Sand dunes, Baroque churches, and Ilocos Norte grit
Capital of Ilocos Norte on Luzon's northwestern tip, Laoag pairs La Paz Sand Dunes — 4×4 sandboarding on Sahara-scale dunes 7km from the city centre — with a heritage district of Spanish Baroque churches, including the UNESCO World Heritage Paoay Church and its distinctive earthquake-resistant buttresses.
The Ilocos region was one of the most intensively Christianised areas of the Philippines during Spanish colonisation, producing a distinctive regional Baroque church style built from heavy brick and coral stone because timber was scarce and Manila galleon trade brought skilled Chinese masons who incorporated Javanese and Chinese decorative motifs into what the Spanish intended as purely European Gothic structures. Paoay Church (1710), with its dramatic tapering side buttresses unlike any in Latin America or Spain, is considered the finest example. Laoag's economy was reshaped by the Spanish t…