Samulan Beach, Philippines

Philippines Premium Accommodation

There comes a time on all vacations when you feel at one with the world. This is how we felt at Samulan Beach. The Beach is 15 minutes lazy walk from Sulangan and could have been a thirty-hour flight the difference was so great. To access Samulan you have to cross a lush grass landscape probably the only one in the Philippines. The walk follows the creek, which separates Sulangan from the main Island of Calicoan.

The beach is a creamy, powdery, white sand utopia. A line of the finest sea shells marks the high tide of the day. Cowries, Coral, Conches, Scallops, all manner of shells are plentiful and as we walked along the beach the most delicately painted seabird eggs lay in small scratched hollows, no one disturbed them for fear of breaking the dream. On the left, coconut palms swayed in the onshore breeze, to the right a clear turquoise ocean rippled almost silently against the shoreline. A slight rumbling thunder echoed in from the reef where the white tipped breakers crashed near the horizon.

Leonardo De Caprio can keep THE BEACH, we wanted this one. It came as no surprise to learn that this was where the local villagers came to picnic; this was the best beach they knew and considering the number of beaches in the Philippines, this was an unquestionable recommendation.

We walked for miles along Calicoan's shoreline and never tired, saw countless sea bird nests with their jewel like contents, we stopped picking at the shells and left them on their painted canvas, if we could have erased our footprints, we would have done so but we knew the tide, or another more perfect being, would do that for us. There was something about this place that nurtured the soul and we had no desire to disturb it, we left in silence, fulfilled and at peace.