Parksey wrote:Tomous wrote:Parksey wrote:I think about six days (coming from Japan so it's a four hour flight and on JetStar so not massively expensive).
I wasn't planing on spending much time in Manila, probably just one or two nights. Then i was planning on flying in Cebu Air to either Cebu, Boracay, Palawan, Bohol or one of the other islands.
Ideally we'd be in a nice, fairly high-end hotel/resort and have the relaxing beach aspect, but also do stuff like diving, kayaking etc as well.
Borocay will be your best bet for something along those lines I imagine. Bohol is great but will take some travelling to-you'd likely need to fly to Cebu then get a boat. We went to El Nido on Palawan which has some amazing kayaking spots in lagoons as well plus diving options-Coron isn't too far either where you can dive a WW2 plane wreck. I don't think it would quite have the level of resorts Borocay would have though.
I've heard that Boracay is basically just a party island for Westerners/tourists though? Someone even likened it to a generic Spanish holiday resort where you go to get plastered. And it's only 7km long so there's no escaping the hordes of tourists?
What we are looking for is basically a nice hotel/resort, preferably on or near a nice beach (some even have private ones) but also with stuff to do nearby. Stuff like snorkelling, diving, kayaking, cottaging, hiking, whale/dolphin watching etc etc...
i was under the impression it does have that super busy area like you describe but also hotel resorts with their closed off areas of the beach? I could be wrong though.
Palawan could be a good bet although we were mainly in El Nido which can be very touristy too. The lagoons for kayaking are amazing though. And it has good snorkelling etc. The island is full of quieter beaches if you go off the beaten track though.
We also stayed in Moalboal which is a few hours on the bus from Cebu and was incredible. The beach there isn't huge or sandy but there's brilliant snorkelling-you see turtles swimming about and a sardine run which is literally thousands of sardines just hanging round together and incredible. We also did canyoning in Moalboal, which I can't recommend enough. Was so much fun-I made a video of our GoPro footage, let me know if you're interested in.
Bohol has your more traditional beach, Alona I think it's called plus it might have some hiking options round the Chocolate Hills (although we just visited the viewing spots).
A Cebu > Bohol > Moalboal triangle could work if you had time.
You can do whale shark snorkelling from Cebu in Oslob but it's ethically dodgy because they field the whale sharks (which messes with their behaviour) and overpopulate the sea with tourists. We opted to do it Donsol instead where they don't interfere with the whale sharks at all but that would be another internal flight for you to get to.
I can't advise on where the best place for cottaging is but Philippines is quite accepting of homosexuality for an Asian country so fill your boots.