Tips for Island Hopping in the Philippines

By Courtney Blincow, Singapore Management University, Singapore

Having completed my first semester at Singapore Management University, my friends and I decided to book a 10 day trip island hopping around the Philippines. Surely when studying on an exchange year it is only right that we reward our hard work with a trip to a surrounding country, right? Well this is exactly what we did and 3 days after my final exam I was on a flight out of Changi Airport to Cebu City.

The trip took some serious organising because we had to carefully plan which islands we wanted to visit and in what order based on travel modes. My top tip if you are planning on travelling to the Philippines is to use Tik Tok and ask for recommendations of any people who you know have visited the country previously! This was the best thing we did as we were able to get first hand experiences about the dos and don’ts.

The islands we chose to visit were Siquijor, Cebu City, El Nido and Coron. The trip as a whole was phenomenal and we got to do some once in a lifetime experiences. My highlight was the day tour we did to dive with Whale Sharks in the morning in Oslob and complete a canyoneering trail in the afternoon in Moalboal. This day was my favourite by far. The whale diving was amazing and I was really shocked by how big the whales were. Our driver did refer to them as ‘the giants’ so I should have known to expect them to be big. We dived with them for 30 minutes and we were able to hire a Go Pro to capture the moment. It was super fun and quite eye-opening to see such an animal. Next up was the canyoneering which is one of the best things I have ever done. The guides were amazing; chatting to us and helping us with all the jumps. The scenery was breathtaking, it felt like something out of Avatar. This is a must do in the Philippines!

Other activities we did included snorkeling, lagoon tours, kayaking and zip lining. I would definitely recommend booking day tours to do these activities because they are great ways to see a lot in one day and it also provides the opportunity to make friends with those who are on the tours also. More importantly you get to see everything the Philippines has to offer and how beautiful it is!

Another recommendation of mine is to try the local food. Funnily enough, there are a lot of Italian restaurants in the Philippines which we found quite random. Try and branch out from this and try some local dishes. We were unsure at first as we hadn’t heard great things about the food but we ventured out and were very pleasantly surprised. We tried pork lechon which is a very popular dish. It was crispy and tasty which made for a brilliant meal.

Cash is key over there so make sure to take a sufficient amount with you, especially if you will be using Tuk Tuk services. For sim cards, I would recommend buying one at the airport when you land which is what we did and it was around £7 for 20GB of data. My final tip is to not push yourself into staying in a hostel to ‘save money’. We actually found that we could stay in really nice hotels and resorts for the same price, so make sure to shop around before booking anything.

Overall, this was one of the best trips I have ever been on and I would recommend it to anyone I speak to. The country is beautiful, the wildlife is amazing and the people are extremely friendly. It is the perfect destination for a holiday after a tough semester and final exams.