News > The underrated country set to become Southeast Asia’s next big thing

The underrated country set to become Southeast Asia’s next big thing

It’s the nuns, for one thing. They’re the first sign you’ve stepped off Southeast Asia’s generic elephant-and-temple tour into someplace different: willowy nuns in buffalo-grey habits, showing surprising strength as they heft their luggage off the carousel at Manila airport, signalling your arrival in a Catholic country. The heat in the Philippines is different from Thailand’s urban furnace or the dusty fug of Cambodia: it’s a heat that has the sea in it. It folds you into a belly hug, thawing away a tough British winter.