Manila travel info

Past 10pm at Terminal 1. You walk out into thick warm air and a row of numbered Grab bays. The city centre is barely ten kilometres away, but in traffic that can take an hour, easily. The first thing Manila teaches you is to measure distance in minutes, not kilometres.

Metro Manila isn't one city but sixteen stuck together. Makati and BGC are glass towers, rooftop bars and malls; up in old Manila, horse-drawn calesas rattle along the stone streets of Intramuros, the walled Spanish city. Across the river, Binondo has been a Chinatown since 1594, with dumpling steam drifting out of every side street, and at dusk the Manila Bay seawall fills with people waiting for that famous orange sunset.

The food is plain and punchy: adobo braised in vinegar and soy, sour sinigang soup, sisig spitting on a hot plate, and halo-halo, shaved ice piled with everything. From June the southwest monsoon rains roll in and typhoon warnings come often, sometimes flooding the streets, so an umbrella and plenty of slack in your schedule are the basic kit here.

Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) (MNL)