Being British but married to a Filipina for over 20 years I must have been to Manila about fourteen times now, and walked around the crowded streets, the busy markets, and ridden on the Jeepneys and LRT and MRT trains, but I have never had anything stolen in this enormous city where there is so much poverty. However I am always very aware of my surroundings in the streets and public places, and I always keep my wallet and money well out of sight.
Whenever I visit a new place anywhere in the world there are two things that forewarn me to be careful and watch my belongings and my step. One of these is when I see people, especially youths and young men, just aimlessly loitering around and looking as though they are doing nothing except watching passers by in an unwelcome kind of way and seemingly scoping them out. Although I have encountered this in some places I have visited, and experienced an unpleasant feeling because of it, I always notice that in Manila everyone seems to be going about their business or at least trying to earn an honest living of one sort or another, and are therefore not paying so much attention to passers by, even though I am sure they must be curious about a foreigner like me.
The second thing that I have experienced in some places other than the Philippines which tells me to be careful is when I am approached or accosted by fit and able bodied youths and young men, who are begging in an aggressive or even intimidating manner or who claim to be selling drugs or able to procure women, etc. By contrast in Manila, the beggars are relatively few in number despite the poverty there. And then if you do encounter any beggars in Manila, they are not young men, but invariably only children, frail and infirm elderly people or visibly disabled people who are blind or have limbs missing. I do not mind being approached by people like that as opposed to the “sturdy beggars” (to use an Old English term) that are part of the street life in some other places. I am happy to give these inoffensive beggars some change, though of course I always have a bit of change in my pocket for this purpose and would certainly never take out a wallet full of cash and flash it in front of them.
For these reasons Manila does have a reasonably "safe" feel to me, indeed a safer feel than you would expect of a city like it, though of course you are more at risk of being pickpocketed whenever you are in a crowd, however "safe" the crowd feels.
This brings me on to my final point, because when I last visited the Philippines (in August 2017) I was the victim of a theft for the first time in the country, though not in Manila. I visited Antipolo Cathedral, pictured above, just about 25 kilometres or 15 miles out of Manila, where I had just a cheap digital camera taken from my pocket inside the cathedral, though fortunately my wallet, cards and cash were safely in a securely fastened pocket elsewhere on my person. Actually the big churches and pilgrimage churches in and around Manila, such as Quiapo and Antipolo, are often crowded and you should be especially careful here. You are probably much more risk of being pick-pocketed in a busy or crowded church than any other public place because of your diminished "situational awareness" - that is to say, you are or at least should always be in a state of relaxed alertness in crowded markets or public transport to reduce the risk of theft, whereas when you leave the hectic streets to walk into the supposed sanctuary of a church, you tend to "switch off" so to speak, and your head and your senses are then in a different place that makes you much more vulnerable. So I am not at all surprised that the only place I have ever had something stolen in the Philippines is inside a church.
