Visiting Bohol with kids is great fun! There are plenty of things to do on Bohol, an island in the Philippines offering a huge variety of activities for all the family. Visiting Philippines with kids can be an exciting adventure, and we all loved our time here and are excited to share the best things we did on Bohol as a family.
Getting to Bohol
Firstly, getting to Bohol is not completely straightforward. We opted to fly into Cebu and then get the ferry and then a taxi. Visiting Philippines with kids requires some planning, and it’s worth noting that the ferry terminal is 25 minutes’ drive from the airport and goes through quite a few poor areas of Cebu. Getting to the dock requires you to pay a harbour fee ($1) and then check in for your ferry. We would recommend booking the ferry in advance.
To Bohol it takes 2 hours and cost us around £60 as a family of four. The ferries are a decent size and when we sailed in mid-December we were welcomed onboard with the crew singing Christmas carols. There is a small refreshments trolley that comes around and sells crisps and drinks, but nothing more substantial so pick up food beforehand if it’s meal time!
On arrival in Bohol, you will be ambushed by so many taxi drivers bidding for your business. We were heading to Panglao first of all, which was a 45-minute drive from the main ferry terminal Tagalung and cost us approximately £16 for a private mini-bus. Visiting Philippines with kids is easy from a transportation perspective.
Getting Around Bohol
As we had become accustomed to in S.E.Asia, we also hired mopeds for our time here and riding round on them was easy as the roads weren’t busy. The bikes cost us £8 per day per bike so much more expensive than we had experienced in Bali or Vietnam.
If you don’t want to ride bikes there are plenty of tuk tuks around – albeit they are more rustic and older than other areas of S.E.Asia. You can also get plenty of private taxis or minivans and many of them will offer you a day rate and visit wherever you want to go for around £50.
Things to do when visiting Bohol
You could use Bohol as a base and visit nearby Panglao for a days snorkelling or to see the white sand beaches. We have a blog just about Panglao here – we opted for a twin centre stay though to really enjoy both islands.
The Best Hotel on Bohol
We stayed at the hotel Stefanie Grace which again had a small pool, but also water slides into the river which can be swum in when the water if green – the hotel staff know when it is safe to head in. These slides offered a lot of fun for us all.
The hotel also offered a firefly tour and this was one of our favourite things to do in Bohol, costing us around £20 for us all. We departed around 6pm, sailed for 30 minutes and then visited two different trees that were full of fireflies. Nyle even managed to hold one! Of course, it’s pitch black so we only have the memories of this trip rather than any photos. But seeing the river at night is definitely has to be on your Bohol list!
We actually also hired our mopeds from our hotel and set off towards the chocolate hills which was just under an hour away. One of our favourite things to do whilst travelling as been day trips on mopeds as a family – even the kids love it. But it also shows how easy it is to visit these places without forking out for an organised tour.
The chocolate hills are quite bizarre! They are mounds formed thousands of years ago from changing limestone and sea landscapes and rise around 50m into the sky, all perfectly the same as each other. We were more interested in them than the kids. To access them you have to park around 5 minutes drive away, and then get the free (included in your entrance ticket) shuttle up to the visitor centre.
From the visitor centre you can enjoy several viewpoints over the hills, and also climb the stairs of one of the hills to the very top. We did this and then 5 minutes later the heavens opened so we legged it back down again and took shelter in the restaurant.
The restaurant offers good food but the service was slow. It was all reasonably priced and portion sizes were decent too. There’s drinks and ice-creams to take away too if that’s more what’s needed. There’s also toilets and some tourist shops at the top. Don’t expect to spend hours here, unless you also head to one of the ATV or adventure parks nearby. Our friends did the ATV and said it was brilliant fun and they got filthy! For the chocolate hills itself, we were probably there just over an hour.
The drive to the chocolate hills is beautiful and you’ll enjoy views of the rice paddies, rivers, local towns and villages. It was definitely a highlight of things to do on Bohol.
Driving back from the chocolate hills we visited the twin hanging bridge which are two bamboo suspension bridges over the river. If you are a little nervous then perhaps skip this – it’s only a 10 minute ‘activity’ but you walk over one to get to the other side, and then cross back on the second one. They do wobble and swing and they are a decent height – for the £1 entrance fee, it’s worth the short detour to see and do it.
The other ‘thing’ to do on Bohol is the manmade forest. This is very much an instagrammers spot rather than anything to actually do. The road to the chocolate hills from Loboc will naturally take you through it and if driving you’ll have to watch out for all of the people standing in the middle of the road to get ‘that’ photo.
The next day we took our bikes and headed to the Tasier sanctuary which was 25 minutes ride from our hotel. This is a brilliant thing to do in Bohol with the kids. There is a small museum at the entrance to learn a little about these tiny creatures, and there is an educational video that has to be watched before entering. Entrance is £5 per person and you may spend an hour here, max as you aren’t allowed to hang around all day to spot the tasiers.
You do need to be very quiet – silence is requested in the sanctuary itself. Every 15 minutes a guide will take you into the forested area in small groups to look for Tasiers. They are largely nocturnal animals so mostly you will see sleeping ones, but occasionally there will be one awake and we were lucky and saw it jumping from tree to tree. The guides will help you take photos and they are very strict about how close you get so this did feel very conservational and ethical compared to some animal encounters around the world!
There is a 2nd sanctuary that has opened on the road from Loboc to the Chocolate Hills which looks a lot busier when we drove past, so we would recommend going to the original sanctuary in the opposite direction.
Other things to do on Bohol include zip-lining (there are so many different adventure parks offering this), explore the town of Loboc, and take the Loboc river cruise which includes lunch (and we had great reviews from friends who did this).
Loboc is approximately 40 minutes from the main ferry terminal, or an hour back to the airport on Panglao. Visiting Bohol was a real highlight of our time in the Philippines as it offered so much variety for everyone and we really enjoyed riding around the island on our mopeds.
Visiting Philippines with kids it totally worth the effort and there is plenty to do on Bohol with kids so maybe that is a good place to start!
