Silay's position in northern Negros Occidental makes it a good base for exploring the surrounding area, or an easy day trip from Bacolod in the other direction.
Bacolod City, 14 km to the south, is the provincial capital and offers everything Silay lacks: a full range of restaurants, shopping malls, the Ruins (the burned-out shell of a grand early twentieth-century mansion in Talisay, just south of Silay), and the SM City transport hub. The MassKara Festival draws huge crowds to Bacolod every October.
Talisay City sits between Silay and Bacolod and is worth a detour for the Ruins — the dramatic coral-stone skeleton of the Lacson family mansion, burned during the Second World War to prevent Japanese use, and now one of the most photographed heritage sites in the Visayas.
The northern coast of Negros Occidental, reached by continuing north from Silay, is largely agricultural — sugar cane all the way to the horizon — but the small fishing towns around E.B. Magalona and Victorias are quiet and largely untouristed. Victorias has a church with a famous modern mural depicting an angry Christ, painted by American artist Willie Donahue.