Dumaguete

A seafront promenade lined with old-style lamp posts and stone benches. Joggers have it at morning, food carts and strollers once evening comes, and in clear weather Siquijor can be made out offshore.

Founded in 1901 by American Presbyterian missionaries, with a campus that runs into the city without any wall. Inside Silliman Hall, a wooden building of 1909, an anthropology museum shows burial jars and pottery from Negros and the islands nearby.

A stand-alone stone bell tower in front of the cathedral, counted as the oldest structure in the city. A small Marian shrine sits at its foot, where commuters stop, light a candle and walk on.

A marine sanctuary set up by the islanders themselves brought the coral back, and now sea turtles are seen up close. Boats from Malatapay beach take 30 to 45 minutes, with a sanctuary fee paid on landing. Wardens swim along to stop anyone touching the turtles.

Paired lakes filling old volcanic craters, with rainforest reaching to the shoreline. Kayaks can be hired to cross, or a ridge path walked between the two. Thanks to the altitude it stays cooler than the city, and fog is apt to roll in during the afternoon.

A waterfall dropping into a tight gorge in the Valencia hills, reached down a long, steep stairway and then by hopping across boulders. The day after rain the steps turn slick and the swollen stream can drown the boulder route.

A long bar off Bais that drowns at high tide and surfaces at low, with cottages standing on stilts above it. It is usually bundled with a boat trip that hunts for dolphins, and only a departure timed to the ebb puts your feet on the sand.

A market held every Wednesday on the Zamboanguita shore, where people down from the hills trade carabao and goats. One corner sells spit-roast pig cut to weight, and the boats for Apo Island leave from this same beach.

Siquijor lies slightly over an hour off by ferry, known for tales of healers and herbal magic. Its coast road runs about 70km, so a hired motorbike covers it in a day, pausing at the pool under an old balete tree where small fish peck at visitors' feet.

A Valencia waterfall whose rocks are stained red by iron, so the name means red stone. Sulphur hot springs and a steaming volcanic patch lie close by, and the three get covered in one outing.

A protected stretch of the Dauin coast south of Dumaguete, famed for muck diving: hunting nudibranchs, cuttlefish and other small creatures over volcanic sand. Snorkellers often meet sea turtles just off the beach.

Boat trips into the Tanon Strait off Bais, north of Dumaguete, to find pods of dolphins, usually bundled with the Manjuyod Sandbar. Dolphins show best early, so boats leave the harbour around daybreak.

The main church of Dumaguete, beside the belfry, a late 18th-century stone church renewed over time. With the tower it faces Quezon Park, and after Mass the congregation spills across into the park.