Lately, there was a video being shared around comparing two emgerging Southeast Asian cities — Palembang of Indonesia, and Iloilo of the Philippines.

Both cities are found on the southern (precisely at the middle) part of two archipelagic countries.

Palembang is a progressive capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sumatra. Iloilo City on the other hand is an emerging metro in the Visayas region of the Philippines.

Palembang, however, is a significantly larger city. Well, that is almost always the case when you compare other cities to Iloilo — the star city of Panay island is small but packs a punch.

Both are river cities and have prominent highway bridges especially Palembang. Its most iconic landmark is the Ampera Bridge and it has a great look and often decorated with pretty lights at night.

Iloilo City has a number of highway bridges and perhaps the most popular is the Diversion Bridge. However beauty of Iloilo as a river city is more on the esplanade and not the bridges. Iloilo City has a very clean river and beautifully developed esplanade.

Based on the video, Palembang is the busier and more crowded city. Structures are much closer to each other. The city seems to be much denser than that of Iloilo.

Palembang has a progressive transportation system and adapts a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system. It is fairly new as it only began to operate last two years.

Iloilo City on the other hand seems to be much more spacious which is very interesting because it is the significantly smaller city. The buildings are more spaced in between each other making the city much more relaxed and less dense. It has wide roads and highways. The traffic seems to be manageable and moderate.

If you compare the general architecture, Iloilo seems to be more on the modern side and certainly newer. Although most of the videos of Iloilo shown are from uptown, the major urban developments — such as Megaworld’s Iloilo Business Park, Diversion area, and SM developments.

Palembang may not have plenty of modern-themed buildings but they have religiously and culturally based structures which are very fascinating.

The point here: it is not about which city is better but knowing that there are emerging cities in ASEAN countries apart from their capital cities, and they can be very different but still equally admirable.