The location is very difficult. For those who haven't been, distances are slowly travelled and you should bank on about 4km in 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Whilst it is near the water, the area is extremely deprived. We walked to the Intramuros (the old town). It's not too far, but you walk though old Manila and Malate full of beautiful old buildings, from a bygone area, but now severely neglected, with high levels of poverty, which is quite confronting. It truly was very sad to see. The sad part is, that there is nothing else in the area, other than this, so it's quite heartbreaking, especially when so many of the locals, even though their hard ship, always were able to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The people of this country are wonderful, however, for most people we would recommend taking a car almost everywhere.
On our first stay we caught a grab one evening to Ortiga and getting back proved to be very difficult as many drivers wouldn't travel that far. We managed to negotiate with a taxi driver to take us back. On our second stay, we organised drivers with the concierge and these were always on time and fantastic, to take us to different areas of Manila. Once we were able to see other aspects of Manila and to see that it was not all doom and gloom, we really started to appreciate this huge multi faceted city.
The hotel is wonderful, in a landmark building, just unfortunately in a very neglected and sad part of the city.
The only thing that lets the hotel down is the Ruby Wong restaurant being very substandard and hugely overpriced and an ok, but not brilliant buffet, in a town where excellent ones are common.
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