A Philippines Honeymoon Over the Holidays: El Nido, Coron and a New Year in Bohol

The honeymoon brief we hear most often in the months before the holidays sounds like this: somewhere warm, somewhere the crowds have not found, a room with a view worth waking up to, and one evening that feels like it was built for two, because it was. And a date range that spans Christmas and New Year, which is both the best and the hardest time to travel here.

This itinerary is our answer to that brief. Sixteen nights spanning Christmas and New Year, moving from a private island in El Nido, through the island corridor between El Nido and Coron by private boat, to Coron itself, and closing in Bohol with New Year's Eve built around exactly the evening the two of you want. Nothing here is fixed. Every element is a starting point.

A Note on the Dates, Before Anything Else

Christmas and New Year is the busiest week of the Philippine year. The resorts on this route sell out months ahead, and the ones that do not sell out raise their rates the same way. If the holidays are the window, the single most useful thing you can do is decide early: we hold the rooms and the flights the same week you confirm, and everything else flexes around them afterwards. The itinerary rewards that decisiveness more than any other on this site.

It is also, genuinely, a beautiful time to be here. December is dry season in Palawan, the sea is at its clearest, and the country takes its festivals seriously: parols in the streets, midnight mass, and a New Year's Eve that fills the sky with fireworks you can watch from a private beach with no one else on it.

Manila: The Soft Landing

You arrive into Manila in the evening and are met the moment you clear the airport, then driven to your hotel for the night. Nothing is asked of you today. Sleep off the flight. The islands begin in the morning.

El Nido: A Private Island Before the Crowds

A morning flight carries you north to El Nido, where a boat brings you across to Cauayan Island and the mainland falls away behind you. This is a private island resort, thirty villas on an island of its own in Bacuit Bay, and it sets the tone for the whole trip: the water is yours, the beach is yours, and the days move at whatever pace the two of you set.

When you want the lagoons, a private bangka takes you into the outer Bacuit Archipelago early, before the day boats leave the pier, so the Big Lagoon and the Secret Lagoon are quiet when you reach them. The reef here is bright enough to keep you in the water until lunch, which is laid out on an island with no one else on it.

Every island day is private and entirely optional. Some mornings the finest plan is the view from your own terrace and nowhere at all to be.

The Crossing: Three Days on Your Own Boat

On the fifth day you leave El Nido for the stretch of sea most travellers only pass straight through: the Linapacan islands and the waters off Culion, strung between El Nido and Coron, where the water turns a colour photographs never quite hold. Three days and three nights on your own boat with your own crew, no fixed crowd anywhere near you. You wake to a different island each morning, snorkel reefs that see almost no one, and watch the sun drop from the deck with the engine off.

This is the heart of the trip, and the part your future selves will talk about longest. How you spend the nights out here, aboard or ashore in a private beach cottage, is the one choice we settle with you before you fly, so the vessel matches exactly how you want to fall asleep under that sky.

Coron: Lakes, Wrecks and a Private Beach Dinner

The crossing delivers you into Coron, and the drama of this coast takes over: limestone walls dropping straight into the sea, Kayangan Lake at first light before the boats arrive, the strange warm depths of Barracuda Lake, the marine garden at Siete Pecados. Coron's water is the calmest in the country, which matters when the whole itinerary is built around it.

You spend three nights at Two Seasons Coron Island Resort, on its own crescent of sand, and two more at Discovery Coron at the soft end of the trip: the southern islands, Malcapuya, Bulog Dos and Banol, white sand over shallow clear water, and a sandbar picnic laid out at low tide with nothing on the horizon. For divers, the Japanese wrecks off Coron are among the finest anywhere, matched to your certification. And one evening, a private dinner is set for the two of you on a quiet beach, cooked to order, lit low, the day boats long gone. That evening is Christmas, in the version we would build.

Bohol: The Year's Turn

After Palawan, a short flight crosses you east to Bohol, and the rhythm eases one more time. Amorita sits on the cliff above Alona Beach, and the final days are built gently around the water: a private boat out to Balicasag, where the reef falls away into a wall and turtles move through the blue, and the Virgin Island sandbar at low tide. Inland, the Chocolate Hills at first light and a slow lunch cruise on the Loboc River.

And on the thirty-first, the year turns. New Year's Eve is the natural high point of these last days, and we build it around exactly the evening the two of you want: quiet and just the two of you, or something with a little more spark. Either way, it closes the trip the way it deserves to be closed.

A short flight returns you to Manila for a final night, and the next day you are taken to the airport for the journey home, carrying a honeymoon that touched three of the loveliest corners of the country and crossed the sea between them the way almost no one gets to.

What This Trip Costs

We keep pricing off the page because it moves with the season and the room. What is true year-round: a trip of this shape, sixteen nights, private boats, private islands, runs from the high four figures per person at the boutique tier to well beyond it at the villa tier, and the holiday window prices above all of it. Tell us the two of you and the dates, and we will build the version with real numbers in it.