Siargao Island Hopping is supposed to be exciting and fun…as what most of us plan…or want it to be.
However, based on experience and on our previous interactions with our guests, that isn’t always the case.
In fact, it’s happened to anyone of us in any other trip, be it local or abroad. Hassle, or “hasul” in our local dialect, means an irritating inconvenience and it just pops out of nowhere to…well, destroy your day.
Flights get delayed and that’s so out of our control.
In other cases, traffic jam on the way going to the airport arrests us from getting on board our flight on time.
Or our tour guide forgets to prepare that local delicacy that we had ordered a few days before we went on island hopping.
But more or less, these things are outside our control. It’s a hit and miss kind of thing: sometimes the trip is perfect, other times we encounter problems.
Nonetheless, you can still do your best and focus on things that you can control to avoid the most common mistakes that can end up very costly for your Siargao island hopping.
The “Secret Island” in Siargao
Calendar and set a reminder for your trip.
A reminder for a vacation? Who needs that?!
In one of my recent flights going back home to Siargao, there was a middle-aged couple who thought their flight was on that day, when in fact, it was yesterday. I felt sorry for them as they looked stunned, realizing that the guard on the entrance was right in pointing it out.
A mistake like the one above is so basic that it irritates you and totally destroys your day when it happens. Not to mention that it is costly because now you have to book another flight to get that vacation you’ve been looking forward to for months.
Now it might be a little overkill, but forgetting stuff happens to the best of us. If I may suggest, put it on your calendar, and set an alarm 2 days before (“advance mag-isip’).
Book an accommodation as early as possible.
Siargao accommodations nowadays sell like hotcakes. And when you book an accommodation just a week before your trip, you end up like waiting to get a Grab during rush hour. It’s frustrating and it’s costly.
You’ll have to compromise things such as the comfort of staying in a place near the center of Siargao, getting a good place for a good price, or worse (and this has happened to some guests) cancelling your trip just because there are no more accommodations.
By the way, if you need a basic place to stay, hit us up on Airbnb. We got 4 rooms, 10 beds listed there as homestays. It’s cheap but of course, it’s not 5 stars.
Book your Siargao Island Hopping packages as early as possible.
More importantly, do your research on what tours are being offered. There are pre-arranged tour packages that already include everything you need. You simply just have to show up on the day of the tour.
If you want to get your own planned destinations – and we know some of these are not the usual tourist spots – then that would entail getting a private tour of Siargao, which may cost a bit higher than the pre-packaged island hopping tours.
Siargao Island Hopping may not be best thing for seniors.
Tour destinations like Sohoton is quite a bit of a stretch in terms of boat ride – 2 hours, that is. The “series of adventure” there is – shall we say – great for young people, but it might be a bit of a challenge for older people.
Make sure that you aware of these things so that you avoid inconvenience for your older family members.
So…next time you go on island hopping or visit us in Siargao, make sure you have the above list ticked off. 🙂
Cheers!