A quiet sandy beach with outrigger boats and palm trees at sunrise, Santander, Cebu.

Philippines

Cebu & Bohol

Two islands two hours apart by ferry, one of them with an international airport — the part of the Philippines that asks least of your schedule.

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Cebu & Bohol

The pair that asks least of you

Most Philippine itineraries are built around domestic flights, which is what makes them fragile. This one is not. Cebu has the country’s second international airport, Bohol is two hours away on a fast ferry that runs many times a day, and everything worth doing on either island is reached by road or by a boat from the beach. For a traveller with five nights rather than a fortnight, or for anyone adding the Philippines to the end of a mainland trip, it is the pairing that survives contact with a real schedule.

It is not the scenery of Palawan and we would not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is variety inside a small radius: a reef you can swim to, a river through the jungle, a strange geological landscape in the middle of Bohol, and waterfalls in limestone canyons an hour off the Cebu coast road.

Rows of rounded grass-covered mounds, the Chocolate Hills, on Bohol island, Philippines

Bohol · Moalboal, Cebu

Cebu

Cebu is a base rather than a city

Cebu City itself is industrial, congested and of limited interest beyond an hour of Spanish-era sites, and almost nobody stays there by choice. Mactan, the island the airport sits on, is a strip of resorts convenient for a first or last night and not much else. The island earns its place from what is three hours down the west coast road.

Moalboal, for the sardine shoal hanging over the drop-off a hundred metres from the beach. You can snorkel it, which very few places of that size allow.
Pescador Island, twenty minutes offshore, for the wall dive and the turtles.
Kawasan Falls at Badian, for canyoneering down a limestone gorge. Go at opening or not at all; by midday it is a queue in wetsuits.
Malapascua, off the northern tip, where thresher sharks come to a cleaning station at dawn most days of the year. Four to five hours from the city plus a boat, so it is a stay rather than a day trip.

Turquoise water below a waterfall in a limestone canyon near Badian on Cebu island, Philippines — Badian, Cebu

Bohol

Bohol in a day and a half

Bohol is flatter, greener and slower. The Chocolate Hills are more than a thousand grass-covered mounds standing in the middle of the island, brown in the dry months and the reason for the name; the viewpoint at Carmen takes an hour out of a day and is worth it for how genuinely odd the landscape is. On the way, the Loboc river runs through the forest, and at Corella there is a tarsier sanctuary that keeps real conservation standards — a small, nocturnal primate is either left alone or it is not, and the roadside cages are not the same thing. Then Panglao, joined to the main island by a bridge: a proper beach, a dive fleet, and Balicasag offshore for turtles and a wall, with daily visitor numbers now capped.

Panglao

One thing we leave out

The whale sharks at Oslob

Oslob, on the southeast coast of Cebu, is where whale sharks are fed from boats each morning so that visitors can get into the water with them. It is the most heavily promoted activity on the island and we do not book it. The animals are provisioned, which changes their movement and their feeding, they are handled and crowded, and hull strikes are documented. It is not a wildlife encounter; it is a queue at a feeding station. Unfed encounters do exist in the Philippines, seasonally and on other islands, and they need their own leg and their own luck. If seeing a whale shark matters to you, tell us early and we will plan the trip around where that is genuinely possible rather than where it is convenient.

Planning

Four or five nights, and the ferry between

Four nightsTwo on Cebu for Moalboal, two on Panglao for Bohol. One ferry, no flights, nothing tight.

Five nightsThe same with a third night on Cebu, which buys the canyoneering morning or a second day of diving.

Cebu City to TagbilaranAbout 2 hours by fast ferry, several departures a day. Book the seat, not just the crossing.

MonthsDecember to May is dry; March to May is hottest and clearest. June to November is typhoon season and the Visayas sit closer to the storm track than Palawan does.

Onward

Why this pair joins a mainland route so easily

Because Cebu is an international airport in its own right, and you do not have to transit Manila to use it. Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo all connect directly, and from mainland Southeast Asia the route is usually one stop through Singapore or Manila. That single fact is why this is the Philippine leg we suggest for a trip that already has a fortnight on the mainland and one week left: you land at Cebu, take a ferry, and never board a domestic flight at all. Entry is the simplest of the six countries — thirty days visa-free for around 190 nationalities, compulsory free eTravel registration within 72 hours of arrival, an onward ticket as a formal condition, and six months of passport validity counted from your departure date rather than your arrival.

Five nights, one ferry.

Plan My Trip

Tell us your dates

We will tell you whether the months suit the Visayas or Palawan, and how the leg joins your mainland route.

Plan My Trip

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Cebu and Bohol, or Palawan?

Cebu and Bohol if you have five nights, want reef and variety, and would rather not depend on a domestic flight. Palawan if you have a week or more and came for the limestone seascape, which is the better scenery of the two by a distance.

Why do you not include the Oslob whale sharks?

Because the animals are fed from boats to keep them in one place, and that changes their behaviour, crowds them and gets them struck by hulls. We will plan an unfed encounter elsewhere in the country if it matters to you, but we will not sell the feeding station.

Can I do this without any internal flights?

Yes, and it is the main argument for this pair. Fly into Cebu from Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo, take the fast ferry to Bohol and back, and fly out of Cebu. Nothing in the plan depends on a domestic departure that a storm can cancel.

Journey ideas