How to Save Money as a Vegan in the Philippines: Travel Tips That Actually Work

How expensive is travel in The Philippines?

The Philippines is renowned for its glamorous honeymoon destinations, stunning dive spots, and breathtaking landscapes. However, travelers expecting a budget friendly experience similar to other Southeast Asian countries may fifind the cost of backpacking here surprisingly high. That said, it is possible to travel on a budget - it just takes a bit more effort.

This article explores why the Philippines is considered one of Asia’s pricier destinations

When you first arrive in the Philippines and start splashing pesos, the first thing you’ll notice is the extremely high exchange rate (£20 is around 1500 pesos), and that general goods, hotels, food and services are comparable to other countries in Asia and on the cheaper side.

First Impressions

Take accommodation for instance: ignoring the luxury options and the 5-star resorts where well-to-do holidaying folk venture, backpackers can find hostels and guesthouses priced anywhere from £5 a night for a bed in a decent dorm-style hostel, to private en suite rooms in clean beach-side guesthouses and hotels starting from just £10 a night.

Public transport costs don’t seem to be out of the ordinary either, for example we paid 210 pesos (£3) per person for a modern A/C bus from Cebu to the coastal town of Moalboal - an 85 km journey.

This is around the same, if not less we’d expect to pay in other Asian countries like Thailand or Cambodia for similar 3-hour journeys.

Taxis are also reasonably cheap too - we mostly used the Grab and Bolt apps, and the most we paid was £5 for a 1-hour journey to the airport. Food is generally inexpensive too - 200 pesos (£2.70) for a large pizza being a comparison our readers will no doubt be familiar with.

Where your money goes

So far so good and you may be wondering that if buses, taxis, food and accommodation all cost around the same as in other backpacker friendly countries, why do some people say the Philippines is expensive?

Before delving into the answer to that question, we ask you to study the geographical makeup of the Philippines. The first thing you may notice is the Philippines’s unique physical characteristic of being made up of a number of large and small islands scattered over a vast region in the West Pacific Ocean.

Look a little closer and you’ll discover that outside of Manila (with its staggering urban population of 24m residents) much of the rest of the Philippine’s 110 million population are evenly spread out among its many islands.

The next thing you’ll discover when researching places for your visit to the Philippines, is that the countries best and most sought-after beaches, attractions and places of interest are scattered throughout the country’s 7600 islands.

Holidaying and staying in one spot is one option, but as explorers we’re naturally inclined to get the most out of our 30 day visas and see as much of the country as possible.

Unfortunately the islands fragmented geography and poor travel infrastructure means moving around from town to town and island to island is not only challenging, but often requires multiple modes of transport across multiple islands, and this results in spiraling costs. It’s the main reason for why the Philippines often gets labeled as an expensive destination.

Getting from a to b

Getting around to see the huge array of attractions and landmarks in the Philippines involves a lot of traveling between islands. Considering the country’s complicated and incoherent transport options, this is no easy task.

Consider this journey we made from MoalBoal, a tourist coastal town on Cebu island to Siquijor, one of the most sought-after tourist destination islands:

In theory, judging by the map it looked like a fairly straightforward 80km trip from one island to another. However, there is no direct route, and moving from one popular tourist destination to the next required an entire day of traveling involving a combination of ferries, tricycle taxis and buses.

Island hoping is one of the main costs of traveling in the Philippines.

You could obviously avoid this by staying or limiting your visit to a onel region of the country, but there’s so much to see across the islands, and each place is so different, it’s a difficult decision to make.

As a frame of reference, compare our journey from Moalboal to Siquijor with similar 80km routes in Thailand and Vietnam From Bangkok to the historic capital Ayutthaya: a local train takes 2 hours and costs less than £1, or a 100km journey from Ha Tien to the island of Phu Quoc in Vietnam - less than £5 (plus a couple of quid for taxis to and the hotel)

Our journey Moalboal to Siquijor:

Time taken: Over 9 hours

Total cost: £12 per person

Tricycle from hotel in Moalboal to bus station - PHP75

Bus to Batu bus station(town outside ferry port) - PHP70

Tricycle to ferry port - PHP100

Ferry from Batu to Sibulan on the next island - PHP135

Tricycle to Dumaguete pier - PHP200

Ferry from Dumaguete to Siquijor - PHP234 (or PHP455 for a fast ferry)

Tricycle to the hotel - PHP200

Island hopping woes

The example of the journey from Moalboal to Siquijor is a demonstration of not only where your money goes in the Philippines, but also where your time goes too. We made so many similar journeys throughout our 4 weeks in the country, some shorter, some much longer, and all of them required two or more different modes of transport to get to our destination.

The quickest and most convenient option for island hopping in the Philippines is to fly between the various small island airports. It is something we had to do once as the alternative options would have literally taken us days. Flying, however, is a lot more expensive than travel via ground and sea, especially with checked-in luggage that instantly adds around £25 to any ticket cost.

Essentially, the more you want to see the Philippines, the more you have to make these types of journeys between islands. Unlike traveling between places in other countries in Asia, the particularly poor and complicated transport infrastructure in the Philippines means that moving between places always requires multiple modes of transport - resulting in longer and more expensive journeys.

What about food and drink in the Philippines?

Food and drink is another budgeting tightrope for visitors in the Philippines, especially Vegan travelers.

You can of course save money by eating at local

places where food is inexpensive and dishes can cost less than 70 pesos (£1) per sitting. For meat and fish eaters, the choices are practically limitless - especially if they’re not overly fussy about food preparation hygiene standards.

Local restaurants tend to have very few vegetarian/vegan options (if any). Even then, those vegetarian dishes invariably contain fish sauce, egg or milk as a core ingredient. It’s safe to say veganism has yet to make a splash in the Philippines, yet.

Eating at local food outlets as vegans is certainly not impossible, and something we did a few times, but it also comes with a huge risk. Even with a reported 88% of Filipinos speaking a good level of English, in our experience, we found it very difficult to communicate what constitutes vegan food at local eateries.

The good news is that there is no shortage of vegan options in the more touristic island towns such as El Nido, Puerto Princesa and Port Barton.

Whilst it’s great to have so many options in places as a tourist you’re most likely visit - eating out in tourist areas means heavily inflated prices which makes eating out in the Philippines ultimately a little more expensive than other countries in Asia - especially for vegan diners.

For instance, take the delicious upmarket 100% Vegan Ver De Restaurant chain located in both Puerto Princesa and El Nido. A main course of falafel and hummus and a simple green tea at Ver De cost PHP 600 (£8.50).

Compare this with a similarly upmarket restaurant on a tourist island in Thailand such as the laid-back Israeli eatery Taboon in Koh Phangan. The exact same meal costs 200 Bahts (or £5).

As Vegan travelers in the Philippines, our food choices were often restricted to the more expensive eateries, and as such food and drink became another item we found to be more expensive than the rest of Asia.

It’s not more expensive by a huge amount, however, but without the saving grace of a 7-11 convenience shop culture serving handy budget-friendly fall-back options, food and drink costs can quickly mount up.

How expensive are activities like tours and island hopping days in the Philippines?

One of the must-do activities in the Philippines are island hopping days and tours that take you to those famous beautiful paradise beaches and snorkeling spots you’ve probably seen plastered all over travel pages on social media.

There is no real budget way of doing these activities. The cheapest option is the standard group bookings: boarding a boat with other holidaymakers through a tour operator.

For those with bigger budgets, there’s the option to hire private boats or even luxury fine dining/private expeditions.

Island hopping tours start at around 1200 pesos (£18), and on top of that, we found we often had to pay additional fees such as environment protection fees (200 pesos), tourist tax (200 pesos) and the optional (but very much essential because otherwise you’re just stuck on the boat whilst the rest of your group go off exploring) - kayak hires (300 -1000 pesos).

There is also snorkel equipment rental (100 pesos) and any tips you wish to throw the way of the usually entertaining boat crew who look after you during the tour.

A full day’s boat tour can then often cost as much as 1800-2000 pesos per person (£24-£27), which when you consider most towns in the country have at least one must-do tour, and in some cases such as El Nido - 4 different tours, the costs of day trips and the taking part in island hopping days escalates quickly.

How to keep costs down

Even after years of experience of traveling on a tight budget around the world we found it difficult to stay within our means in the Philippines.

We are the wiser for our experience however, and have learned a few things about how to keep the costs down the next time we visit the country.

Find our guide on how to keep costs down in our next article: Budget tips for travelling in the Philippines