A very large island 2 hours by ferry from Siquijor, Bohol (like most of The Philippines) also has pristine white beaches, blue sea & good diving but we were heading there for the inland attractions.

There’s just 2 ferries per day and they get full quickly, so Debbie had purchased our tickets as soon as we arrived in Siquijor 6 days earlier. The ferry terminal was chaos, with a few hundred passengers trying to check in themselves and then their baggage for the 0820 departure. While Debbie was queuing and Steve minding the bags, a very kind employee of Ocean Jet asked whether she was a senior citizen and moved her forward – cheeky sod. With a big, fast ferry and flat calm conditions, the journey was smooth and, after Debbie’s baggage had been inspected by a Jack Russell sniffer dog (!), we were in a taxi and on our way to our hotel.

We opted to stay inland rather than at the beach for a bit of a change and also to be closer to the parts of Bohol that we wanted to experience, and chose Loboc Riverside Resort & Restaurant, a newly opened hotel funnily enough right on the banks of the Loboc River. There was a beautiful (and way out of our budget) resort also on the river, but this place was really good for £40/night. We could only get a river view room for nights 2 & 3 as Debbie had procrastinated on booking and missed out on night 1 – but the staff moved our stuff after the first night to a small but lovely room with balcony overlooking the river. We think calling it a Riverview ‘Suite’ was poetic licence! The restaurant on the river bank was by far the best looking place in walking distance as Loboc is more a locals than tourist place – breakfasts (included) were a little odd but fine, the juice was cucumber (really strange), we made some bad choices for dinner but didn’t starve, beer was cheap (PHP 60 for a San Miguel Pilsen, less than a quid). A 7 Eleven a few minutes walk away provided snacks, chocolate, lovely donuts and more beer.

We arranged a private ‘Choco Tour’ through the hotel for our first full day – covering the key sights we’d come to Bohol for. Expecting a small car, we were delighted with a big minibus for the same price, but Debbie was a little confused when our driver Glenn said that the first stop was cable car and zipline as that wasn’t on the tour we’d booked. A bit sulkily she reviewed the options at the ticket office, not sure whether she wanted to do any of them and worried whether her shoulder would be up to it. Steve advised the Princess to get over herself, assured her that her shoulder would be fine, and we signed up for 1-way zipline and cable car return. It was WOW – zooming high over the trees and across to the other side of the Loboc River, with distant views of the sea. Steve was gutted that he didn’t have his GoPro – we’d not expected to be doing this after all – so we mooted returning the following day to do it again. And Debbie’s shoulder was fine other than not being able to fully extend her arm to do a proper flying bird pose! Crap picture but proves that we did it…..

Next stop, and one of the main reasons we came to Bohol, was the Tarsier Conservation Area. The world’s smallest primate, these nocturnal creatures are less than 6″ tall, about the size of a human fist and have huge eyes (the biggest eye-to body ratio of any mammal). We were expecting the sanctuary to have them housed in enclosures and were pleasantly surprised to find them just sleeping in trees, usually under a big leaf. Not the easiest to spot but absolutely gorgeous…..

Next was another ‘unexpected’ stop – in the vicinity of the other main reason for our visit to Bohol, the Chocolate Hills area – quad biking. Oh well, in for a Peso, in for a few thousand and we signed up for a 1 hour tour, with a bike each rather than a shared buggy. It was great fun, we got VERY muddy as it’d rained heavily overnight, and our guide took lots of photos and videos on our phones. Steve is trying to work out how to speed up the footage so that we don’t look like something out of Driving Miss Daisy!

And then onto the viewpoint for the Chocolate Hills up a couple of hundred steps. WOW again! A unique geological formation of over 1200 conical hills spread over 50 sq Km, covered in grass which turns brown during the dry season – hence the name. Stunning!

Heading back towards Loboc we stopped for a photo at the Manmade Forest – with lots of Filipinos posing in the middle of the road. Nice mahogany trees but really not worth risking life and limb for a photo with them!

And finally Loboc church, the oldest in the region and very deceiving – a plain exterior but stunningly beautiful inside, apparently blessed as despite the town being ravaged by flooding over the years, the image of the Virgin Mary had never got wet or been damaged. Super Typhoon Odette in 2021 devastated Loboc, with villagers evacuated for over 2 months and the floodwaters rising to above the top of the church doorway, but still the image was untouched by the waters.

We passed up on the Loboc River lunch cruise as it was already 14.00, we weren’t particularly hungry and we could always do it the next day if we felt like it – and instead drank beer from the 7 Eleven and watched the world go by.

The next day Debbie sorted a private boat tour instead of the tourist nonsense and which picked us up from the hotel landing stage – it was cheaper than the lunch cruise, we didn’t want an unlimited buffet anyway and certainly weren’t sorry to be missing out on the naff on-board singers and local choir performance. A group of 3 (what seemed like) 12 year olds collected us in a boat that Debbie was convinced they’d ‘borrowed’ and we set off up the river. The Loboc River is beautiful and we soon reached a set of waterfalls that the bigger lunch cruise boats couldn’t get to. Our juvenile crew moored the boat against a rock and we sat for a while just soaking in the atmosphere and watching the zipliners overhead (the same place as we’d been the previous day). The 12 year old ‘captain’ came for a chat – actually he was probably in his 20’s, we are just getting old – and wanted to hear about our lives and share insight into his and how the village had coped with Super Typhoon Odette. It was humbling, especially as there was no self-pity and he wanted to reassure us that everyone was safe, even if people had lost their homes and everything they owned. We knew that The Philippines were very exposed to typhoons, but we’d seen on this trip that most of the places we’d visited so far had been severely impacted by Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 or Odette in 2021, and it seems that insurance isn’t a ‘thing’ here 🙁

Back on our balcony for the afternoon, Debbie listened with amusement to the songs being murdered by the singers on the plethora of passing lunch cruise boats – Islands In The Stream, Sweet Caroline, Dancing Queen, Flashdance, Achy Breaky Heart amongst others – oh dear god! There must be 10 or more of these strange floating platforms pushed along by a little boat – how the hell the driver can see anything is beyond us…..

We thought about using our hotel’s paddle boards but really couldn’t be bothered, and we already knew how rubbish we were at paddle boarding. We had a bit of panic, or at least Debbie did, as our laundry hadn’t been returned and we were leaving at 6am the next morning. By 8pm the reception lady wasn’t too confident that it’d turn up either but assured us that she’d go on her bike to collect it, even if it was still wet or hadn’t been done. While Debbie was worrying about what the hell we were going to do if half of our clothes went missing, and planning contingencies for how the hotel could get them back to us, Steve was idly thinking about what new clothes he would buy to replace them. But as Debbie pointed out to him, clothes sizes in the Philippines and our next destination (Japan) are tiny – so replacing stuff might not be so easy. Anyway, panic over, our laundry turned up at about 9pm.

We enjoyed our brief stay in Bohol – a longer stay combined with time on the beach and some diving perhaps would’ve been ideal, but we were short on time and can’t do everything.

Another early start as we we being collected at 6am for a mammoth (understatement!) day of travel – back to Cebu by ferry and then onwards to another part of The Philippines, destination El Nido on Palawan…..