Place
Siargao
Surf island in the far south-east of the Philippines — palms, empty beaches and mangrove stilt villages, with island-grade infrastructure and, unusually, police who don't ask for bribes.
Siargao
A teardrop-shaped island off the north-east of Mindanao in the Philippines, reached by a short domestic flight from Manila. It arrived on Harry’s list by reputation — he had been told repeatedly it was the best island in the country, better than Bali, and he went to test that rather than confirm it. His verdict is unqualified: the beaches and the palm forest are as good as he has filmed, and the people are the other half of why. The reservations are all practical and all about infrastructure.
It is his fourth trip to the Philippines and his first to Siargao, which he notes is itself a comment on how much country there is to get through.
What Harry did
Rented a motorbike and rode in one direction to see where it went. He bought bread from a baker in the palm groves, drank a coconut at the island’s most photographed spot and then left it because of the crowds, found a village built on stilts over a mangrove swamp and paid a fisherman to paddle him through it, was stopped at a police checkpoint, swam at a beach that isn’t marked on Google Maps, watched a man climb a coconut palm barefoot, sang ABBA with a roadside group, and finished with a whole roast chicken on an empty beach.
General Luna
The tourist end of the island and the reason most people come — the main street is called Tourism Road, which Harry takes as an admission. It’s the surf centre, and by local account good for beginners. Western-style restaurants, spas, hotels, and a bar scene are all concentrated here.
What is not here is chains. No McDonald’s, no Jollibee, no international hotel brands — one large resort group was advertising itself as coming soon, which Harry treats as the beginning of the end. Many of the people working the strip have come across from Mindanao, because the island itself is small and remote.
The stilt village
Away from the strip, a settlement built out over a mangrove swamp on wooden stilts, some of it visibly damaged by an earlier typhoon. Houses flood at high tide by design — the water comes up through the floor and goes down again — and they have electricity, kitchens, even washing machines, but the swamp doubles as the sewer, and the water underneath is the dirtiest Harry says he has seen. Ten minutes’ ride away the same water runs clear.
Harry wondered aloud who owns land that is water and guessed the residents don’t, but nobody told him that, and it stayed a question he put to the comments rather than an answer.
Practical facts
- Rooms run roughly $30 to $100 a night; Harry’s was about $30, outside town and deliberately so. A motorbike is around $10 a day, and a western-style restaurant meal $5–10.
- The infrastructure is island-grade: power cuts, unreliable plumbing, and don’t drink the tap water.
- Typhoons come through roughly once a year, by residents’ account.
- Boat through the mangroves: 200 pesos for about ten minutes with a local fisherman. Another boatman opened at 600 for the same thing.
- A coconut is 50 pesos; bread from the roadside bakery 5 pesos a piece; lechon manok — the roast chicken every village stall sells — 250 to 270.
- Plastic straws are banned in the municipality; sellers hand out organic ones.
- The island is predominantly Christian, and Tagalog is not the first language here, so Tagalog greetings land as a surprise rather than as normal.
- Police checkpoints are routine and are about helmets and licences, not money. Harry was stopped, asked to put his helmet on, thanked and sent on — the only time in four or five stops across Asia and Africa that no bribe was suggested.
Harry’s tips
- Ride out past the photographed spots. The famous coconut viewpoint had a queue for pictures; the beach he rates the most beautiful he has seen wasn’t on Google Maps and he found it by stopping.
- If a tourist attraction is a river or a stretch of water, go further along it. The water flows a long way and the crowd doesn’t.
- Wear the helmet. It’s the thing the checkpoints actually care about.
- Pay the local rather than the tour price. He knew the 200 pesos for the mangrove trip was the foreigner rate and paid it because the man had spotted his chance — see reward honesty and hard work.
