Parañaque sits in the southern part of Metro Manila, wedged between the airport and the coast. Most travelers pass through it on the way somewhere else, sitting in traffic on the roads fanning out from Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The city deserves more than that reputation.
The old heart of Parañaque around the barangay of San Andres is one of the oldest settled places in the Manila area — the parish church here dates from around 1580. To the north, Baclaran Church draws tens of thousands of devotees every Wednesday for the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, one of the largest recurring religious gatherings in Asia. The surrounding Baclaran Market is a sprawling bazaar of extraordinary density and cheapness, selling everything from fresh fish to clothing to cheap electronics.
Along the coast, the Entertainment City development has transformed the bayfront into the Philippines' answer to Macau. The four integrated casino-resorts — Solaire, City of Dreams, Okada Manila, and Westside City — are deliberately spectacular, and the baywalk between them offers one of Manila's better sunsets. Okada Manila's indoor lagoon and outdoor beach club are worth a visit even for confirmed non-gamblers.
South of the airport, the BF Homes district is a genuinely liveable residential neighbourhood with a long-established restaurant and bar strip on Aguirre Avenue. It offers a quieter, more local version of Manila life than the casino corridor — good food, reasonable prices, and pavements actually worth walking on. The Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX) near the Coastal Road is the modern gateway for buses to southern Luzon, and is itself a small architectural achievement worth acknowledging.