The Under-the-Radar Filipino Island That Evokes 1970s Bali

13.12.2024 - 16:47 / nytimes.com

Spend a few days in Siargao, the fig-shaped Filipino island in the country’s southeast, and locals will tell you, with a mix of anxiety and excitement, that the coconut tree-covered enclave is what Bali was in the 1970s. Or they might say, as the documentarian and trans-rights activist Queenmelo Esguerra told me last month, that laid-back hotels and cafes that’ve opened this decade (like Siago), “feel inspired by Tulum, no?”

What the island, one of more than 7,000 that comprise the Philippines, shares with these busier destinations is a bohemian history, warm hospitality, beautiful jungle and ocean surroundings and an under-the-radar sense of cool that, as some locals rightfully worry, will quickly diminish if the construction seemingly happening everywhere isn’t carefully managed. Two years ago, the main airport began a major expansion — and now there are more than two dozen short flights each week to Siargao from two of the country’s major cities, Manila and Cebu; in recent years, United and Philippine Airlines started direct routes to Manila from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Some residents fear that cruise ship docks aren’t far-off on the horizon.

For now, though, this 169-square-mile landmass still feels very remote. Regular visitors, like the mononymous Singaporean recording artist Linying, often bring up the “curse of Siargao” — the idea that you come here to lose yourself and then, soon after, lose your fidelity to time and to your life back home, deciding instead to extend your trip again and again as you canoe through mangroves, sing karaoke and eat pork lechon in General Luna, the most built-up area for tourists, and learn to surf at nearby Cloud Nine, host to many global competitions and widely considered to have some of the world’s nicest swells.

In fact, it was those barrel waves that first drew intrepid travelers in the 1980s, who named Cloud Nine after a popular Filipino chocolate bar and soon set up hippieish dive bars and hostels where they could party and crash. In 2010, Bobby Dekeyser, a German-Belgian businessman who founded the Filipino-made furniture line Dedon, built the discreet, high-end resort now known as Nay Palad Hideaway, which opened others’ eyes to the island’s potential as a luxurious escape. Then, in 2021, Super Typhoon Odette hit the southern Philippines, destroying much of Siargao, after which its 100,000 or so residents rebuilt in ways that improved their own lives (cellphone service has become less spotty and the roads are now better, although occasional power shortages occur and there’s still no full-scale hospital) and made the place, with a certain ambivalence, more welcoming to visitors.

Much of the island’s energy is centered on the aptly