Culion

Once a remote island used primarily as a leper colony, Culion is a place with a historical background. We were lucky to have met someone in Coron who knew a local, who offered to guide us around town for a day. So we decided to take a day trip to visit present Culion and learn a little about it's facsinating past. We took a banca boat approx. 2500-3000Php from Coron to Culion.

We first walked about 10 minutes from the port to the main church. Our first impressions were that Spanish influences are still very much present in the architecture of the old town today.

Afterwards, our guide also took us up to one of the hotels located on a cliff with a truly spectacular view for lunch. Though the ocean views are comparable to a gorgeous Mediterranean seascape, Culion is still only slowly opening up to tourism, and currently has only two hotels on the island. This makes accomodation and food choices very limited, so don't expect any sidewalk reaturants or burger joints. We recommend going to the hotel we visited on the cliff (which used to be an orphanage years ago) the other is by the port. We then walked around downtown and climbed the 330 steps to see the island's Eagle Crest and take in more beautiful ocean views. We highly recommend this steep trek as it gives you an amazing panorama of the surrounding islands.

We also visited the Leperosy Musem (Culion Sanitarium) and learned about all the medical advances that helped cure the disease and how life was inside the colony. The museum contains rare artifacts from the early 1900's that were used with patients. We also watched a short film about the history of the island. We found out that there are still people living next door in the hospital that were once leper patients, but have since been cured of the disease. Museum cost is 250Php for foreigners, 50Php for locals.

We realized that depiste some limited tourist resources, Culion is a very special place with a lot of growth potential, simply a gem waiting to be discovered.