north, stopping occasionally to explore deserted beaches and quiet villages. Around noon, we got a snack at the Women’s Kitchen in the town of Burgos, near Siargao’s northern tip. Run by a women’s collective, it serves home-style food like tortang talong—eggplant battered in egg, then fried. One gorgeously greasy bite, and I felt a wave of comfort.

It sustained me until we got to Kitchenette Food Houz7, a family-run restaurant nearby. After ordering vegetable curry and chicken adobo, we watched as one of the servers grabbed a machete and started hacking away at coconuts for us to drink from.

Why did that tortang talong, that curry, that coconut water fill me with joy, while Tourism Road ignited irritation? Why did I judge one as authentic, the other as not? In both places—indeed, everywhere we’d gone—people were just doing what they’d always done: pag pasimpalad. 

Perhaps it was all authentic, in the sense that it was all true to the Philippines’ story. Its people have always been open to the world and constantly reshaped by it, unfailingly hospitable and ready to adapt. 

The Philippines is a nation of travelers. Every family I encountered had a tale of dramatic rises, steep falls, and transporting ambition. About a tenth of the country’s population works abroad, sending back more than $30 billion in remittances each year. Even within the archipelago, the Filipino story is one of migration. People on every island spoke of roots elsewhere—across time, space, some body of water.

Perhaps the impulse to go out and take chances and try one’s luck is so ingrained in Filipino culture that they see no need for a word like “adventure.” It’s not what they do; it’s just who they are. 

A version of this story first appeared in the July 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Turning the Tide.”