Forty Weeks: Visitng the World's Best Island -- Palawan (Part I)

For two years in a row, Palawan has been hailed by Condé Nast Traveller as the Best Island in the World, beating Bora Bora and Maldives, two places I would love to visit too.

This is only my second time visiting Palawan; the first one was several years back at Amanpulo, long before GoPros and social media. If we weren't ready then to document our travel, we were ready now, kinda.

My husband and I were both beach buddies, and if there was one place we wanted to spend time together by ourselves, it had to be Palawan. We were lucky too because Palawan is just a couple of hours away from Metro Manila.

We knew we wanted to save as much as possible without sacrificing the quality of our stay, so we decided to scour the travel fairs for the best deals. July to September are the best months to get the coolest deals for local and international travel. We found a great El Nido Resorts deal for a 4-day stay at Pangulasian Island. We spent about $2,500 for everything including airfare, lodging and food. This is just about the normal rate for the accommodations, so in a sense, we were able to get free airfare and food.

The resort had its own aviation travel partner, whose Manila airport was smack right where Amanpulo's is. It really brought back memories. The El Nido lounge has a breakfast buffet set for us, and we had our own reserved table.

Getting to Pangulasian was very easy because everything was already arranged for us. Let's see. We rode a plane from Manila to El Nido. Then this huge jeepney took us from the runway to the airport lounge, where we were served Palawan delicacies.

It was high tide when we arrived, so we rode a speedboat from the marsh behind the lounge to get to the bay and ride the bangka to the resort. Normally, visitors have to ride a jeepney to go to the port and ride a bangka from there.