100 days in Southeast Asia | Part 4 | Philippines: Moalboal

After getting off the bus, you need to take a tuk tuk which should cost half of the price they will tell you basically. I don’t remember exactly but I believe we paid pp$70for both of us to take us to Panagsama Beach. They usually charge pp$100+. As always, ask around and try to negotiate.

The beach in Panagsama is not an actual sandy beach, it’s more rocks and corals, but I enjoyed much more than the White beach as I was there to snorkel and potentially dive. And what a cool little town! Full of snorkeling, diving, turtles and sardines!

This is one of those places where you can see the famous ‘Sardine Run’ I think it is called. Thousands and thousands of sardines, every single day and all you have to do is to ask a local where to see them, and you walk to the beach and they are super close to the shore. It’s unbelievable.

You don’t need to pay anything if you have your own snorkel/mask or just rent one if you don’t. So just walk to the water and snorkel around! 

Sometimes you can even see them from outside in a distance! Looks like the sea is boiling haha 

Definitely a great free attraction!

At night time on weekends it gets quite busy as the locals from Cebu come down to Moalboal to party. They have a couple of bars with live music and they were quite packed when we were there.

And then they have the after party which I was way too wasted to go after the first bar, but anyway, can’t tell you if it’s any good, but people talk about it a lot around town.

We stayed at Ivonne’s Apartelle which is quite decent, clean, comfortable, spacious room, with wifi and hot water, you can choose fan only or with aircon for a bit extra. Quieter location but also only a couple of minutes walk down from where all the party and most restaurants are and cheaper than all the other place we found. Really good value for the quality you get. We paid about $15AUD at the time and I think $5 more for an aircon room.

They also book trips to Kawasan Falls which is a couple of hours away from Moalboal by bus/van, I didn’t book with them but the price seemed fair, at least better than what we paid buying it on spot with some friends. Oh well.

We spent a total of 4 nights in Moalboal and went snorkeling pretty much everyday, tuktuk to white beach and spent a few hours there having a couple of Red Horses which is strong local beer… Like really strong haha but not bad at all.

We also went canyoneering at Kawasan Falls on a day trip, a must do definitely if you like water and adventure, and of course if you know how to swim. I would say must enjoy and be a bit fit to hike and climb too.

We tried to go to pescador island but our boat broke down halfway there and we ended up being rescued by another boat going back from pescador haha

So we didn’t make it there but heard that it has great corals for both snorkeling and diving. 

Then from there we, decided to go down to Siquijor Island, but had a couple of stops on the way there.

First stop was in Oslob, which I regret to be honest, I didn’t do my research beforehand and paid for this show they put on with the whale sharks. 

I would not recommend going to Oslob to see the whale sharks because they are basically domesticated animals. They don’t seem to be trapped by any net or cage which is good, but they only go there because the fisherman feeds them from 6am to 11am daily, so they go there just for the food even if it’s not their season. 

Anyway, if you have the chance to go to Donsol in the north of the Philippines instead, I would go as they only do tours it if it’s the right season and seems to not interact with the whales.

Well, since we did it, I’ve gotta say, they are such adorable creatures!! Huge and have this cute square face haha 

Afterwards, because we had our backpacks with us already, we went to Liloan port to catch the Ferry to Siquijor Island.

However, we didn’t realize there were 2 Liloan ports 10 minutes walk apart from each other. So make sure you look up the right port, talk to locals and have enough time in case you go to the wrong port accidently so you have time to change ports. We didn’t have spare time so we had to go the longer way from the wrong port. 

So because of that, we ended up first in Dumaguete Island - which if you have time, it might be worth stay 2-3 nights to explore a bit. I kinda regret not staying to be honest.

Then, we took a Jeepney from Sibulan port where we got dropped off down 30 min to Dumaguete port to catch the ferry to Siquijor island. 

Which was still fine, but yep there is a direct ferry from Cebu island to Siquijor island.

And the adventure continues in Siquijor...