Best Manila Nightclubs to Meet Normal Filipinas?

Guilly’s Island

While the Philippines is thought of as one of the easiest countries to pull girls in, some of the traditionally ‘best Manila nightclubs’ in the Makati / Fort area aren’t easy.

When you go to the BGC area superclubs e.g. Valkyrie, Palace Pool Club, Revel, places heavily featured on any ‘best nightclubs in Manila’ list, the girls there will tend to have boyfriends already to pay the expensive bottles, table and entrance fees (500 – 1000 pesos unless you get on a guest list in advance).

The crowd includes some of the most ‘hiso’ (high society) girls in the richest area of the capital city, you can’t just expect to rock up and get laid every night.

They’re similar to Thailand nightclubs like Demo or Onyx. Full of stunning girls but most won’t be interested unless you look like a male model. The car parks are full of the Porsches and Lambos of rich local guys.

Black Market

Even if they are into you, some will be embarrassed to be seen talking to foreigners in case they look like hookers. These clubs are best for when you already have a date.

On the other end of the spectrum are hooker discos, the ratio gets worse over time as normal girls stop going there and soon it’s near 100% working girls.

ZZYZX & Exclusiv in Manila, Climax & Insanity in BKK (coincidentally both Exclusiv & Insanity used to be called Insomnia), J Ave in Cebu, HISO in Angeles, Apocalypse Now in Saigon, @Home in Vientiane, etc.

Then hookers start going to normal clubs too, anywhere foreign tourists are at, even ones obviously not looking for paid sex, and surprise them with the news at the end of the night or in the morning.

Royal in Makati has a lot of freelancers, so do Sugar, Levels & Mixx in BKK. Even Route 66 has some.

Guilly’s Island

It can feel like there aren’t any normal clubs left in the tourist spots. I think the best strategy is to venture 30 mins out of town to cheap clubs without foreigners so hookers don’t go there.

Ideally somewhere near a university so students party there rather than trek into the centre of the city. No cover charge, no charge just for tables just first come first served.

In BKK Ramkhamhaeng ticks all of those boxes, lively clubbing scene and near a uni. You still get some ‘foreigner value’ there.

In Manila the equivalent is Quezon city or Pasay. There’s Guilly’s Island club in Quezon City, 20km North of Makati, and Black Market just before Pasay. Still in Makati but in the middle of nowhere miles from the tourist spots, might as well be in Pasay.

Black Market

Best Night Clubs in Manila?

I was out one night in Manila with AFarangAbroad blogger Harvie and a Filipino guy he had met on Freedomsurfer, a forum for digital nomads. We asked him where are the best bars or clubs in Manila to meet girls, non prostitutes, in his opinion as a Pinoy guy.

He said girls in clubs in Makati and the BGC can be pretentious (by Filipina standards) and wouldn’t want to talk to us. Instead we should check out nightclubs in Quezon City, around the Timog Avenue area.

In particular, he recommended Guilly’s Island on Tomas Morato Avenue (which crosses Timog Ave), or Guilly’s for short. So off we went, stopping off at Oblivion Club nearby for warm up drinks.

At this point I’d never properly been out in Quezon City nightlife as it’s 20km out of town and I’d vaguely heard Quezon city is ‘dangerous’, plus didn’t have much mongering apart from Pegasus KTV which I went to once and it was dead.

So not being a fan of clubbing in general I hadn’t ventured out there. But I ended up having one of my best nights out in Manila.

Oblivion Club

Oblivion DJ

We started at Oblivion Bar & Lounge a small club on Timog Ave with about 10 tables, some sofas and DJ playing EDM music.

One thing that immediately stood out is Quezon City has hardly any expats or tourists so you get a bit of attention from girls, even out of simple curiosity. Then it’s easy to get talking to them.

The guy we were with knew some people there so got some girls to come over and talk to us. Having a Filipino guy friend is great social proof, similar to Vietnam.

The Fiesty Girls dance group even came over to say hi and take selfies and while we didn’t expect to bang them one even asked Harvie if he had Facebook.

Fiesty girls

He made the mistake of saying give me yours and I’ll add you later, then found out she had one of those profiles with no add friend button 😀 Anyway we were flying back to BKK the next day.

But just how friendly and laid back they were was a good start to the night. Although I’m not really counting this as one of the best nightclubs in Manila I’ll lump it into how good Quezon City clubs are.

There are many lounge clubs like this on Timog / Tomas Morato and it didn’t feel unsafe.

Oblivion (right) and Guilly’s (top)

Girls here seemed quite appreciative that we’d even bothered to check out Quezon City because not many foreigners do and they were keen to make sure we had a good time, better than we might have had in the touristy spots of Makati / the Fort.

A good approach strat would be to say hey I’m new in QC and enjoy the Filipino hospitality because they go out of their way to welcome you to their part of town.

I took this video of the Fiesty girls but they won’t be there every night, it might be a different dance act or just the EDM DJ all night.

Guilly’s Island

So my #1 pick for best club in Manila is Guilly’s.

Our guide explained everyone goes to Guilly’s later on in the night when the smaller clubs start winding down, that it’s the best nightclub in Quezon City and stays open until 6am ish, sometimes even later.

It’s a much larger club and we got out of the cab to this group of cute Filipina girls about to go in. Good start.

Car park

Some travel blogs say girls will just come up to you in the Philippines and chat you up and this is usually either a bit of an exaggeration or they were working girls.

Normally if they’re non hookers they’re still going to be a bit shy even if they like you and just go for eye contact first, or look for an opening through other people.

But if there’s anywhere it’ll happen it’s Guilly’s, the tables are close together and the club gets packed so it’s easy to bump into girls and get chatting. I’d expect to be able to ‘open some sets’ as the PUA guys say.

Took this short clip of the dance act:

Luckily we had our Filipino friend who just went up to girls and said hey come talk to my friends. Then like Oblivion bar the Pinays here were really nice.

Random guys were also curious to talk to us and ask what we thought of Quezon city, then if they were with girls it was easy to get introduced.

Our guy also explained what you should do is buy a big bottle and then offer it to girls, most Pinays in this club don’t have much cash to drink but are looking to get drunk and party. Many wait around with one drink hoping a guy will invite them over to share his bottle.

Pinay happy with her bottle

I didn’t get the vibe of it being a hooker disco. Just normal girls having fun. Not much sense for freelancers to come here as there’s near-zero foreigners.

One P. Burgos girl I know checks in at Guilly’s a lot on Facebook. So some girls may be hookers in other locations but then go to party at Guilly’s with their girlfriends because it stays open later than other clubs.

Then they’re drunk and horny so just bang whoever buys them a bottle and has a nice condo to sleep at instead of going back to the fan room they share with other girls.

Maybe ask for a few hundred pesos taxi money in the morning and then take a jeepney.

Girls looking for a table

It’s 3k for a bottle of Hennessy or 700 for a pitcher of cocktails, mixers are 80, JD Coke 165, plate of Pork Sisig 215. So I’d go early, get a good table, eat something then invite girls to join.

No charge for entrance or the table so overall it’s cheaper than partying in Makati. You can hand unfinished bottles back to the Guilly’s staff to keep for next time.

Update: A helpful Filipino local has let me know the comments below that Guilly’s has some hookers, but cheaper ones. It’s known as a pickup spot for Pinoy guys, the girls there are either really horny nymphomaniacs that bang for free, or you can score by buying them a bottle / maybe some taxi money.

Black Market

Black market club is on the border of Pasay and Makati just North of the airport. Harvie and I checked it out on a previous night.

Again not many foreigners, no cover charge, cheap drinks (~100 peso beers), and a laid back vibe. It’s more of a hipster / student club, lots of trendy young people.

The difference though is this is definitely not a hooker spot, whereas Guilly’s is a bit of grey area the Black Market girls come off as university girls, daughters of rich parents, but not that cashed up themselves to go to places like Valkyrie. Or they just feel more comfortable in Black Market.

As a reader pointed out below it may not be the best spot for over 35s.

Black Market several rooms, an EDM room, reggae upstairs, and then hiphop downstairs in a small bar style room called Finders Keepers.

Finders Keepers

It gets quite busy in that room and people are so packed together it’s easy to get eye contact and start talking to girls. Then if you get a table in the EDM room you can invite them over.

As far as I could tell no girls here were hookers and again it makes no sense for them to go so far out of the centre of town to a place full of locals.

It stays open until 3-4am ish and there’s a small afterhours spot called 2020 (written in roman numerals XXXX) just down the road from it.

One strategy might be to get talking to girls who want to keep partying and head there.

Most taxis don’t even know where Black Market is, ask for Chino Roces Avenue. If you stay at The Beacon condo you can walk there.

Pulling Girls in SE Asia Nightclubs?

It’s true that a lot of Asian girls are into foreigners and like casual hookups – you can expect to get laid more than back home – but be realistic at discos.

Not many ‘good girls’ in SE Asia go clubbing, unless it’s someone’s birthday or a special occasion, and if they do they’ll rarely go home with a guy that night, instead just swap numbers.

Then the % of girls that enjoy casual sex and actively go to clubs to meet guys – instead of just banging the guys that hit on them all the time, out and about or on dating sites – is quite small, although they do exist.

Often when you read on forums ‘yeah I pull girls every day here I don’t see the point in paying for sex’ it’s a grey area girl, or a less hardcore freelancer that hopes the guy will give her a bit of cash in the morning.

Black Market reggae room

Take for example PUA forum RooshV where you get banned if you mention P4P / hookers too much, happened to Harvie. Yet the locations they write ‘datasheets’ for where they are getting laid constantly – apparently through sheer charisma and pickup skills – have a high concentration of prostitutes.

This is an example where a RooshVer goes to what he doesn’t realise is a hooker club in Laos. He talks about approaching ‘sets’ of girls, and luckily the guys were ‘betas’ so he pulled a girl from away from them.

“Pretty much a cockfest, seen like 2 sets. We spotted three Lao girls with like 5 foreign guys, some of them looked good, classy and all that but we gave it a try and one of us sneaked in and started to chat with one of the chicks. It did not take long for me to realise that those guys are still betas so moments after one of us was in we were all talking with those girls. Mine started to grind on my dick and all so I thought that she will be easy.”

Those guys were probably just long term expats having a beer that knew the girls personally, and knew they were hookers. There aren’t many options to go out late in Vientiane and everyone knows everyone.

“Mine started to say some shit that I will pay her $100 after the night, it was mostly like cocky funny even from her side so I played along but did not take it seriously. We took a tuk tuk and went to the hostel. It was easy apart from the fact that she wanted me to go with her to bathroom and washed my dick and shit.

So I fucked her, nothing special. Wanted to send her home but she started to say that she will take her girlfriend with her so I did not want to ruin something for my mate and let her sleep there. In the morning she started to talk about the $100 I basically laughed a bit and told her to go away. She left angry. End of story.”

Black Market

Asian girls will be shy to firmly ask for money, so as to avoid a confrontation. It’s a culture where men hit girls a lot. Some won’t dare say anything at all, and if you don’t pay will just not answer your messages or make eye contact if they see you again in a club.

She washes his dick but he still doesn’t realise it’s a hooker. Tries to send her away, she makes excuses not to leave (because she hasn’t been paid yet). Spends the night. Slowly tries to bring up the topic of money in the morning but he kicks her out.

Some guys do things like this all across SE Asia and then post about how they pulled 7 girls in 7 nights on their holiday and they ‘never pay for sex’.

That guy at least seems brand new to the country and isn’t bragging, so it’s forgivable. I’ve made similar mistakes when I first moved to Asia.

Now I don’t expect too many one night stands at SE Asia discos in touristy areas, I treat them as a place to get a bunch of phone numbers. There are hundreds of girls all under one roof. Better to get 20 leads for dates then go get a massage.

Also the same girls go to the same clubs and if they see you going home with a girl they’ll remember that.

Anyway, I saw very few foreign guys or obvious hookers at both Black Market and Guilly’s Island. So if there’s anywhere you’re going to pull girls, I’d go for those.

Finders Keepers bar

It’s also a fun, unpretentious, casual vibe at both places so those are my picks for the best clubs in Manila.

Plus the smaller bars and clubs all along Timog Ave and Tomas Morato Ave, and Finders Keepers attached to Black Market.

How Hooker Discos Work

The guy in that forum story was taken to the club at the proposal of a tuktuk (it’s @Home club in Vientiane). In general taxi and tuktuks will always propose places that give them a commission for taking you there. That’s either a brothel / karaoke, or a hooker club.

The hooker clubs in BKK all pay drivers 100 – 200 pesos per head for every passenger they take there – Climax, Insanity, Mixx, Spicy all do this, as well as various brothels like Honey or ones with no name. They wait outside and get their money when you pay the cover.

ZZYZX Manila, mostly hookers

The clubs can afford to pay commissions because they charge high cover, and then overcharge on bottles too, knowing foreign guys will pay whatever to go to a club full of girls (who are mostly hookers).

These clubs actually don’t even let Thai men in. They’re essentially simulated nightclub experiences for foreigners that are actually brothels. The clubs win, the hookers win, the guys lose.

Unless they’re looking for a hooker but then disco freelancers sometimes overcharge because they’re in a confined space with tons of guys giving her attention.

Philippines isn’t quite on the same scale as Thailand but still every cabbie is trying to take you to a ‘casa’ brothel or KTV, where he waits outside to collect his commission if you get a girl.

If you’re not into P4P and looking to pull, go to more local spots, where the cover / drinks prices are more in line with what locals are willing to pay.

If anyone else has tips for the best Manila nightclubs lmk in the comments.

22 Responses

  1. Jasper Laguitao says:

    May I correct you in some details you posted. Guillys is a 100% pickup place for local guys who want to fuck. My friends and I usually go there to unwind and 99.9% we would go out with girls (both hookers or nymphos)

    As a local , we see guilly as a place to get either free or cheap fuck . Lots of horny girls there. It’s true , pinays are shy . But give them a bottle and show them you have cash . They’ll be all over your dick in seconds . Great article nonetheless . I suggest you go to FRENZY club next time

    • jspill says:

      Thanks! Damn just goes to show you never can tell unless you’re a local.

      At least there are some nymphos that’s good to hear.

    • Flosser69 says:

      So true.
      I love it as I love a good bottle and have plenty of cash.
      Current one is all I could possibly handle.
      Loving life after 15 years of white girl misery.

    • Jonathan says:

      Just stumbled onto this site and using it while currently in Manila.
      Jasper you sound like a cool ass dude, we should hangout at Guilly’s and you can teach me your local wisdoms!! haha

  2. southernallstars says:

    good realistic write-up, some people in the forums (especially pua places) pretend the whole island is nothing but a huge fuck party, but actually Pinays don’t that easily hook up. Their degree of shyness is somewhere between Western girls and other Asian girls and they speak English so if your day game is good you should have fairly good chances, they do easily small talk and obviously your value as a white guy is quite high.

    It’s quite difficult finding good clubs in Manila, they are there but many stay empty and the crowd keeps moving. I guess the high entrance fees act as a deterrent.

    • kick2dante says:

      ya i dont have much experience at nightclubs but for manila i agree guilly’s in quezon does look good from jspills pics

      and i know plenty of guys like valkyrie

  3. Jay says:

    Jspill, would you have been comfortable going to either place, mainly Guillys solo? Great article.

    • jspill says:

      Yes, I didn’t feel unsafe inside the club, I’d say just don’t walk down dark alleyways outside and it should be fine.

  4. Reader says:

    Blackmarket girls either are youngsters from rich families or are looking for guys like that.

    If you’re under 35 and look hipster or wigger you got prime girls that may be down for it.

    https://www.facebook.com/blackmarketmnl/videos/746772332168151/

    • jspill says:

      Good point it might not be the best manila club for 35+. I felt a bit old there at 30.

      Go for those nymphos and bottle sluts at Guilly’s instead as Jasper put it ^^

      Then again, you’re as young as the girl you feel… some might be university girls looking for a sugar daddy if you play your cards right.

  5. RumandCokeMan says:

    Are P4P girls as hot as those girls at the black market pretty rare to find?

  6. BangkokBaller23 says:

    Yeah, good points JSpill!
    For SEA Newbs the main confusion comes from having to deal with “grey area” P4P girls. In the States or Europe, it’s white (normal chics) & black (straight up P4P). In SEA, you have to insert that “Grey Area” for all the part-time freelancer, spoiled college girls, etc. Its a hard adjustment to make for SOME foreigners.

    In the end, BE (as the girl perceives it):
    – A freaking naive tourist
    – Out just to have fun
    – Playful
    – Interesting (photography, art, golf, something!)
    – and make it CLEAR u don’t do P4P under ANY circumstances. I simply say it’s “against my religion”.
    Then, let the SEA Girl Goodness rain down!?!?😎

  7. RumandCokeMan says:

    I definitely like the looks of those girls in his main article picture from Black Market- young, sexy, clean, good facial symmetry, etc and when you add an all natural porn star sized rack to that- That combo is a 10. Girls like that are hot from any race IMO. A decent amount of those SEA girls pics of some of the various dating sites like Thai Friendly, and Filipino Cupid defintiely aren’t as good looking as those girls he photographed at Black Market.

    • jspill says:

      Yeah they were stunners, just wish they’d stand still so the pics were a bit less blurry 😀

      I asked for ones number but she said she had a boyfriend already

  8. Alex says:

    Quick report:
    I went to Black Market/Finders Keepers this weekend for the first time specifically thanks to your tip here. Pulled a college girl, went to my apartment and banged her. Bought her two drinks, but otherwise didn’t pay her anything. Nothing great, but a score is a score.

    I’m 38. I agree that it’s a young scene and I was the old man, but it wasn’t a problem. You have to dress the part, shitty party clothes, not anything nice and definitely no shirt and tie obviously, but my age made no difference. Maybe older guys wouldn’t want to put up with the scene, though. It’s a party place, so I’d think your pull rate will depend a lot more on being able to deal with the high energy and loud music, and being able to keep a good vibe going.

    Although to be fair, though, I agree that at some point, age is a factor. At 38 I could still get by; but even dressed right I’d think a man who’s 50+ would seem ridiculous.

    I’d thought I was headed to some out of the way club without foreigners, but damn was I stupid about that lol. Way more white guys there on the prowl than I had expected. Mostly American, from those I spoke to. Tiny as a percent of all the people inside of course, but there were a decent number of them coming and going. Maybe at least 10-20 white guys hanging around at any one time. The ones I talked to were circling between Black Market and 2020 (XX XX), a bar-club just on the other side of the building complex which was 90% white foreigners this weekend (including a surprisingly high number of white girls, both backpackers and Europeans living here it seemed).

    The white guys I talked to at Black Market/FindersKeepers were ending up empty-handed with the Pinays, but they said (and I believe them) that it was more a motivation thing. Girls weren’t much different in hotness than at any p4p bar, a little worse on average actually, so it was tough for them to energize to spend the necessary hours gaming and getting shot down over and over in order to maybe find one girl who would bang when they knew they could just head to P. Burgos for a certain thing.

    Gotta say I agree. I was pretty lucky in finding a sweet slutty girl and more importantly getting all the logistics right to get her out of there away from her friends. Anyone else with more experience at this club than my one night should chime in, but from what I saw I’d imagine most nights would be a bust and it’s not worth the hassle for that combination of low probability of success, high logistical hurdles, and low average quality of girls.

    Cover charge was 350 pesos.

    Btw, your IP blocking for your site seems unncessarily strict. Maybe loosen up to make it easier to access via VPNs, Tor, etc?

    • jspill says:

      Thanks for the trip report, good stuff. Agree they are hotter at Kojax / XOXO on P Burgos.

      Hmm I’m not doing any IP blocking

      • Alex says:

        I’ve tried to respond several times in the last week. I’m not a hit-and-run commenter, lol. I had a huge response to your response on the thread about malls/quality of girls, with links to real photos, but the submission was rejected and my report was lost.

        It’s definitely IP blocking. Your site constantly shows this text-only page when I try to load a page:
        “Access denied. Your IP address is blacklisted. If you feel this is in error please contact your hosting provider’s abuse department.”

        I reload 10-20 times, keep getting that message, then eventually it finally lets me get to the page.

        The problem seems to be the same one affecting the ability to leave a comment. When my comments are rejected, the message is: “Not Acceptable! An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security.”

        This message I wrote and saved on my computer. So I’ve just been trying to submit it a few times every day. When you finally see it, that means that it got through 😉

        Not going to claim that my reports and comments are so wonderful that it’s worth changing your site security lol, but unless you’re under heavy attacks, maybe you could loosen up the restrictions a bit?

        • jspill says:

          Cool well this comment worked. Try again with the girly photos 🙂 Would like to see those.

          I haven’t set up any security restrictions / IP blocking, no idea why that’s happening. Must be a hostgator thing, they suck. Nothing I can do

  9. fatclown says:

    So what are the best night clubs in Manila if I AM looking for hookers?

    I don’t mind paying, I just want to have fun and something that is guaranteed. Which night clubs or freelance bars should I go to?

    Thanks.

    • jspill says:

      Royal club in Makati, just over the road from Gramercy condo where I recommend staying via Airbnb

      And LA Cafe freelancer bar in Ermita

      ZZYZX club in Malate too but some of those only want Korean/Jap guys, or a younger western guy, it’s a young crowd. I took an 18 year old freelancer from there. The Royal girls are a bit more of the ‘bang any guy’ type, you get some Arab guys there, they’d struggle at ZZYZX

      LA Cafe is walking distance from ZZYZX though if you don’t find one. LA Cafe girls are the oldest and cheapest, open 24 hours

      • jan says:

        LA cafee is for newbees who accept mataba fat old pinay against idiot high prices
        Including the idot high drink prices…
        cause it is mentioned in Lonely planet!!!

        I think if you want to pay a few box and want to have a nice girl just walk from LA cafee to G point (or Robinsons) and if you dont see a lonely girl standing asside the street smiling to you the best bet is to take one of the manny pimps who whisper “need a girl” as tourguide and give them 100p AFTER you did find a nice girl…

        In discoos you can not see can not hear…so you waste ur money and time on Baklas..

        But yeah if you are 30 and handsome…but then i did not pay annything hihi

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