🎵 🎵
Hi, my name is Christian LeBlanc and in 2015, I had the extreme pleasure of traveling to nine Asian countries and spending almost seven and a half months abroad.
Every country has unique things to offer, but the Philippines was by far my favorite.
I've never met a kinder group of people and a more beautiful landscape.
The bluest of waters, the most exaggerated landscapes.
There's so much to see and so much to do.
The Philippines is comprised of over 7,000 islands, of which I saw a handful.
During our time in the Philippines, we stayed in three main areas, Manila, Palawan, and Cebu.
When you land in the Philippines, you'll be landing in Manila.
However, we don't recommend spending any longer than you need to.
Simply get on the next flight from Manila and head to either Palawan or Cebu.
For our trip, we went straight to Cebu.
Once we left the airport, we went 15 minutes away, got a hotel and stayed there for about two days.
Mactan is beautiful, but we don't recommend spending too long there.
After that we caught a cab going into Cebu City where we would go to the local bus station to catch a jeepney heading south.
Jeepneys are the buses used by the locals.
They're highly affordable, highly safe, and I highly recommend using them.
Once the jeepney took us to the southern tip of Cebu, we took a ferry going to Dumaguete.
Once we arrived in Dumaguete, we got on the Filipino tricycles.
You'll see them everywhere.
We took one of them into Dumaguete and spent the rest of the night drinking and singing karaoke with our newfound friends.
The next morning, without any sleep, we got on the ferry and headed to Sikihore Island.
Once we got on the island, we rented this crappy little car.
It broke down like five times, but there's not really any other options.
You have to rent some sort of a vehicle because there's no other means of transportation.
Sikihore Island is known as a mystic island or for its voodoo magic.
However, we didn't see anything too weird.
Siquijor is also not very well known to the public.
I barely saw any other tourists and it was mainly the locals that knew of it.
One of the most beautiful places I saw while traveling for seven and a half months was here.
Saladong Beach.
I think I'm probably saying it wrong, but it was stunning.
I remember looking over this diving platform and thinking, there's no way anyone jumps here.
The tide must be out or something.
And next thing I know, these three dudes literally lunge themselves off into the ocean.
It may as well be called peer pressure beach because everyone ends up jumping at the end of the day.
This was one of my favorite beaches in all of my travels.
We spent our last day in Siquijor spending time with the local strays and enjoying traditional Filipino meal known as a budol fight.
The reason it's called that is because once people start eating, it's a free-for-all.
The food consisted of fish, sea urchin, seaweed, and a bunch of spices.
It was surprisingly good.
After Siquijor, we went back to Dumaguete and then straight to Oslob.
Oslob is known for one thing, and that is the whale sharks.
The whale sharks are some of the most amazing creatures you'll ever see.
For 30, you get 45 minutes to swim next to these whale sharks, and there's generally gonna be five to 15 of them.
The truth is they're being fed, so it's not quite as impressive as seeing them in their natural surroundings, but it's still very impressive.
I recommend you go at 6am.
By noon they've eaten their fair share of tourists and go back into the ocean.
No they don't eat people but you do want to be there early.
If you have extra time in Oslob I highly recommend checking out Tumalog Falls.
It's only about a 15-20 minute motorbike ride away and it's definitely worth a sight.
Now this is a bit of an untraditional route, but one I highly recommend.
After Oslob, we went straight to Bohol.
Bohol is a large island.
Because it's a bit unusual, you won't see this advertised online.
What we did is we simply went to the pier in Oslob and asked around until we found someone who was driving their boat across.
I think we paid about $20 to $30 per passenger.
If you don't do this, you'll have to drive all the way back up to Cebu City and catch a plane or a boat from Cebu City.
After spending a day hanging out on Alona Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches, we rented a scooter and headed up north to the Chocolate Hills.
This is a full day trip in itself.
There's a lot to do.
You can see the beautiful cathedrals, the creepy little monkeys with big eyes known as Tarsiers and, of course, the chocolate hills.
I love Bohol.
I don't recommend saying that out loud too often.
To get back to Cebu, we went to the big pier in Bohol and took a boat going back to Cebu City.
Once in Cebu City, we took a jeepney going down to Badean.
This is about a three and a half hour bus ride.
Badean is incredible.
This is where we went canyoneering, one of the most memorable experiences of my entire trip.
Although I've probably said that a few times now.
If I were to imagine where Gatorade came from, I would imagine it was here.
The water is one of the most unique blues you'll ever see in your life.
And one of the best parts of the whole experience is when you get to the very end of the canyoneering, you're led to this beautiful waterfall known as Kawasan Falls.
The company we use is called Baryan Cebu Canyoneering.
I recommend them.
After Badeon we went all the way back to Dumaguete and from Dumaguete paid about 50 to get a boat to take us to Apo Island.
We split that cost among the four of us and paid another $10 to rent snorkel gear for the day.
The reason it's called Apo Island is because Apo means sea turtle, or at least the Filipinos told me that.
And it makes total sense.
We saw about seven to eight sea turtles that day and it's just an absolutely beautiful island 100 worth the visit.
After Apo Island, we made our way all the way back to Mactan, the airport where we originally landed in Cebu.
From the Cebu airport, we had a one-way flight to Porta Princesa Palawan.
There's an incredible cave you can explore in Porta Princesa, but we didn't spend any time and headed straight to El Nido.
We paid about $15 to have a passenger van drive us north to El Nido.
Now you're probably asking, why do I go all the way to El Nido?
The answer is that it's probably one of the most beautiful places in the entire world.
In fact, it's been consistently voted the most beautiful islands in the world and, according to my mom, Kanye West has an island there.
The footage you see here is from Laura and I on tour A.
There's tours A B, C and D.
The only one we did was tour A, but we absolutely loved it.
From what I've heard, the island tours A and C are the best.
However, talk to people around you and you can get some feedback from them.
On the mainland of El Nido, there's an amazing cliffside overlooking all of El Nido.
It's called Tara Cliff and it's actually pretty dangerous so you'll need a guide to bring you up.
We asked around the town until we found a guide for about $30.
Generally, dive shops will be the most in place to go, and they can organize you with anything from accommodations to tours.
Just make sure they're not taking advantage of you.
Do your research.
I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life.
My shirt could be ringed out and you would, oh, yep, there's water coming out of it.
Sweat.
In El Nido, we rented a bike and did a day trip to Nakpan Beach, my all-time favorite beach.
It was so unbelievably beautiful that we made another trip back to actually spend the night there.
I'm freaking dying.
I don't understand why the power keeps dying every single, like, freaking two hours.
One note that should be made is that El Nido often loses electricity, which leads to excruciatingly hot days and nights where the air conditioning does not work.
To avoid this, simply stay at a place that has generators.
El Nido has a great reputation for scuba diving.
Laura and I did two dives.
We saw sea turtles, massive schools of fish and we even went scuba diving into a cave with super poisonous snakes.
I didn't like that part.
If you're really big into scuba diving, you'll want to go further north to Coron.
Coron is widely known as the best place to scuba dive in all of the Philippines.
There's sunken warships that you can actually dive through and it's very beautiful.
The next day we went back to Nakpan Beach.
We used the locals way of transportation and sat on the top of this truck.
We paid probably about $2 each and it was an amazing way to meet the locals.
I highly recommend you go out of your way to not only save money, but try these unique and authentic experiences.
Nakhon Beach is my favorite beach in all of my seven and a half months of traveling.
It's truly a hidden gem.
If you don't go to Nakpon Beach, you're missing out on a huge part of what made the Philippines so special to me.
I absolutely love Nakpon.
Nakpon was essentially our last night in the Philippines.
After Nakpon, we went all the way back to Porta Princesa, took a flight all the way to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and then left the Philippines from Manila.
My time in the Philippines was unforgettable and I loved it so much that I'll actually be going back in 2016.
To finish this video, I thought I'd answer a few questions that I know will be commonly asked.
The first being, is the Philippines safe?
The Philippines is very safe.
Like any country, there will be bad places and places you should avoid.
In this case, I recommend you avoid the south of the Philippines, also known as Mindanao.
The best resource will always be your national embassy.
See what they have to say on every country you plan to visit.
But to conclude this question, the Philippines was one of the safest countries I visited in my entire time in Asia. the second question is do I need a visa to visit for the Philippines you actually don't need to buy a visa in advance but what you do need is you need to buy a two-way ticket and this is crucial this almost affected Laura and I and almost had us turned around when you go into the Philippines you'll of course have bought a one-way ticket into the Philippines but you also need to have purchased a return ticket Your tickets cannot be more than 21 days apart because 21 days is the most the country allows you to stay without special permission.
I highly recommend you always do your own research because terms can change.
But to conclude, make sure you have your return ticket bought in advance.
The third question is, where should I go if I don't have time to see both Palawan and Cebu?
Well, this will totally depend on you.
In my opinion, Cebu has more to do.
You have options between the whale sharks, cliff jumping going, canyoneering and even island hopping.
Palawan, on the other hand, has a bit less selection.
You're either going to Porta Princesa or you're going to El Nido, and el nido is absolutely stunning, so i would highly recommend you make your way there.
But if you don't want to spend 10 days laying around the beach and doing island tours, i recommend you do cebu.
Both cebu and palawan have incredible islands to offer, and if you can't make them both work in this trip, maybe consider doing one now and doing the next in the future.
It's definitely worth returning to see the other.
And the last question is is the Philippines expensive?
Now I'm not going to go into any detail, but a very vague answer is no, it is not expensive.
It's very comparable to traveling through Thailand.
A meal will cost you anywhere from 2 to 5 American dollars.
And accommodations is a little bit more expensive, going anywhere from 7 all the way up to 15 for a reasonable accommodation.
Overall, traveling the Philippines is very affordable and I highly recommend it.
This video just gives you a small glimpse of each place, but if you want to see a bit more in detail, check the description box.
Because I was vlogging every day.
I've created vlogs for every single experience we had in the Philippines, from having a layover in the manila airport to scuba diving in el nido.
So if you want more information on a particular event or simply want to see our adventures from start to finish, make sure to check out the vlogs in my description.
I hope you guys found this video insightful and if you have any questions that I didn't answer, feel free to leave them in the comment box and I'll do my best to get back to every single one of you.
And, as always, I'll be posting daily vlogs as I travel through Southeast Asia and North America over the next year, so make sure to subscribe, because there is a ton more to come.
