Just about everyone who visits Manila, especially from the West, is floored by one thing the second they leave the airport. Not the heat, not the density, not even the unique and oddly pleasant BBQ-and-exhaust smell…but the traffic. It even costs the Philippine economy about $70 million per day! Every big city has congested roads, but Manila’s traffic is particularly…
if you’ve got even a couple of extra days on your trip to Manila, then it’s hard to think of a better getaway than Tagaytay. Just an hour or two south of Metro Manila, Tagaytay City has some of the Philippines’ most famous and enduring scenery: Taal Volcano and Taal Lake. It’s also a breath…
Everyone who visits Manila comes back with a strong opinion of the city. Sometimes it’s positive, sometimes it’s negative, but one thing is for sure: staying in Manila leaves a strong impression. That raises some interesting questions for travelers. What’s different between those who do and don’t like the city? What sort of expectations lead…
Whether you want to learn Tagalog for daily life around Manila, or to talk to friends and family, or just for the fun of taking on a new language…it’s not an easy language to learn. What’s more, classes are rare (in most of the US) and there are fewer good resources than for the more common second-language choices….
Manila and Cebu are the two biggest cities of the Philippines. Manila is the massive national capital, and the usual entry point for international flights. Its metro area, known as Metro Manila or the National Capital Region, is probably near 15 million residents as of writing. Cebu is the principal city of the Visayas—the expansive…
There’s a vibrant specialty coffee scene in the Philippines, but the most authentically local option revolves around something else altogether: barako coffee, or kapeng barako in Tagalog. Barako is a unique varietal of coffee plant in the Philippines, grown primarily in the Province of Batangas. While most of the world’s coffee comes from the arabica and robusta species, barako is actually a varietal…
If you’ve studied a European language, then you’ve probably spent many an hour trying to separate your le and la or you der, die, and das. And looking elsewhere in the world, languages have and handle gender in countless ways. Some disregard it altogether whereas others have elaborate systems of gender that even differ between people, animals, and objects! But where does…
Conjugation, or changing parts of a verb, is one of the most common ways that languages indicate when and how things happened. Although verb conjugations are common (especially in Western languages), they’re not at all universal. So, you may wonder, does Tagalog have conjugations? Tagalog verbs are conjugated to identify three things: aspect (what state the…
From its epic sunsets to legendary battles, Manila Bay is a significant part of history and life around Metro Manila. Approaching the city from the air, you can’t miss the fish ponds and even impromptu houses that extend far into its water. It can be surprisingly hard to tell where land ends and the bay…
Puerto Princesa is the capital of Palawan, a long and narrow island in the far west of the Philippines. It’s best known as the home of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, more commonly known as the Underground River. This stunning natural wonder is an absolute must-see, and one of the Philippines’ UNESCO World…