There are all sorts of tips and tricks that can help you when planning your trip to the Philippines, these ones are more of the ‘life admin’ side of your travels, the boring bits that might not make it to your average travel blog, but for me are definitely worth knowing to be sure that you don't waste time you could be enjoying your travels when you are there!
PLANS ARE YOUR FRIENDS
If you’re visiting the Philippines with less limited time and with no real plan, you can probably work things out as you go; but, if you do have a time limit and a list of islands you want to visit, a bit of planning can really help, as travelling between the islands is not as easy as you might hope.
Originally, we had 5 islands on our list and thought we could just travel round them clockwise so that we were closer to Manila when it was time to leave. Turn out this was not all that easy. Some islands may be right next to each other on the map but have no direct flights between the two. A website called Rome2Rio will be your best friend when planning your island-hopping route. The site will show you all possible transport options between two locations, including how long it will take and the cost. In the end we used a combination of internal flights and ferries on our trip. Ferries are 100% the cheaper option, but can be really long between some islands; my general advice would be if you have plenty of time and less money stick to ferries, and if you have a little more money and less time try using a combination of flights and ferries.
CASH
We found that so many places, including a lot of accommodation and excursions would only let you pay in cash, so you can save yourself a lot of time by making sure you always have some on you. There were ATM’s in pretty much every place we visited, however there is only one at the Chocolate Hills (Bohol) and that one was out of order when we were there… the next nearest one was about 50-60km away so maybe think ahead a little if you plan on visiting there.
FERRIES
The ferries are a great way to get to islands close to each other, we booked all of ours through oceanjet ferries at least 48 hours in advance. This was really easy to do online, where timetables are available also. The price you pay for your tickets online doesn’t include your luggage though, so just be prepared you will need to pay this just before you board – it was always super cheap, but just worth being aware of.
VEGGIES
The Philippines is probably the most difficult place to be veggie that I’ve come across on my travels so far, a lot of their staple meals are meat with… or fish with… and they tend to make up a big portion of the dish. It definitely wasn’t impossible though, I just had to accept I wasn’t always going to be spoilt for choice and I mean, what do you expect when visiting a developing country?
The word vegetarian seems to get a bit lost in translation here though, most of the time people seemed to think I was just asking if the dish had vegetables in, so be careful when ordering your veggie meals! The best way around this was to just ask which meals had ‘no meat’ or which could be made with ‘no meat’.
