Click on the photo to see detailed planning of our Palawan itinerary.

This itinerary for Palawan is the following: 

Manilla – Puerto Princesa – Port Barton – El Nido – Buhay Isla – Coron – Manilla

Itinerary Palawan: Manila & Puerto Princesa (1 night)

After a short stopover in Manila, we flew to Puerto Princesa. Do you do this too? Tip: ensure a minimum of 5 hours between your arrival time and the next departure time. Flights can sometimes be delayed and the terminals of Manila airport are wide apart of each other with a bad connection. In the evening we arrived in Puerto Princesa where we stayed for only one night. It’s not a beautiful city and also not very safe.

What to do in Puerto Princessa on Palawan?

We didn’t feel like staying here longer, but if you do, you can always visit the village of Sabang on the underground river or visit the special open prison. Puerto Princesa is located by the sea but has no beautiful beaches, you have to go to the west coast. Beautiful beaches nearby are Honda Bay (30 min by scooter), Nagtabon Beach (35 min by scooter), Talaudyong Beach (40 min scooter) and Monkey Beach Sabang (50 min by scooter).

Itinerary Palawan: Port Barton (4 days, 4 nights)

Just 3.5 hours north of Puerto Princesa, the sleepy village of Port Barton is located on a beautiful beach. Previously only a settlement of some fishermen, nowadays there are some small-scale hotels and guesthouses. This is the ideal place to get used to the heat of the Philippines and to recover from jetlag. There is not much to do here, but it’s super idyllic.

What to do in Port Barton, Palawan?

Relax in a hammock with fresh coconut. In this area, there is only a few hours a day of electricity available. We stayed here for four days and Ries got his diving certificate. Four days was perfect for us when we would have stayed longer, it might have gotten a bit boring, but shorter we wouldn’t have time to really relax.

Had we had more time in the Philippines, would we have gone to the following places? For sure, yes, or at least, to most of them. However, the Philippines is a very big and stretched country, so you have to make some hard choices!

Cebu – Diving

Cebu is an island that is still on our bucket list, and mainly because of the village of Moalboal. Here you seem to be able to dive very well. Cebu city is very busy and not so nice. In addition, you can swim with whale sharks in Oslob, another village on Cebu. We strongly advise against this: the circumstances under which this happens are bad for the animals.

Bohol – Chocolate Hills

You will visit Bohol to see the famous Chocolate Hills. This beautiful natural phenomenon consists of a thousand hills that, in the months of March and April, turn brown due to the discoloured grass.

Boracay – Very touristy

We strongly decided against visiting Boracay and were happy with this choice. This is the most touristy spot in the Philippines. The beaches are beautiful, but you share this with hundreds of other Asian tourists … It is, however, the place to go, when you want to party a lot.

Siargao – Surfing

Do you enjoy surfing? Make sure to make the trip to this surfing paradise. It is a bit out of the direction, but that also means that there are few tourists! The food here seems to be super too. We definitely want to go there one day!

Siquijor –  Cool Vibes

Last but not least, the quiet Siquijor. Here we MUST go one day! It seems to be nice and quiet here, with exactly the right relaxing vibe. Locals say that this is El Nido from 30 years ago. Sounds good, does not it?

Getting to Palawan might sometimes be a challenge since flights are not always reliable. Domestic flights can sometimes have mayor delays or are suddenly cancelled. This is always a risk when flying domestically in the Philippines. However, once, you reach your destination, it is very easy to travel around!

How to fly to Palawan

There are several daily flights from Europe to the Philippines. The flight duration from for instance Amsterdam to Manila is +/- 15 hours. Click here for the most recent flight deals to the Philippines!

The Philippines consists of hundreds of islands. Island hopping is a lot less easy than often seems. Flying is sometimes necessary if you don’t want to sit on a boat for days. Airline tickets in the Philippines are not as cheap as in other Asian countries (prices from € 60 to € 150). However, when you book on time, the prices are relatively low. Only at the airport or a few days in advance is not recommended.

Some airlines in the Philippines:

• Cebu Pacific (Cebgo), great company, we flew with them from Busuanga (Coron) to Manila.
• AirAsia (Philipines). Always try to avoid AirAsia in the Philippines !! In other countries they are fine, but in the Philippines, they almost always are delayed. We had more than 9 hours of delay. In addition, the aircraft is very dirty.
• PAL (Philipines Airlines). Slightly more expensive but good service!
• Air Swift. This is a relatively new player in the Filipino market. Currently, they only serve the route Manila-El Nido (and are also the only ones flying on El Nido). Soon they will also operate the Cebu – El Nido and Manila – Secogon routes. Slightly more expensive but the convenience of going directly to El Nido instead of via Puerto Princesa.
• Skyjet Airlines. We have heard bad stories about this airline (flights that are cancelled and where you can not get money back, bad planes and extremely high costs for baggage). So we deliberately did not fly with this.

Using buses and minivans as a way of transport on Palawan

If you travel over Palawan, you will most likely sometimes catch the bus/minivan. The roads on Palawan are bad, winding and well … no fun. It can easily take 2 hours to go 50km. The buses in Palawan are also not in a great state, and never drive on time! We have mainly travelled with minivans. This is slightly more expensive, but often a bit faster, much safer and you will be picked up from your hotel.

You can often book a minivan at your hotel, but you will pay a surcharge. Booking directly by calling SBE for example (the only company with somewhat positive reviews) is cheaper. Keep in mind that you will almost always be picked up too late.

Getting around in Palawan is quite easy and straight forward. However, below you find some tips just to be aware of while travelling through this beautiful place.

1. The travel season for Palawan

In the Philippines, it is always warm, but it is a tropical country, with a rainy season and typhoon season. Especially the latter you don’t want to experience. Typhoon season coincides with the rainy season and is from June to October. In November it can also sometimes rain well, but we did not suffer from this.

2. Don’t run out of cash on Palawan

The currency in the Philippines is the Peso. Currently, you get for 1 Euro, 65 Peso. Getting cash out of the ATM on Palawan is not easy everywhere. In Port Barton, they don’t have ATMs, and you almost never can pay with a credit card or debit card. So take enough money with you. In El Nido, Puerto Princesa and Coron there are cash machines, although it can happen that some of them are broken. We went to the ATM in advance at the Domestic terminal in Manila, which is highly recommended (best exchange rate also).

3. How much does food costs?

The Philippines are cheap, not as cheap as Thailand or Indonesia, but still very well priced. We paid an average of € 29 per night (prices per night are shown in the diagram above). Food was on average 3 euros per meal (pp) and public transport is very cheap. A daily activity (boat trip) cost 10 euros. Our excursion with Buhay Isla was the only really expensive part of this holiday. We paid 292 euros per person for 3 days and 2 nights. This includes all the food, drinks (water and rum), equipment and access to nature reserves. It was more than worth the money for us!

4. WiFi on Palawan

Most hotels offer WiFi. This is often slow Wi-Fi that also sometimes fails, but sending a message or with some patience, google might work. Anyway, Netflix and chilling might be a problem since the Wifi connection is not that strong and reliable

5. The best SIM Card for travellers in The Philippines

We bought a Philippine SIM card on arrival so that we could call locally, but also always have an internet connection. We bought this at the airport, there are several stands where SIM cards are sold. There are roughly 2 providers, Smart and Globe. What is crazy is that you can only call people who have the same provider as you. That’s why all the Philippines have a phone with two SIM cards in it. Companies therefore often have 2 numbers. The connection is not always good with both cards. We had a Smart prepaid card with 4 GB and paid around 15 euros for this.