Philippines Family Travel Guide

Beyond the Bookshelf

Stories to carry you deeper into the Philippines. This is our own family shelf, real books, films, music and a cookbook tied to the place, not a generic reading list. Read it before you go and the trip means more when you get there.

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Why this country, for this family

Why Philippines

Poppy marks the family parts. Wherever you see her, that section is written for traveling with children.

The Philippines is the easiest country in Asia to talk to people in and the hardest one to plan. Everyone speaks English. Then you look at the map and the beach is two flights and a van away.

Who it is for. Beach and water families with kids over six. Anyone who wants Asia without a language barrier. Families who like being fussed over, because Filipinos adore children.

Who should skip it. Anyone who wants a quick trip, the logistics need ten days. Skip it in typhoon season too, June through November, especially August to October.

The English Thing Is Not a Small Thing

It is the single biggest practical difference between the Philippines and every neighbor, and it changes what a family can actually do in a day.

What that buys you. Independence. This is a country where a family can rent a car, hire a boat, book a homestay and deal with a hospital, all in English. That is worth a great deal when something goes wrong.

Domestic Flights Are What Eat Your Trip

This is the math nobody does before booking, and it is the reason so many Philippines trips come back disappointing.

Palawan and Bohol Are the Family Picks

If a family asks me for two, this is the pair, every time, and for different reasons.

Culture and Etiquette

The Philippines is Catholic, warm, family obsessed and runs in English. It is the easiest country in Asia to talk to people in and the manners are gentle.

Resort Philippines and Backpacker Philippines Are Different Countries

More than anywhere else in Asia, the gap between the two is enormous, and families end up on the wrong side of it by accident.

What You Will Eat

Filipino food is the least spicy in Southeast Asia and the most familiar to American kids. Sour, salty, sweet, a lot of pork and rice with everything. Lechon, the whole roast pig, sinigang, the sour tamarind soup, and halo halo, the shaved ice dessert, are all worth ordering even though they are not pictured here.

Adobo. Meat braised in soy, vinegar, garlic and bay. The national dish, mild, and the one every family orders twice.

Pork BBQ. Sweet marinated pork on bamboo sticks, grilled at the roadside every evening. Cheap and reliably a hit.

Lumpia. Thin crisp spring rolls with a vinegar dip. The snack that keeps children going between meals.

Pancit. Stir fried noodles with vegetables and whatever meat is around. Served at every birthday, for long life.

Inihaw na Isda. Whole fish grilled over coals, eaten with rice and a soy and calamansi dip. Order it where the boats come in.

The mangoes. Philippine mangoes are the best in the world and nobody who has eaten one there argues. Buy them from a market, not a hotel.

Getting Around

What It Costs

Cheap on the ground, expensive to move around. That inversion is the whole budget story here.

When to Go

Typhoon season is real and I am not going to soften it. It is also survivable and predictable if you pick the right months and the right islands.

How Many Days and How to Route It

Cheap on the ground, slow to move between islands. Two islands, not five.

Regions at a Glance

Where to Go in Philippines

The Philippines is seven thousand islands and a flight between each. Five places, and two per trip.

Doing It With Children

Splurge-Worthy Experiences

Typhoons, Two Monsoons, and Picking Your Month

More trips here are ruined by the wrong month than by the wrong island. The country runs on two wind seasons with different names and they do completely different things to your week.

Amihan, roughly November to February. The northeast wind. Dry, cooler, clear, and the reason this is the high season. Christmas and New Year are the single busiest and most expensive fortnight of the year in the Philippines because the whole country travels then too. If you can go in late January or February you get the same weather at a much better price.

Habagat, roughly June to October. The southwest monsoon. Warm, wet, and it does not usually rain all day, it dumps hard for an hour or two in the afternoon and then stops. Prices drop, the islands empty, and the diving on some coasts is actually better. This is a fair trade if your dates are fixed.

Typhoon season overlaps and runs about June to November, with the sharp end from July to October. Typhoons come in from the east, so the exposed places are the eastern seaboard, Samar and Leyte, and the north of Luzon. Palawan sits further west and south and gets hit far less often. Mindanao and the far south are almost outside the belt entirely. This is why the same month is a bad idea in one part of the country and completely fine in another.

What to actually do about it. If you are traveling between June and November, build a spare day into the itinerary before the international flight home, buy insurance that covers a named storm before any storm is named, and keep the plan flexible enough to swap islands. Domestic flights and ferries here cancel readily when the weather turns, and they should. A cancelled ferry is an inconvenience. A ferry that sails in a storm is not.

The sweet spots. Late February to early May is the driest and calmest period across most of the country and April is the hottest month of the year. Late November and early December is the quiet gap after the storms and before the Christmas rush, and it is the month I would pick if I were choosing freely.

The Water, and Doing It the Right Way

This is one of the great marine countries on earth and it is also a place where the wrong booking puts your family in front of something that should not be happening. It is worth knowing the difference before you book.

🦉 Whale sharks. Where you go matters enormously. In Oslob on Cebu, the sharks are fed by hand every morning so they stay in one small bay for the boats. It is close, cheap, guaranteed and it changes the animals’ behavior and migration. In Donsol in Sorsogon, the sharks are wild and unfed, and boats go out to look for them from roughly November to June with the peak around February to May. Donsol is a longer trip and there is no guarantee you see one. Take the one with no guarantee.

🐟 The sardine run at Moalboal is the best snorkel in the country for children. Millions of sardines in a moving wall, twenty yards off the beach, in water shallow enough that a competent nine year old with a mask sees the whole thing. It is there all year. You do not need a boat, a licence or a tour.

🐢 Turtles, in the same stretch of water. Green turtles feed on the seagrass along the Moalboal shoreline and around Apo Island, and they are entirely used to people. Do not touch, do not chase, do not stand on the coral. Every guide will tell you this and most tourists do it anyway.

🌊 For divers. Malapascua is the reliable place in the world to see thresher sharks, on a dawn dive at a cleaning station. Coron has a fleet of Second World War wrecks in shallow, clear water, several of which are within reach of an open water certification. Tubbataha, out in the Sulu Sea, is a liveaboard only reef and one of the finest anywhere, with a short season from March to June.

The lagoons of El Nido, and the crowding problem. The famous lagoons are every bit as good as the photographs and they now run on a permit system with tours split into lettered routes, which spreads the boats out. Go on the first boat of the day or a private one. A midday arrival at the Big Lagoon in high season is two hundred kayaks and a queue.

🐕 With children. Boat days here are long, open and hot, with real sun exposure and often no shade. Rash guards, a hat, and a bail out plan for the youngest. Island hopping is sold as a full day and half of the boats will do a half day if you ask.

The Philippines That Is Not a Beach

Almost every itinerary is islands, and the mountains and the old Spanish towns are where the country gets interesting for anyone who has already had a beach week.

The rice terraces of Ifugao. Carved into the mountainsides of northern Luzon and still farmed by hand after two thousand years. Banaue is where the buses stop and the viewpoints are. Batad, an hour further and then a walk in, is the one worth the effort, a natural amphitheatre of terraces with a village in the middle of it and a waterfall below. It is a long overnight bus or a chartered van from Manila, and it is a completely different country from the coast, cool enough for a jacket at night.

Vigan. A Spanish colonial town in the northwest with cobbled streets, horse drawn carriages and houses built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It survived the war intact, which almost nothing here did.

Mount Mayon in Albay is the most perfectly symmetrical volcano on earth and it is active, so how close you get depends on the alert level that week. Even from the town it is the view.

Chocolate Hills on Bohol, which pairs neatly with the tarsiers and works easily as a family day out of Panglao.

📘 The practical basics, since they are simple here. US passport holders enter without a visa for thirty days, extendable in country if you want longer, and the immigration officer will want to see an onward ticket. It is a cash country outside the resorts, so carry pesos and expect small places to have no card machine. And English really is everywhere, which is covered further up this page and is the single biggest reason this country is easier with children than its neighbors.

Who the Philippines Suits, and Who Should Skip It

How the Philippines Compares to the Rest of Asia

The comparison is what actually helps, because most families asking me about this have already loved somewhere else out here.

Things That Surprise First Timers

Where I Would Start

First time in the Philippines with kids? Palawan. Fly to Manila, connect to El Nido or Puerto Princesa, and stay on one island for a week.