Malcapuya Island is Paradise Defined

Malcapuya is a remote island in Palawan, more than an hour away by boat from the Coron town proper.

We went there during our second day in Coron, after island-hopping. We were staying overnight so the caretakers asked us for PhP700 per person. We thought is was too expensive so my mom haggled it down to PhP400 per person.

They had a number of tarpaulin huts with tables and chairs. I also saw a grilling area. There are also some hammocks around.

The cottages are just nipa huts with very minimal privacy. Our nipa hut didn't even have a door. They gave us foam mattresses, blankets, sheets and pillows, which I really appreciate. (Apparently, that's where the entrance/overnight fee goes.) However, during the night, a rat was playing around the roof and in the morning, we found out it ate our bread!

Our cottage

Our cottage's interiors

The restrooms are pretty nice and even had tiled floors. There was no water closet though but there was a huge pail and a dipper for flushing.

The dead coral curtain is cute!

Unlike the restroom, the "shower room" was rundown. It's just a makeshift structure made of bamboo/wood frame, plastic/tarpaulin walls, nipa roof and a shower curtain (in place of a door). The drainage and flooring the was simply gravel. There's no shower head. You have to draw out water from the deep well just outside.

Water from the deep well was very hard and smelled rusty. (Hard water is water rich in calcum and magnesium. It is difficult to make soap bubbles with hard water but it makes rinsing easy. Boiling hard water leaves scaly residue in kettles. However, hard water doesn't necessarily mean dirty water.)

Being a remote island, electricity is powered by a generator which only runs for around four hours a day (usually around 6 pm up to 9 or 10pm). My father has a lot of stories about these kinds of places and situations in the provinces but it's my first time to actually experience it! (I was born and raised in the city.)

My photos don't do justice to the beauty of the place.

However, I think all the difficulties were worth it. The word "beautiful" would be an understatement. Very fine white sand. Very clear waters. Beautiful rocks. Paradise, indeed.

The west side of the beach

There's sea grass debris. However, during low tide, the sea grass are swept to the shore.

Oh, and did I mention that our group (my family and a family friend) were the only guests in the island? The place is so remote but I felt like a million dollars! I felt like we had the whole island for ourselves. Haha!

Great place to hang out

According to the caretakers, the owner plans to develop the place and construction is taking place this June. I guess when that happens, the place is going to be expensive. I'm really just glad that I was able to visit there while it's still affordable.

The east side of the beach as seen from the view cliff

By the way, Malcaupya island has its own website. The photos in the website do more justice to the place. I was quite surprised that this very remote and undeveloped island has a pretty nice website. Perhaps the owner is really preparing for development.