Manila's historic, walled city centre doesn't seem to be a big hit with tourists, which I put down to most of it not actually existing, thanks to a solid month of devastation at the hands of the occupying Japanese in the Battle of Manila (part of World War II we don't hear so much about in the West, because it mainly affected brown people).
Those no-good Japanese, someone should destroy some of their major cities and see how they like... oh. Right.
There's been some rebuilding of walls and gates in the decades since, but most people would probably agree that the Philippines has more important things to spend its money on, like cosmetic surgery and embezzlement. For colonial sightseeing, Intramuros isn't as good as Georgetown in Penang or Singapore, but it's better than Malang in Java.
I still enjoyed spending an afternoon walking around these orderly streets, which offer a welcome escape from the bland, endless uniformity of Metro Manila in general. I always feel much more comfortable enclosed within crumbling walls than I do in bigger cities, and I grudingly accept that this will inevitably lead to me developing some sort of BDSM/asphyxiation-based sexual perversions in middle age, for which I apologise in advance.
