Boutique islands in 12 days: Coron, Bohol and a good hotel in Manila
Two small resorts, four nights in each, and a design hotel in Manila in the middle rather than a lost transit day. Everything on the water is private, nothing is joined, and the whole trip involves three internal flights and one unpacking per island.
- Duration
- 12 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 5
- Best months
- Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May
- From
- $4,320 per person
A word on what boutique actually means in this country, because the brochures are unhelpful. The best small properties in the Philippines have twelve to thirty rooms, are often on their own bay reached by boat, are frequently built by a Filipino owner rather than a chain, and have food, design and a sense of place that a five-hundred-room resort cannot buy. What they also have, and what nobody writes down, is their own generator, a menu of eight dishes, and internet that works when it works. If you would trade a spa menu for a beach with nobody on it, this trip is built for you. If you want a hotel that behaves like one in Bangkok or Tokyo, we would put you somewhere else and tell you why.
Who it suits: couples and pairs of friends who care where they sleep, are happy on a boat, and would rather have two places properly than five in passing.
Planned by: Mai Est, our Head of Travel Consulting, with our own office in Manila.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive in Manila. Airport transfer to a design hotel in Makati or Bonifacio Global City, both of which now have properties with real Filipino art on the walls rather than hotel art. Nothing scheduled.
Day 2: Manila to Coron. A morning flight to Busuanga, an hour, then a road and boat transfer out to a small island resort in the bay. The transfer is part of the point: you arrive by water and the resort has no road to it. Four nights.
Day 3: Kayangan Lake and Twin Lagoon. A private bangka with crew, out before the day boats. Kayangan is reached by a limestone staircase and is one of the clearest bodies of water in Asia, and at eight in the morning you will have it. Twin Lagoon after it, through the gap at low tide. Back at the resort for a long lunch.
Day 4: The southern islands. Malcapuya, Banana and Bulog, an hour and a half south, which are sand, shallow water and nothing built at all. Lunch cooked on the boat. The alternative, which we offer on the morning depending on wind, is snorkelling the shallow Japanese wrecks off Coron, where the Skeleton wreck sits in five to twenty metres and is genuinely good without a tank.
Day 5: Nothing, or the hot springs. A deliberately empty day. Kayaking off the resort, a reef swim from the beach, or the Maquinit saltwater hot springs at dusk, which sit in mangroves and are best in the last hour of light.
Day 6: Coron to Manila. A late-morning flight south and an afternoon that earns its place: the Ayala Museum, a gallery walk through Poblacion, and dinner at one of the modern Filipino kitchens that have made Manila a genuinely interesting eating city over the last decade. One night, in the same hotel as day one, which means the staff already know you.
Day 7: Manila to Bohol. An hour and twenty minutes to Panglao, then twenty minutes to a boutique hotel on the west coast, positioned for the sunset rather than the sunrise, which is not an accident. Four nights.
Day 8: Inland Bohol, privately. The Chocolate Hills at first light, before the coaches, then the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary at Corella, which is the research sanctuary and the only one we use, and the Loboc river. Private vehicle and guide, so the day runs at your pace and finishes when you want it to.
Day 9: Balicasag and the sandbar. Out before six by private boat. Green turtles on the Balicasag wall in the first hour of light, the Virgin Island sandbar before the day boats, and back for a very late breakfast. Balicasag now caps daily visitor numbers, which is why this needs booking months rather than weeks ahead.
Day 10: Free day, or Anda. The pool, the beach, a spa afternoon, or the two-hour drive east to Anda, which has the coastline Panglao had two decades ago and almost nobody on it. We will have told you which we would do.
Day 11: Bohol to Manila. A flight back to the capital and an afternoon free. This night is not padding: we never put a domestic flight and an international departure on the same day in this country.
Day 12: Departure.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast in the room category we have actually chosen rather than the entry one, all three internal flights, all land and boat transfers including the island resort crossings, three full private boat days with crew and lunch, the guided Bohol day, the Balicasag dawn boat, all park and environmental fees, a day-by-day document with tide notes and boat times, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant in Tel Aviv and our Manila office for the duration.
What we would change, and when
- Want a private island? Amanpulo sits alone on Pamalican with its own airstrip and a direct charter from Manila. Four nights there replaces the Coron leg cleanly. It is a considerably higher bracket than the price above and we will show you the numbers before you decide rather than after.
- Want the famous scenery? Swap Coron for El Nido and a resort inside Bacuit Bay. The limestone is more dramatic and the boat days are longer and busier. Both are defensible and we will ask which you are after.
- Travelling August to October? We keep Coron, which sits on the sheltered western side of the archipelago, and add contingency. Bohol is more exposed in those months and we may move that leg west.
- Twelve days feels short? The three extra nights we would add go to Siquijor, reached by ferry from Bohol rather than by air, which costs you a morning instead of a day.
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