Manila

Manila has been destroyed as often as any city on Earth — earthquakes, fires, and the war that leveled Intramuros — and answers with a Filipino specialty: joy as a form of resilience. The walled city the Spanish built still stands in patches by the bay, the world's oldest Chinatown still feeds anyone who crosses its bridge, jeepneys painted like carnival floats still run routes their drivers inherited, and the sunset over Manila Bay remains, by popular and correct opinion, among the finest anywhere.

The sensible traveller walks Intramuros in the morning — Fort Santiago, San Agustín's stone that survived everything, a calesa ride if the horse looks better fed than the driver —; crosses to Binondo hungry and follows the lumpia, the hopia and the soup dumplings wherever they lead; pays respects at Rizal's monument to the polymath the country loves like family; and takes the bay walk at six, when the sky performs and the whole city comes out to watch it.

The Guide's honesty: Manila's traffic is a fact of planetary scale — plan few things per day and cluster them —; keep phones inward in crowds and ride by app after dark; the bay sunset is free and the rooftop shows the same one at cocktail prices — both are correct; and Manila is the country's loud, complicated hallway to seven thousand islands: give her two honest days, and she will hand you the archipelago.