Exotic sea shells are a popular, easily portable, and bargain-priced Philippine souvenir.  Shell collectors go crazy there. Gorgeous examples abound. Other hand-crafted goods show great skill, but double-check the basic material. Tax laws often prevent importing the best raw materials to work on.

As far as transportation goes, it's a long trip. There is no great way to do it. We found that changing planes on the West Coast broke up the trip better than changing in Chicago or New York.  A stop in HNL takes (or used to take) hours longer - not good unless you want to break up the trip and spend a day or two there. PAL offers a non-stop MNL-LAX; that is the fastest and might be the best choice, but it costs more - quite a bit more, IIRC.