Hi John,
I also wrote a few polite but slightly sarcastic emails to the British Embassy in Manila when we were waiting for my wife's visa to come through and at the time the best address to use i found was ManilaVisaEnquiries.manila@fco.gov.uk.
As Joe said, you quite often get an automated "out of office" reply first, followed by a real reply with a real person's email address, but if you then reply to that email, you usually get the automated reply again followed by a reply from a different person. I definitately think it's worth doing though as it seems to make things happen.
Iain.
