Philippines vol. 2 (Dec 2025)
Malapascua
Thresher sharks (Alopias pelagicus)
Our Christmas trip didn’t start well. The flight from Hong Kong to Cebu was delayed by almost two hours before even taking off, and the plane had to stay in the air for another additional hour while in Cebu due to heavy air traffic. Luckily, we had a speedy driver from the airport to Maya port (almost 4 hours drive…) and 3 spare hours, which saved us from missing the ferry to Malapascua and having to wait until the next morning. Unfortunately, even though we didn’t miss the last ferry, we arrived too late to secure a night dive that we hoped for. That, however, was the end of unfortunate events and only marvels followed after.
Malapascua is the only place in the world for daily recreational dives with thresher sharks. We’ve already been to places that failed to deliver “guaranteed” exciting encounters before so at first we were rather sceptical about this, but we’re more than happy to report that we were wrong in this case.
Thresher shark recorded with Insta360
A quick note on thresher sharks. They are fascinating deep sea creatures ascending to shallow cleaning stations only in the morning for parasite removal (which is also why the daily trips to Kimud Shoal, their main cleaning station in recent years, leave between 4 and 6am). They spend most their time in the darkness at great depths, as deep as 500m, hence they’ve developed huge eyes. When hunting schooling fish like bluefish or juvenile tuna, thresher sharks are known to "whip" the water. The elongated tail is used to swat their prey, stunning it before it gets eaten. Thresher sharks are one of the few shark species known to jump fully out of the water, using their elongated tail to propel them out; this behavior is called breaching.
We chose Evolution as our dive shop, recommended by a friend in Anilao, and it was a fabulous choice indeed. Apart from delicious food and nice accommodation, we were on one of the first boats heading out to see the sharks at 4:00am (except for Christmas Eve, when we left at 7:00am) and our Dive Masters usually took us to areas with fewer people, granting us the most intimate shark experience. And the sharks… oh boy, they are just magnificent. Altogether, we did 6 dives in Kimud Shoal, and we saw dozens of them during every single dive. We were even lucky to see a few breaching on the first day! Their exceptionally long tails, huge puppy eyes and shiny skin left us in awe, and they weren’t afraid to swim close to us at all. These were definitely our best marine wildlife encounters to date, even though we had to get up around 3:00am and dive breakfast-free (which turned out to be quite refreshing actually). We can’t recommend this place enough.
Bangka boat during surface interval after the first dive
Apart from shark dives, we also did Monad Shoal and a few local dives, but they were nowhere near as impressive. It was actually shallow Kimud Shoal (shark spot) where we saw the most nudibranchs, moray eels and frogfish. Watch the video below to see what it looked like. The video includes bonus caroling on the ferry from Cebu to Bohol in the end.
Karolina with a thresher shark in the background
Watch the video from Malapascua
Bohol
It was sad to say goodbye to the sharks, but we had to move on. After two early morning dives in Malapascua, we travelled by boat, car, ferry and taxi to eventually reach our hotel in Bohol at night.
The next morning, we met with Bohol Wild Herping and kicked the day off with a cave trip. We didn’t see any snakes, but there were other interesting animals around.
After the cave, we were treated to a delicious homemade lunch and very needed cold drinks, as it was boiling hot during the day. Getting off the bike and leaving the gentle breeze behind felt like entering an oven.
Since a local farmer spotted a samar cobra slipping into a crevice that morning, we checked the spot he pointed to… and it was still there. After around 30 minutes of careful, sweaty work, this stunning adult female finally emerged. Easily one of the most beautiful Asian cobras.
Samar cobra (Naja samarensis)
Habitat of the samar cobra
After a little break, we got back together for another tasty meal and headed towards other habitats. We first explored a steep forest, where we encountered a Philippine blunt-headed tree snake (Boiga angulata), oriental whipsnake (Ahaetulla prasina) and a male North Philippine temple pit viper (Tropidolaemus subannulatus). There were some cool bugs too!
We then explored an area near a river, hoping to see our last two reptile targets of the trip, which were the stunning Mindanao mangrove snake (Boiga dendrophila ssp. latifasciata) and Philippine sailfin lizard (Hydrosaurus pustulatus). We saw both thanks to the eagle eyes of our guide. Unfortunately, adult Philippine sailfin lizards are a local delicacy so finding a big individual is extremely tricky nowadays - maybe next time.
We also encountered some other herps, like Southeast Asian bockadam (Cerberus schneiderii), Philippine tree skink (Lamprolepis smaragdina ssp. philippinica) and green crested lizard (Bronchocela sp.).
Pretty impressive for just one day of herping! We had a great time with our hosts and we definitely recommend them to anyone who visits Bohol and is into reptiles.
Dauin
Our last stop was Critter Republic in Dauin where we did 12 macro dives with an amazing Dive Master, Alex. We saw a huge array of macro creatures, from nudibranchs and shrimps, through octopuses and frogfish to turtles. We had a really good time.
Watch the video from Dauin
