18/07/2026
MY TAKE ON BOHOL, Philippines, We are leaving Bohol and going back to the Manila area, specifically Bonifacio Global City (BGC) for 6 days, then back to Korea for 11 days.
First impression was not good. We stayed in the largest concentration of tourists for all of Bohol, on the island of Panglao, Alona Beach. The big island of Bohol offers the majority of famous tourist destinations and is a 20-30 minute drive to the connecting bridges. We stayed in a Villa Hotel only a 5 minute walk from the beach and steps a away from the main roads loaded with restaurants, cafés and spas. Generally, we found the town restaurant food to be poor across the board.
What to do in Bohol? Beach, diving/snorkeling and natural attractions. Supposedly some of the best diving in the world. The main beach (Alona) is pretty bad for sand and surf, but there are numerous other beaches that are very good. The natural attractions are pretty good if you are into the whole tour group thing.
BEACHES:
Alona Beach – For us, not good. The beach is pretty awful as it has eroded badly and is only a narrow strip of sand during the day, the water filled with ‘stuff’, warning signs of beware of stepping on sea urchins and not much shade. At low tide (late afternoon), ocean recedes and you are left with hard compressed sand with plenty of sea grass. Relentless harassment by people selling tours or costume jewelry. If you are looking for nightlife, maybe good, but I am unable to evaluate. It’s there, the typical rustic clubs with pretty girls…The town has plenty of restaurants & cafes offering lousy food. The only branded restaurants is McD and Jollibee (🤯), no thanks. I did find a good take on Detroit pizza at Moonlit, a great kimchi burger at Burger Bros, plenty of mediocre Korean restaurants (60% of the tourists are Korean). Found a good café at Coffee For Ya offering a good breakfast menu.
Dumaluan & White Beach – about a 15-minute tuk-tuk ride to/from Alona, a group of resort style hotels with a beautiful beach strip, picture perfect and tropical. Probably the way to go in Bohol, find a good resort (no branded hotels), good breakfast buffet and restaurant offerings and hop a tuk-tuk once in a while to Alona for other offerings and book a couple tours to the Chocolate Hills, etc.. The Bohol Bee Farm is nearby and one of my favorite places in the area.
Doljo & Hermit Beach – about a 20-minute tuk-tuk ride from Alona, This was our secret weapon! Up in the NW portion of the island up into a peninsula, There is a new smallish mall with a few decent restaurants including the famous Bee Farm Buzz Café. A medium sized decent resort and 2 more resorts being built. The sand is silky white, very little coral or rocks, pretty shallow for about 100m. You can sit in the water all day, 100m out. Only about a dozen people from the resort in the water, with lots by the pool overlooking the water. We stayed further down from the resort, very secluded and gorgeous.
HOTELS:
Villa Kamayan – we stayed here. Small 3-star hotel with only 6 villa style rooms, each one quite big and very Filipino, but comfortable. Small pool with lounges, no fitness room. They keep the place immaculate and beautifully landscaped. It was good except for the shrieking chickens at 4:30am (typical outside the big PI cities) and the hotel construction across the unpaved road. Breakfast and pool bar as well.
Henann Resort – owns a large slice of Alona Beach and probably the only well kept piece with lounges on the beach and large pool overlooking the water. Comes alive at night with all kinds of entertainment.
ATTRACTIONS:
-The Chocolate Hills - Bohol Tour, The Chocolate Hills - the most famous natural attraction of Bohol, a geological formation composed of ancient limestone coral deposits that were uplifted, fractured, and shaped by millions of years of erosion. A minimum of 1,260 hills, and possibly over 1,776, spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometers. They are covered in green grass that turns chocolate-brown during the dry season, hence the name.
One hill is setup with a 220 step staircase to a viewing area at the top. Interesting but naturally very touristy.
-Loboc River Cruise - Truly the most beautiful area I have ever seen anywhere in SE Asia. Normally we don’t take these lunch cruises as we have found them to be horribly touristy, lousy food, etc but this was a great experience. Live band on board playing some 70’s American rock (hah!), very good small buffet, and a stop for a cultural show
-Tarsier Conservation Area - Also one of the top natural attractions, the Tarsier. A primate native to Bohol. Unrelated to any mammal, an amazing creature that fits in the palm of your hand and features outsized brown eyes. Nocturnal, so most were barely visible, luckily we found one with his sleepy eyes open. Also very-very sensitive to light and noise to the point of critical stress and death. We had to be super quiet, no camera flashes. Not a great stopover as you could barely see them during the day but gorgeous tropical forest area.
-Bohol Bee Farm is a very rustic resort but it offers a great restaurant/café with a superb view of the ocean. It is perched on a cliff with a super view. The menu is really good and features local honey in many of there offerings, to include their famous honey ice cream. Try the charcoal ice cream, sounds bad but it has a smooth as silk texture and just the right amount of sweetness. Get it on a cone made of casava (better then flour). They have a great gift shop with their excellent/cheap honey.
-Tagbilaran – The capitol of Bohol. At the city center is a plaza with St Joseph Cathedral, we were there during Sunday Mass, very crowded but interesting. On the other side of the plaza is a National Museum of the Philippines offering Bohol specific information, it is a very good museum. Nearby is also a medium sized mall, Alturis Mall, with a supermarket. All walking distance.
LOCATION: In the Visayas Philippine island group, therefore easy ferry’s or short flights between Cebu, Mactan, Bohol, and Dumaguete. Sand, surf and diving sites everywhere.
