Day Trip to Molocaboc Island in Sagay

After my friend saw me swimming in Manjuyod for the third consecutive year; envious, she made plans for another beach trip a day after. Our conversation went something like:

Her: "Let's go to the beach!"
Me: "My schedule's packed, I can't do another overnight trip."
Her: "Just a day-trip to the beach then."
Me: "Where? Lakawon again? I don't feel like going there."
Her: "Sagay?"
Me: "Carbin Reef?"
Her: "No, they're suggesting Molocaboc."
Me: "Never heard of it. Game!"

And so after a very short conversation of planning to go there, the date was set. We didn't think much about it since it was just 2 hours away from the city. We got to the dock and started asking how to get to the island. People were saying that we should charter a boat because boats going there are on a one-way trip daily, and the only way we can get back is that if we rent a boat. It took some going back-and-forth as to who can possibly accommodate us with our request since they don't seem to get a lot of tourists there, on top of us arriving on a weekday mid-morning. After some talks with random people at the dock a middle-aged lady finally came riding on a tricycle and pointed to one of the boats that can take us there. Php1500 for a whole day tour of the island for the four of us.

They are starting to construct villas as seen on the far right.

They have random stuff trapped on this netted-boat-trap-thing. We played and grilled some, but was scared of eating them because getting a stomach ache would be unimaginable out there.

A conch that we found and decided to grill and eat.

These are the only available grill on the cottage that we had to make do with patiently waiting for our food in small batches at a time.

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the island. I suppose that's due to the fact that people around the dock have never been to the island, resulting to a lot of unsure answers. Some say it takes an hour to get there, some say 45-minutes...while to took us less than that to reach Molocaboc, roughly 35mins. A lot of contrasting information also came when it came to food and the "floating restaurant". People were claiming there's a place to eat there while some say that there's no restaurant there. Our boatmen said someone can cook for us there, while we had to buy the ingredients needed for our lunch. In the end, we bought raw food to be cooked in the floating cottage, but we had to do the cooking ourselves...leaving us starving for a bit because there was nothing there. The availability of ingredients in the area are also scarce and expensive. Their seafood is even more expensive than in the city, considering that they have aquaculture in the area. At one point we asked a bystander where we can buy pork for lunch and he casually pointed across the street only to realize that they were selling whole live pigs for slaughter. The frustrating bit is the language barrier because they only spoke bisaya and can't seem to understand much of ilonggo, tagalog or english. Plus, they also greatly increased the prices of their stuff on us knowing that we weren't locals, turning a supposed 50-peso-at-first serving of scallops into 250 a few minutes after, and just plainly adding a 100-peso increase per kilo for the squid. We didn't buy in the end because it didn't make any sense to play along with the scam. Seriously, Php380 for a kilo of squid, that's even more expensive than supermarket prices in Manila!

They also didn't have facilities around the docking area, like a changing area or toilet for tourists that we ended up having to use the private toilet of a bakery for us to get by. They're a mix people of opportunists, curious ones, and kind ones. Our presence got some confused stares, probably wondering why we were there in the first place. Well...that's the price of going to a less trudged beach.

That's what our floating cottage looked like in the distance. It's really just a floating bamboo anchored on the seabed, and the caretakers just leave it out by sundown and return in the morning. 

This is their beach, a combination of big crushed seashells and fine powdery sand.

The only source of shade in the island, a thorny bush to those who don't want to get a sunburn. But you'll still get sunburned either way...so....

The waters around are real shallow that we didn't even bother to swim...because we can't submerge ourselves.

A lot of shells available for your taking.

You get your own private beach and boatmen to watch over you get a sun tan.

At the end of the day, those are minor setbacks, and the reward in having an entire stretch of beach all to ourselves, and one bluest of waters I ever swam on. Molocaboc's waters are so still, and the clear blue sky resulted to very crisp looking reflections that I wished I had snorkeling gears with me. There were barely any seaweeds floating, while small fishes and starfishes were all over the place, just goes to prove how clean the waters are. One thing I'll recommend though is using aqua shoes or sandals as we found some broken bottles on the beach and is chuck-full of clams that my friend got wounds on her finger after one probably bit her as she was crawling in the water because it was too shallow for us to swim since it was low-tide and the shallows stretched pretty far.

When we got there, the island is covered in mangrove on the right side of the island so we only had the beach on the left side, while the middle part was populated by a few villagers who lived on stilts. One rumor our driver told was that while he was chatting up with the locals, he told him that an aswang was dwelling in the island there. My friend then blurted, "With that population, everyone would be dead by now if that were true!" Then my other friend said, "Aswangs don't victimize their own village, they attack other nearby villages to avoid suspicion." Well...whatever the case is, we came home safe and felt no threat even if it was just four of us girls being toured around the place the whole day with no other outsider. 

Would I come back again in spite all that? Well yeah, the waters are to die for! It's so clean that we came back to Bacolod without ever taking a shower since, as mentioned before, there were no facilities as all. We didn't felt any stickiness or itch on our skin afterwards. Changing to our dry clothes is another thing though, we had to change in the car, contorting ourselves from peering eyes. That was fun. And oh yeah, they had no toilets in the floating cottage. I literally had to balance myself on two bamboo poles to get to their "CR" which is a separate small floating box attached with ropes on the side of the cottage, and in there is just a small rectangular hole on the floor of the bamboo floating thing that you can squat on and do your business, and it goes directly in the waterrrrr!!! I'm glad I didn't see any floating crap while I was changing there, else I'd just curl myself back in the boat and not enjoy the rest of the trip. For the cottage that we stayed in, a family was also there just hanging around as caretakers, and they were basically just there to assist us a bit and wait for our payment. The place costs Php300 to use for the whole day...we cooked our lunch there and swam a bit around the cottage. Compared to the other spots in the island that we went to, this was the perfect place for a swim with the perfect depth at four feet...you're gonna have to shove aside the thought that there's a floating CR a few meters where you are though. And yeah, they have rice that they can sell you if you happen to not bring any like we did. The rice was really good and fluffy after being cooked in charcoal. I think Php55 for an almost pot-full of rice that can feed up to 5-8 people depending on your appetite.

The last part of the tour was the more prominent feature of the island which is the long cemented walkway from a concrete cottage in the middle of the sea that leads all the way down to the main land. Slippery as hell, I slipped even while I was just sitting! I'm glad I was wearing sandals that had a really good grip...which I suggest you bring for safety purposes. The water in the area is about six feet when we got there but tend to get deeper or shallower depending on the tide. The water was dark blue, and rocks were aligned on the bottom for you to sort-of use to lift yourself up, but crabs were also present and that's not a great thought to consider when they have pincers attached to them. 

Molocaboc has some ways to go to better serve the tourism industry..by that I mean the less adventurous kind...but they have plans of getting there, and it's best to wait out a little longer for your trip here. But, if you want to take it as it is, unspoiled and still out of the tourists' track, then now is the time. It's also a scenic view of sloping sugarcane fields on your way there, just avoid being reached by twilight because it gets very dark. A day-trip is just perfect; leave Bacolod around 7am and stay in the island until 4pm, just get back before the waves get high.

  

Notes:

*No toilets.

*No changing rooms.

*No restaurants. It's best to bring in cooked food to better enjoy your time. They do have some utensils for you to use, but they don't have proper sanitation for them. And as mentioned earlier, some will rip you off with ridiculous prices for their goods, so it's best if you come prepared.

*No drinking water.

*No sandbars here, just the open sea and a short stretch of rocky beach.

*The quality of the sand on their beach is a combination of real soft powdery sand to a more grainy one that can hurt the feet. If your feet are sensitive to surface textures i.e. not enough callus, best to wear some sort of aquatic friendly footwear.

*Close to their shoreline is a massive clam field that stretches pretty far, so better wear something to avoid being bitten like my friend.

*Sagay is about 2-hours away from Bacolod and there are buses that pass here. There are direct ones to Sagay, also you can have yourselves dropped if the bus is en route to Escalante, then probably rent a tricycle that will get you to the port.

*The roads getting to the port is all cemented and well kept that you can opt to use small cars as it's pretty flat all the way to Sagay.