Philippines

Once the hub of a booming sugar industry, these days Bacolod is known for its food and convenience as a transport hub. There are a few sights of historic interest and good restaurants, and it's a useful base for Mt Kanlaon Natural Park or the nearby historic district of Silay.

If you're flying into Cebu City, nearby Mactan (sometimes referred to as Lapu-Lapu) is where you'll actually land. Connected to Cebu City by two bridges, this busy island has some great diving off its southeast coast, and its all-inclusive resorts are popular with weekending visitors from Manila, Hong Kong and Korea. For independent travellers, the main draw is island-hopping trips in the Bohol Strait between Cebu and Bohol.

If you've spent a bit of time in Manila, you're probably clawing to get out to the countryside for some fresh air and relaxation – as many locals and ex-pats do on weekends. Surprisingly, you don't need to go too far to leave the city and most of its traffic behind.

The tiny island of Pamilacan, adrift in the Bohol Sea about 23km east of Balicasag, is cetacean central, its rich waters supporting marine megafauna including whales and dolphins, manta rays and sharks. Islanders have always lived off the sea, hunting whales until the ban in 1992, then targeting sharks and rays. In 1993 Sulliman University recorded 30 whale sharks landing in Pamilacan in just 44 days. If you visited the island in the mid-1990s, lanes would be full of shark and manta meat drying in the sun. Finally, in 1998, whale shark and manta hunting were officially banned.

Sitting among mist-shrouded mountains, tiny Sagada is the closest thing the Philippines has to a Southeast Asian backpacker hub, yet it's possible to find tranquillity along its many hiking trails and get your adrenalin pumping on adventures in the depths of its caves. There's a mystical element to this village, a former refuge for intelligentsia fleeing dictatorship: the centuries-old coffins high up along limestone cliffs lie close to the sky, and days and nights are peaceful thanks to the lack of tricycles or much other traffic.

For students and historians of the Pacific and WWII, the word 'Leyte' conjures up images of bloody naval battles and the site of MacArthur's famous return. For Filipinos it's equally associated with the rags-to-riches rise of Imelda Marcos and the nostalgic, romanticised portrait she painted of her birthplace after she made good in the capital. For travellers, Southern Leyte, wrapped around the deep-water Sogod Bay, is one of the Philippines' many diving hotspots. The Cebuano-speaking Leyteños live in the south, and their Waray-speaking neighbours live in the cattle-ranching country of northern Leyte.

Initially drawn to Siargao (shar-gow) by good year-round waves and a tranquillity and beauty lost in other Philippine islands, a small group of passionate Aussie, American, European and now Filipino surfers are still living the good life. Even with a marked surge in development over the last several years, more hotels and flights and better roads, the island's laid-back resorts are still the norm. Besides surfers looking for the next challenge on their international wanderjahr, low-key do-it-yourself types do well here and prolong their stay by weeks. There are rock pools, mangrove swamps, twisty rivers, offshore islands with strange rock formations and wildlife, waterfalls and forests, with hammock sitting the usual coda to any day.

This was Typhoon Yolanda's “ground zero”. Tacloban took a direct hit on 8 November 2013, when the mother-of-all tropical storms destroyed the city. Yet as you walk through Tacloban's streets today, it's impossible to imagine the apocalyptic scenes on that fateful morning. The center has been fixed up, hotels have been repaired and there's even a degree of cafe culture evident. Tacloban's bars are again filled with local drinkers instead of relief workers. Yes, the city has resumed its role as the commercial heart of both Leyte and Samar.

To many travellers, North Luzon is simply the Cordillera. These spiny mountains, which top out at around 2900m, are beloved, worshipped and feared in equal doses by those who witness them and those who live among them.

This group of islands in the far north of Palawan, also known simply as the Calamianes, is a bona fide adventurer's paradise, with wreck diving, kayaking, island-hopping and motorbiking leading the way. It's a bountiful region filled with white-sand beaches, coral reefs, dense rainforests, mangrove swamps and the crystal-clear lakes of Coron Island.