Bicol

The Spanish found the region in the 1560s and 1570s and called it Ibalon, a name that survives in the Ibalong epic of the heroes Baltog, Handyong and Bantong, who cleared the land of monsters. Franciscan missionaries converted the peninsula, and Nueva Cáceres — today's Naga — became the seat of a diocese in 1595 and the colonial capital of the Bicol provinces. Bicol's shipyards built Manila galleons from the local hardwood forests, and the coasts suffered Moro and Dutch raids.

Mayon has shaped Bicol's history as much as any ruler. Its 1814 eruption buried the town of Cagsawa and killed over a thousand people, and later eruptions and lahars repeatedly destroyed farms and villages. In January 1897, during the revolution, the Spanish executed fifteen Bicolanos for aiding the Katipunan, remembered in Naga as the Fifteen Martyrs of Bicol.

The American period brought the railway from Manila and the expansion of abaca and coconut plantations, and the Second World War brought Japanese occupation and guerrilla resistance. Since independence Bicol has had a long record of disasters: Typhoon Reming in 2006 sent lahar down Mayon's slopes and killed more than a thousand people, and Naga and the Bicol River basin flooded badly again in 2024.

Bicolanos speak Bikol languages that change from district to district — Central Bikol around Naga and Legazpi, Rinconada in the lake towns of Camarines Sur, and other varieties in Albay, Sorsogon and Masbate — and Tagalog is widely understood. The regional reputation is for devotion, a love of chilli, and a relaxed sense of humour about living beside a volcano.

Faith is intensely Marian. The image of Our Lady of Peñafrancia, the Bicol Madre, is carried each September from Naga's cathedral in a procession and then back up the Naga River in a fluvial parade of boats, drawing pilgrims from across the region and beyond. Towns hold their own fiestas, Legazpi celebrates the Ibalong festival in August with parades of costumed epic heroes, and Albay's Magayon festival takes its name from the legend of Daragang Magayon, a beautiful maiden whose grave, the story goes, rose into Mayon.

Masbate is cattle country with a rodeo festival of its own, a rarity in the Philippines. Crafts include abaca weaving and handicrafts, of which Catanduanes is a leading producer, pili-nut sweets, and pottery and bags sold in Legazpi and Daraga markets.

About 6 million people live in Bicol. Legazpi, with around 200,000 people, is the regional centre and port, Naga, of similar size, is the commercial, university and church city, and Sorsogon, Iriga, Daet, Tabaco and Virac are the main provincial towns. Much of the population is rural and farms rice, coconuts and abaca, fishes the coasts, or works in small-scale gold mining around Paracale.

Many Bicolanos migrate to Manila or overseas. Tourism has grown around Mayon, Donsol and the islands, and the opening of the Bicol International Airport near Legazpi in 2021 made the region easier to reach. Call centres have arrived in Naga and Legazpi.

The rhythm of life is set by the weather. Evacuation drills, early-warning sirens and schools used as shelters are routine around Mayon and on the Pacific coasts, and after each typhoon villages rebuild roofs and replant. Evenings in Naga and Legazpi centre on the plazas, churches and food stalls, and the calendar turns on the September Peñafrancia festival.

Bicol cooks with gata, coconut milk, and sili, chilli, more than any other region. Laing is dried taro leaves simmered in coconut milk with chilli and shrimp paste or pork; pinangat, from Camalig in Albay, wraps fish or shrimp in taro leaves and cooks the parcels in coconut milk. Bicol Express, pork stewed in coconut milk with a great deal of chilli, is named after the Manila–Bicol train and is now eaten nationwide. Kinunot mixes flaked fish, often shark or stingray, with malunggay leaves and coconut milk, and sinantol uses grated santol fruit rind the same way.

Kinalas is a noodle dish topped with meat scraped from a pig's or cow's head in a thick, brown sauce. The pili nut, grown mainly in Bicol, is roasted, candied, turned into pili tarts and mazapan de pili, and sold everywhere; sili ice cream, flavoured with chilli, is sold as a novelty.

Masbate's cattle mean more beef than elsewhere in the region, and fish and seafood come fresh from Albay Gulf, Lagonoy Gulf and the Sorsogon coast. Tuba, fermented coconut sap, is the traditional drink in the villages.

Albay is built around Mayon Volcano, whose near-perfect cone rises above the plain. The Cagsawa Ruins in Daraga keep the old belfry against a backdrop of the volcano, the baroque Daraga Church stands on a hill nearby, and Legazpi, the provincial capital, has Ligñon Hill's viewpoint and the bay boulevard. Organised ATV tours cross old lava and lahar fields on Mayon's lower slopes, and Camalig has the Hoyop-Hoyopan cave and Sumlang Lake.

To the south, Sorsogon has Donsol, where whale sharks, the butanding, feed offshore in the first half of the year and are viewed under strict rules by snorkellers from registered boats; Bulusan Volcano and Bulusan Lake in their forest park; and the port of Matnog at the peninsula's tip.

Camarines Sur centres on Naga, with the Peñafrancia Basilica, the cathedral and the old Spanish-era quarter, and on the Caramoan peninsula, whose coves, limestone islets and pale beaches such as Gota are reached by boat. Camarines Norte offers the Calaguas Islands and their long beach, and the town of Daet. Offshore, Catanduanes has the Pacific surf at Puraran and the Binurong Point headland, and Masbate its ranches and island beaches.