Panglao

Panglao's limestone is old sea floor, and its caves and coastal terraces have long drawn attention: archaeological finds in the caves of Bohol point to burial and settlement going back thousands of years. When Spanish ships reached Bohol in the 16th century the island was inhabited by Visayan communities with trade links across the Sulu and Camotes seas, and Bohol's founding story — the blood compact of 1565 between the chief Sikatuna and Miguel López de Legazpi — took place on the coast just across the water.

Spanish rule brought Jesuit and later Recollect missions, and with them the coral-stone churches that still stand at Panglao town and Dauis, built by communities that quarried blocks from their own shore. Raiding from the southern sultanates was the defining threat of those centuries, and the watchtower beside Panglao church belongs to a chain of lookouts built along Bohol's coasts. The island lived on fishing, coconut and a little farming, and its people were known as boat builders and sailors.

Tourism came late and then quickly. Divers found the wall at Balicasag and the reefs off the south coast in the 1980s, and Alona Beach grew from a fishing cove into a strip of dive shops and guesthouses. The opening of the island's international airport in 2018 accelerated everything: resorts, staff housing and subdivisions spread across land that had been coconut groves, and water supply, waste and the protection of the reefs became the island's central arguments. The 2013 Bohol earthquake, which destroyed or damaged many of the province's old churches, is still within living memory here.

Panglao is Boholano, and Bohol has a strong provincial identity within the Cebuano-speaking world. The language is Bisaya, spoken with a distinctive Bohol accent that other Visayans recognise at once, and Boholanos are stereotyped within the country as quiet, thrifty and courteous — a self-image the province enjoys. Catholic practice is central: the fiesta of each barangay's patron, the novena, the dawn Masses of December and the processions of Holy Week organise the year.

The island's older culture is maritime. Boat building, net fishing and a familiarity with the reefs run through families here, and many of the men who now crew dive boats and island-hopping outriggers grew up fishing the same water. Bohol's provincial festival, Sandugo, is held in Tagbilaran each July and re-enacts the 1565 blood compact; the image of two men drinking from a cup is on the provincial seal.

Custom in daily dealings is gentle and indirect. Elders are greeted with the mano, the hand taken to the forehead; po and opo soften speech; and open confrontation is avoided. Visitors are asked to keep beachwear to the beach, to dress properly in the churches, and to treat the tarsier — the small primate that has become Bohol's emblem — with the quiet the sanctuaries insist on. How far tourism should be allowed to reshape the island is the subject residents return to most often.

About 42,000 people live in the municipality of Panglao and nearly 54,000 in neighbouring Dauis, and the population has grown quickly as work has drawn people from the Bohol mainland and further afield. Most residents live inland or on the north and west coasts rather than along the resort strip, in villages of concrete and timber houses among coconut palms.

Tourism now dominates the economy: resorts, restaurants, dive shops, boat crews, tricycle drivers, builders and the trades that supply them. Fishing continues alongside it, though the reefs are protected in places and catches are watched closely, and some families still farm coconut, cassava and vegetables on thin limestone soil. Many households also depend on relatives working in Cebu, Manila or abroad.

The day begins before dawn for the boats and the market and pauses in the heat of the afternoon. Water is the constant worry: the island's supply comes from groundwater in porous limestone, and the demands of resorts, swimming pools and a growing population have made supply, drainage and sewage the dominant local issues, along with the traffic on the road to the airport. Power cuts happen, and typhoon and earthquake preparation is taken seriously in a province that has experienced both.

Panglao eats from the sea and the coconut grove. Fish, squid, prawns and shellfish are grilled over charcoal or simmered in sour broths, and kinilaw — raw fish cured in vinegar and calamansi with onion, ginger and sometimes coconut milk — is the dish that travels with this coast. Rice comes with everything, and the coconut appears in cooking, in drinks and as the shell a sweet is sold in.

Bohol's specialities are mostly sweet. Calamay, a thick paste of coconut milk, brown sugar and glutinous rice, is sold sealed in halved coconut shells and is the province's standard pasalubong; peanut kisses, small sugar-crusted meringues, come in the same shops. Broas, sponge fingers, and dried mangoes fill out the gift boxes. On the savoury side the island shares the Visayan repertoire: lechon at feasts, adobo, humba, a sweeter braised pork, sinugba grilled meat and fish, and puso, rice cooked in woven palm pouches.

Alona Beach has the most international eating on the island, with Italian, Korean, Japanese and Indian kitchens alongside the seafood grills, a legacy of the divers who settled here. Away from it, carinderias serve rice with a choice from a few pots, bakeries sell pan de sal in the morning, and tuba, fermented coconut sap, is the village drink. Halo-halo, shaved ice with sweet beans, fruit and milk, answers the afternoon heat.