Philippines

Austronesian settlers built "barangay" communities and, from the fourteenth century in the south, Islamic sultanates. Ferdinand Magellan's Spanish expedition arrived in 1521 — and Magellan was killed by the chief Lapu-Lapu at Mactan — but Spain colonised from 1565 and ruled for 333 years from Manila, converting most of the archipelago to Catholicism and linking Asia and the Americas through the Manila galleon trade.

A revolution against Spain broke out in 1896, and independence was declared in 1898 — but Spain instead ceded the islands to the United States, which crushed the First Philippine Republic in a brutal war and ruled the Philippines as a colony until 1946, leaving behind English-language schooling and American institutions. Japanese occupation in the Second World War, the Bataan Death March, and the catastrophic 1945 Battle of Manila preceded independence.

A patronage-driven republic dominated by landed families gave way to the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1972 and governed as a dictator — cronyism, torture and disappearances, and billions plundered — until the peaceful "People Power" revolution of 1986 ousted him and installed Corazon Aquino. The restored democracy has cycled through reformers and scandal-plagued leaders; Rodrigo Duterte's nationally popular but lethal "war on drugs" killed thousands and led to his 2025 surrender to the International Criminal Court. In 2022 Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., the dictator's son, won the presidency in a landslide alongside Duterte's daughter as vice-president — an alliance that has since collapsed — and has swung foreign policy back toward the United States while taking a firmer line against China in the West Philippine Sea.

The Philippines is the outlier of Asia — majority Catholic, heavily influenced by Spain and America, yet unmistakably Southeast Asian and Austronesian underneath. Faith runs through daily life: fiestas for town patron saints, the world's longest Christmas season, Holy Week processions, and the January Feast of the Black Nazarene that draws millions into the Manila streets.

Family is the organising unit — extended, close, and the reason so many Filipinos work abroad — and values of utang na loob (debt of gratitude), hiya (propriety), and pakikisama (getting along) shape social life, alongside a famous warmth, humour, and resilience. Karaoke is a national institution; basketball is played on every barangay court; and boxing produced Manny Pacquiao, a national hero turned senator.

The highland cultures of the Cordillera, the Moro sultanate traditions of Mindanao, and the crafts of the Indigenous lumad peoples add a depth the tourist image often misses.

The Philippines is young, urbanising, and defined by mobility. Metro Manila, one of the densest urban regions on Earth, holds the government, the money, and the traffic; Cebu is the fast-growing second centre; Davao anchors the south.

The economy runs on the young English-speaking workforce — the call-centre and outsourcing industry is a world leader — and on the remittances of some ten million overseas Filipino workers, from nurses and seafarers to domestic helpers, whose money sustains millions of households and whose absence reshapes families. Electronics assembly, farming, mining, and tourism fill out the picture, but a few dynastic families dominate business and politics, and poverty is stubborn.

Above all, life is lived under the weather: the Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, hit by around twenty typhoons a year and ringed by volcanoes and fault lines, and communities have deep habits of preparation, mutual aid, and rebuilding.

Filipino cooking is savoury, tangy, and unfussy, shaped by Malay roots and Chinese, Spanish, and American layers. Adobo — meat braised in vinegar, soy, garlic, and pepper — is the unofficial national dish, in endless regional versions. Sinigang, a sour tamarind broth, and kare-kare, an oxtail-and-peanut stew eaten with shrimp paste, are home classics; lechon, a whole spit-roasted pig, is the centrepiece of every fiesta.

Chinese-derived pancit noodles, siomai, and lumpia spring rolls are everyday food, and the American era left fried chicken, banana-ketchup spaghetti, and a love of tinned meat. Breakfast is silog — garlic rice, fried egg, and a cured meat. Street food runs from balut to grilled skewers of everything.

Sweets and merienda are their own world: halo-halo shaved ice with beans, fruit, jelly, and purple ube yam; bibingka and puto bumbong at Christmas; and ube and pandan in everything. San Miguel beer and coconut lambanog round it out.

The Philippines is a beach and island country above all. Palawan tops most lists — the karst lagoons and island-hopping of El Nido and Coron, the underground river near Puerto Princesa, and remote Tubbataha for divers — followed by the white sand of Boracay, the surf and lagoons of Siargao, the hills and tarsiers of Bohol, and the diving of Malapascua and Moalboal. Whale sharks are seen at Oslob and, more ethically, at Donsol.

Inland Luzon has the amphitheatre rice terraces of Banaue and Batad, carved by the Ifugao over two thousand years; the hanging coffins and caves of Sagada; the Spanish colonial streets of Vigan; the near-perfect cone of Mayon volcano; and Taal, a volcano in a lake on an island in a lake.

Manila itself has the walled Spanish quarter of Intramuros with Fort Santiago, the old districts and markets, and a strong art and food scene in Makati and Bonifacio Global City. The Cordillera trails, the far-northern Batanes islands with their stone houses, and the war memory of Corregidor and Bataan add range to a country that is hard to see quickly.