Top Five Bucket List Activities in the Philippines!

There are an incredible amount of experiences available in the Philippines and so much to explore! It can be difficult to try to decide what to do, especially if you only have a two week vacation. To help you, here is our bucket list of Filipino experiences you must try:

Diving and Snorkeling

No visit to the Philippines is complete without taking the opportunity to explore the underwater world! The turquoise waters are teeming with marine life, and you’ll be in awe of the beauty of the ocean. There are thousands of dive sites, dedicated dive resorts and something for every skill level, even complete beginners! Take the opportunity to start or expand your PADI training surrounded by over 1200 marine species and 400 of the world’s coral species. It’s a magical place!

Hike the Banaue Rice Terraces

A humbling and spiritual journey, take a local guide and explore this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Enjoy the hospitality of the people, and experience a simple life of humans living in delicate balance with nature. It’s hard not to be inspired by this amazing place. The scenery is breathtaking, constructed mostly by hand over 2,000 years, and still used to this day.

Festival

With over 42,000 festivals in the Filipino calendar, you’ll find it difficult not to partake in at least one! Each village has its own festivals, for a multitude of religious and cultural purposes. No matter what time of year you visit, there’s always something to celebrate with loud bright costumes and street parties. Filipinos have so much community spirit that they just love getting together and having fun, and you’re more than welcome to join them!

Visit the Tarsier Sanctuary

You’ll have to be extremely lucky to catch a glimpse of one of these tiny, nocturnal, bug-eyed primates. They’re an endangered species, which for 45 million years inhabited rainforests around the world. Now they can only be found in only a few islands of the Philippines, Borneo and Indonesia. A visit to the Tarsier Sanctuary is an amazing opportunity to get up close to these shy creatures, where they are free to live in their natural habitat, free from predators. Be sure to follow the strict rules when visiting, touching the tarsiers is forbidden as is flash photography, as the tarsiers are very easily stressed.

See the Chocolate Hills

Not made from actual chocolate, but named after the chocolate brown color they turn when the grass dries in the dry season. From late November until May, you can see this incredible geological marvel in all its glory. It is theorized that the strange formation of the over 100 almost symmetrical hills is due to the erosion of limestone, although others believe they are formed from erupted coral reefs. No matter the mystery behind them, they’re indeed a breathtaking sight!