Western Visayas Waited More than a Thousand Years for You. 

You are in Western Visayas the moment you board a plane or ship for Iloilo, Bacolod, Kalibo and Roxas City. 

The fair lass seated near you and 60 % of all other plane passengers are Ilonggos, people of the region. On an inter-island vessel, you are pampered with other Ilonggos, 80% of all aboard, from captain to deckhand. 

The trip reveals the real Philippines -- an archipelago of large and small green islands in placid waters. At the center are Panay, Negros , Guimaras, and more than a hundred of tiny others, home of a guileless people. Their catholic culture rubs off on visitors, their history antedates Julius Caesar, their quaint cities and towns bathe in sunlight, in cool clean fresh air, their centuries-old industries and arts -- survivors amidst galloping technologies and suffocating disonant forms -- continue to nourish a life-style of grace and elegance. 

Hurry or Take Your Time. It’s Easy to Get Here. 

Western Visayas is accessible from major cities in the Philippines. The region is less than an hour by plane from Manila and Cebu which are both international gateways. 

The provinces of Iloilo , Negros, Aklan and Capiz have domestic airports. There are 16 daily flights from Manila and two flights from Cebu daily. There are other flights from Cebu and Palawan arriving Iloilo twice weekly. There are daily boat trips from Manila and Cebu. 

Iloilo, the regional capital, is 55 minutes by plane from Manila and 25 minutes from Cebu. By boat, it is 20 hours from Manila, 16 hours from Zamboanga, 14 hours from Cagayan de Oro and 12 hours from Cebu. It is 45 minutes to two hours by boat from Bacolod City six times daily. It is also accessible by land transportation from Aklan, Capiz and Antique. From the island province of Guimaras, it is 30 minutes by pumpboat ride. 

Here’s Why You Should Visit Western Visayas  

*Hotels. Whether you’re in or out, they’re first class or good. 

*We take care what you eat or drink. Restaurants serve Filipino, American, Chinese and European dishes; bars dispense Philippine-brewed or imported liquor. 

Try tuba, pure sweet coconut flower nectar, fermented as it collects drop by drop from a fresh every-six-hour gash on the flower cluster, in the same way tuba had been produced centuries before the first pyramid was built.  

You stay at a resort, take tuba in place of morning coffee, as daytime refreshment and late evening nightcap. Three days of this, as many as swimming and sunning, and the pink glow on you will be conversation piece for weeks anywhere in the world. 

Rumors about exotic things to eat are true. Durian, rambutan, lanzones are plentiful, juicy and sweet in Aklan, northern Antique, central Capiz, Iloilo highlands, southern Negros. Mangoes from Guimaras and Iloilo flood markets in summer.  

Seafoods like crab, lobster, prawn, shrimp, eel, oyster, snail, clam or shellfish. Don’t miss pancit molo, spiced pork-chicken meat balls, each ball daintily wrapped in thin dough, boiled in chicken-pork broth. Or La Paz batchoy, a noodle dish made very tasty by pork or beef broth, fried garlic, fresh and green onion and pig or cow innards. 

*We have the largest playground in Asia. This part of Asia, anyway. 

Golf courses are open all year round. Tennis, badminton, basketball, pelota courts, bowling alleys, football fields, rugged hiking country. 

Fish Antique waters for tunas that fight. Boats for rent available. 

Swim any hour of a fine day. Much more sea than land in the region. 

Blending science, art, superstition and gambling, cockfighting is gymnastics as much for cocks as for spectators. By razor-sharp fighting-cock spurs for souvenir that should be kept out of children’s reach at home. 

Twenty caves in Capiz, one in Iloilo, five in Guimaras, three in Antique await spelunkers. 

Those who resent other tourists getting in the way can ask to be marooned by motorboats on small vacation islands off northern Iloilo and Guimaras. The more numerous opposite breed can shriek, shout, squeal, sweat, stomp, prance, dance the whole day and night at Kalibo’s Ati-Atihan and Iloilo’s Dinagyang festival, third and fourth weekends of January every year.