Planning a Trip to Samal Island

Looks like we are FINALLY going to be going back to Samal Island later this summer. It’s been quite awhile for us – since early 2008. I won’t have as much time as I’d like for this vacation, but at least I’m going. There was some doubt about that for the last year or so.

This will be my 5th or 6th trip to the Philippines, and my third trip to the Davao region. For the first few trips I only ventured into Manila, more specifically Quezon City and the surrounding areas. What I’ve learned since traveling to Davao is that it’s much more of a commitment to time and expense. It’s not easy to get to Davao from another country, except possibly Singapore.

Things have gotten a little better since our last trip in regards to making reservations online. We could not for the life of us get Cebu Pacific to accept our reservation from Manila to Davao with the online reservation system the last trip. We had to call them, several times I might add, to get that finalized. This time we will use Philippine Airlines to get us from Manila to Davao, and back again. Their online system appears to be able to accept our reservation, but we have not actually booked that segment yet.

So far we’ve only booked from Spokane to Manila and just doing that makes me realize how difficult it really is to get to Samal Island from here. We need to book to Manila, which would be a little easier and cheaper if we lived in a bigger city like Seattle, then we need to book a complete new reservation from Manila to Davao, and finally we need to take the ferry to Samal. That doesn’t sound that difficult, but trying to do that from here is more than a little frustrating and time consuming. Particularly because you must decide whether to stay in Manila or try to continue on to Davao the same day.

On our last trip we decided to go on because of the time of day we got into Manila (morning) but our flight to Davao was canceled right before it was to take off and no flight was rescheduled until the next day. We were able to get on another flight, after working our way through the madden crowd, and arrived in Davao after 31 hours of travel. This year we will stay in Manila over night on the way to Davao. Coming back we will try it in the same day – wish us luck.

If you’ve got a couple of weeks, or aren’t on a schedule, this can be part of the charm. It’s quite a little adventure. If you only have a week, like I do this year, it can really be a detriment to your vacation. Add in the time difference going over, and it becomes a real short stay in Davao and even more so Samal.

I can only hope that Davao eventually adds more international flights. It’s one thing to say you want to be a tourist destination, but it’s another to do something about it. If it’s this difficult to get there for a foreigner, and even more so for Samal Island, how much business do you think they lose because of it?