Tacloban is the capital of Eastern Visayas and the busiest port on the island of Leyte, a low-rise grid of jeepneys, karinderyas, and concrete churches strung between Cancabato Bay and the green ridges behind it. Most travellers know it for two things: the Allied landing at Red Beach in October 1944, when General Douglas MacArthur waded ashore and made good on his "I shall return" promise, and Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda), which flattened the city in November 2013 and killed thousands. The Tacloban you visit today is the rebuilt one — bigger, brasher, and visibly proud to still be here.
The city is small enough to walk in a morning. The compact downtown around Real, Burgos, and Zamora streets holds the Sto. Niño Shrine and Heritage Museum (the Marcos family's former Tacloban residence, now stuffed with their hoarded art and oddities), the old Spanish-era Sto. Niño Church, and the rebuilt waterfront where Yolanda's storm surge came ashore. Climb Kanhuraw Hill behind the city hall for a clean view across San Pedro Bay. Out at the edge of town, the great San Juanico Bridge — for decades the longest in the Philippines — arcs across the strait to Samar. In the Anibong district, the Yolanda Shipwreck Memorial preserves the bow of a cargo ship the typhoon dumped in a city neighbourhood.
Use Tacloban as a base. Red Beach and the MacArthur Landing Memorial are a short ride south at Palo. Beyond that lie the limestone coast and Marine Park at Marabut, the cave network at Sohoton on Samar, and quiet island beaches like Sinapdan reachable by pumpboat. The food is hearty and unpretentious — grilled tuna, sinigang, pork sisig in the open-air eateries on Burgos and Zamora — and the beer is always cold. People are friendly to a fault. Come for the history, stay a day or two longer than you planned.