Philippines

The Philippines is 7,641 islands organised into three loose archipelagic regions, four major dialect groups, and one of the more complicated colonial histories in Southeast Asia. The country still gets less long-haul attention than Thailand, Vietnam, or Indonesia, which is part of its argument: a returning Asia traveller can find Palawan's Bacuit Bay at the level Phuket was operating in the 1990s, and the El Nido and Coron limestone karst on the level Halong Bay used to be.

Palawan is the country's headline and remains, despite the pressure, genuinely well-managed. The Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park sits 150 kilometres south-east in the Sulu Sea and is one of the last unbleached coral systems of its size in the world — visited only by live-aboards from March to June, capped at strict numbers, the visitor fee funded entirely back into ranger patrols. Closer in, El Nido's Pangulasian and Apulit, run by the Ten Knots group, are the country's reference for reef-fronted luxury that has done the marine-park work over thirty years.

Off Palawan the alternative case is the Visayas. Bohol for the Chocolate Hills and the Tarsier sanctuary at Loboc; Cebu for whale-shark watching at Oslob (the ethical version, with Tan-awan's strict feeding moratorium, is where to go), or Donsol in Sorsogon for the genuinely wild encounter; Siargao for the surfing economy that has grown up around Cloud 9; Bantayan for the country at its quietest. Manila is unavoidable as a hub and is more interesting than its airport reputation suggests — Intramuros and the Pasig riverwalk at dawn, the Aristocrat or Toyo Eatery for the country's culinary case.

The dry season runs November to April and is the operational window for almost every reef and island operator. Avoid the wet season (June–October) for diving; visibility collapses and many of the smaller bangka-boat transfers stop running. Typhoon risk is real on the eastern seaboard from June onward and is taken seriously by the better operators.