They are not variations on a theme. Palawan, Siargao and Bohol are three different holidays with three different costs in travel days, and choosing between them is the most consequential decision in a Philippines itinerary after the dates. We build a custom Philippines itinerary around this choice more often than around anything else, so here is how we make it.
The short answer: Palawan for the landscape, Bohol for an easy trip or a trip with children, Siargao for surf and a social island, and almost never all three in one fortnight. Palawan wants five nights split between El Nido and Coron and costs about a day and a half of transfers. Bohol wants four nights and connects to Cebu by a ferry of roughly two hours, so it costs the fewest travel days. Siargao wants four to five nights and costs a full transfer day each way, which is why we only add it at eighteen days or more.
Who this is for: first-time visitors with ten to eighteen days, families with young children, divers choosing between wrecks and walls, and anyone who wants to know what the lagoon photographs cost in days.
Updated October 2026 · Osnat Angerman, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand travel consultant, Go East Travel
Which island is best for a first trip to the Philippines?
For a first trip, Palawan, and if the trip is twelve days or more, Palawan plus Bohol. Palawan is why most people come to the Philippines and it earns it. Bohol is the island we recommend most and the one clients are least excited about in advance, a pattern we have learned to argue with. Siargao is the second-visit island: wonderful, also far, and in a two-week trip it replaces a base rather than joining one.
If this is your first time in the country, read our first-time Philippines guide alongside this.
The comparison, in a table
| Island | What it is for | Nights it needs | How you get there | Months to go |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palawan (El Nido and Coron) | Limestone landscape, lagoons, island-hopping, wreck diving in Coron. With children from about seven. | 5, split three in El Nido and two in Coron | Flight from Manila or Cebu to Puerto Princesa, El Nido or Busuanga (Coron), then road or boat; about 1.5 travel days return | December to May; the most typhoon-sheltered of the three |
| Siargao | Surf, lagoons, a food and bar scene, an island with a social life. Not our first choice with young children. | 4 minimum, 5 is better | Flight from Cebu or Manila to Sayak airport, then a drive; a full transfer day each way | Surf August to November; calmest sea March to June |
| Bohol (Panglao) | Calm shallow beaches, the Chocolate Hills day, tarsiers, diving at Balicasag and Anda. Yes with children of any age. | 4 | Flight to Bohol-Panglao airport, or a ferry of about two hours from Cebu; about 1 travel day return, or half a day from Cebu | December to May; workable most of the year |
How many days do you need in Palawan?
Five nights, three in El Nido and two in Coron, with the boat between them. Fewer than four and you will either skip Coron or spend the whole stay in transit; more than six and El Nido’s limited town starts to show.
El Nido sits at the top of a peninsula on Bacuit Bay, where limestone towers rise straight out of the water and the island-hopping runs through lagoons that you enter through gaps in the rock. There is nothing else quite like it in Southeast Asia, and it is genuinely the finest day-boating in the country.
Two honest notes. El Nido town is busy, traffic-heavy and has a small beach, so where you stay matters enormously: a resort on a beach outside town changes the trip. And the snorkelling in Bacuit Bay is ordinary by Philippine standards. People who arrive expecting a reef they will remember for life leave slightly disappointed, and they should have been told that the scenery is the point.
Coron, three and a half to four hours north by fast craft or a short flight, is the quieter half. The Japanese fleet sunk in 1944 lies on the seabed and it is superb wreck diving on a clear day. Kayangan and Barracuda lakes, reached over a steep limestone staircase, are among the finest swims we know. The town is unremarkable and nobody minds.
Getting there. Puerto Princesa is the cheap airport and then five to six hours by road to El Nido; Lio airport at El Nido saves the drive and costs more; Busuanga serves Coron. We fly into one end and out of the other so the boat between them is a leg of the journey, not a detour. Why a missed connection here costs a whole day is in the internal flight problem nobody warns you about.
Who it suits: first-time visitors, anyone who wants the landscape they have seen in photographs, divers who want wrecks, couples. It is the most typhoon-sheltered part of the country, which makes it the answer for a wet-season trip.
Who it does not: anyone whose priority is reef life rather than scenery, and families with children under about seven, for whom the boat days are long.
Is Siargao only for surfers?
No, and it has not been for about a decade. Most of the people in General Luna in the evening have not touched a board, and the island works perfectly well as a place to swim in lagoons, eat well and do very little. What it does not do is connect to anything else, and that is the real question, not the surf.
The surf. Cloud 9 is a serious reef break with a shallow bottom, and it is not a learners’ wave. The swell season runs roughly August to November, which sits inside the typhoon window. Beginner spots are elsewhere on the island and work in the same months.
Everything else. Sugba Lagoon, a jade-green inland lagoon with a diving platform. The Sohoton caves. Island-hopping to Naked, Daku and Guyam. Rock pools, a coastal road through palm forest, and General Luna, which is where the eating and the evenings happen.
The cost. A full transfer day each way. Siargao is a flight from Cebu or Manila to Sayak airport with a further drive of under an hour to General Luna, and it does not connect to anything else. In a fourteen-day trip it replaces a base rather than joining them, which is why we would take it at eighteen days rather than fourteen. Palawan and Siargao, 14 days is the version that does it in a fortnight and shows honestly what it costs.
Who it suits: surfers, obviously. Independent travellers in their twenties and thirties. Anyone who wants an island with a social life rather than a resort. Second-time visitors.
Who it does not: families with young children, anyone with under twelve days, and anyone who wants the limestone landscape, which is not here.
Is Bohol good with children?
Yes, and of the three it is the only one we recommend without hesitation for families with children under seven. The beaches on Panglao are calm and shallow, the inland day is a road trip with short stops rather than a long boat, the airport is on the island, and the alternative arrival is a ferry rather than a dawn flight. The whole family case is in the Philippines with children.
Panglao, joined to Bohol by a bridge, has calm shallow beaches, a good spread of accommodation from guesthouses to serious resorts, and Bohol’s own airport. Alona Beach is busy; the beaches either side are not.
The inland day is genuinely good and it is the thing people remember. The Chocolate Hills, which are 1,200 or so grass-covered limestone mounds that turn brown in the dry season. Tarsiers at the Corella sanctuary, which is a real conservation project rather than a roadside operation where animals are handled for photographs, and we only use Corella. The Loboc river, and the man-made mahogany forest, an ecological curiosity worth the fifteen minutes.
Diving. Balicasag’s wall is still good, the shallows are tired and daily numbers are capped. Anda on the east coast is quieter and better. Cabilao is excellent.
The efficiency argument. Bohol connects to Cebu by an OceanJet fast ferry of about two hours between Cebu City and Tagbilaran (route listed on OceanJet’s site, checked October 2026; sailing times change by day, so we confirm the departure when we book). That is the only pairing of its kind in the country and it saves you an entire airport day. Bohol-Panglao International Airport, on Panglao itself, takes the flights from Manila and Cebu; its operation passed to a private concession in December 2024 (CAAP, checked October 2026).
Who it suits: families, first-time visitors, anyone with less than twelve days, divers, anyone who wants to combine beach and land without flying.
Who it does not: anyone who came for the dramatic landscape in the photographs. Bohol is pleasant rather than spectacular, and it is honest to say so.
Can you combine two of them in two weeks?
Yes, and the pairing that works is Palawan plus Bohol, with Cebu as the hinge. Fourteen days holds Manila on arrival, five nights in Palawan, a flight to Cebu, the ferry to Bohol for four nights, and a buffer night in Cebu before the flight home. That is the route we send most first-time clients on, written in full in our two-week route through the Philippines and day by day as classic Philippines in 14 days.
Palawan plus Siargao in fourteen days is possible, but there is no sea link between them, so every leg is a flight through Manila or Cebu and it costs three transfer days. Bohol plus Siargao works better than people expect, because the ferry from Bohol lands you in Cebu and Cebu to Siargao is a short flight.
All three in two weeks is the request we decline most politely: three travel days plus a shortened stay everywhere, and what people remember afterwards is the airports. At eighteen days it becomes a good trip, and so does adding north Luzon instead, where Batad and the Cordillera rice terraces are a different country from the islands. What we would leave out is in what we would skip in the Philippines.
When should you go to each island?
December to May for Palawan and Bohol, August to November for Siargao surf, and Palawan if you have to travel in the wet season. PAGASA, the Philippine weather bureau, defines the dry season as December to May and the rainy season as June to November (PAGASA, checked October 2026), and counts about twenty tropical cyclones a year in its area of responsibility, with the peak from July to October (PAGASA, checked October 2026).
Palawan sits in the west, outside the main typhoon tracks, so it is the safest choice from June to November; it still rains, often hard in the afternoon, but boat days are rarely cancelled for days on end. Siargao is on the Pacific coast and takes the weather first; the surf is good precisely because the swell arrives with the same systems that bring the typhoons, so an August to November trip there needs slack built in, while March to June is calm and better for swimming. Bohol is in the central Visayas and is workable most of the year; the Chocolate Hills are brown in the dry season and green in the wet.
The calendar, with the holidays and school breaks that move prices, is in the Philippines month by month.
What about the paperwork?
Less than people fear. Every traveller registers on the government’s eTravel platform before arrival, and the platform states that registration costs nothing (etravel.gov.ph, checked October 2026). The Bureau of Immigration admits tourists who need no visa for an initial thirty days, and anyone staying beyond fifty-nine days must extend with the bureau (Bureau of Immigration, checked October 2026). Israeli passport holders are admitted without a visa for up to 59 days (Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, checked by our team in October 2026); rules change, so we re-check them before every departure. You will be asked for an onward ticket at check-in.
What we would build
Under twelve days: Bohol and Cebu, or Palawan alone. Twelve to fourteen: Manila, Palawan, then Bohol and Cebu. Eighteen or more: add Siargao, or north Luzon. For a family with children under seven, Bohol and Cebu now and Palawan when the children are older. For a second visit: Siargao and the quieter middle, which is Siquijor, Camiguin, Apo Island and Dauin, where people who keep coming back actually go. Our representatives in the Philippines check the boats, the resorts and the roads before every season, which is how we know when a Bohol dive site has been capped.
Plan this trip with us
Tell us your dates, who is travelling and which of these islands you cannot leave out, and we build the trip as a day-by-day plan with recommended hotels by level and every transfer set out step by step. You can start your $39 trip plan now and have the first draft within a few working days.
Keep reading
- The Philippines for first-time visitors
- Our two-week route through the Philippines
- The internal flight problem nobody warns you about
- The Philippines month by month
