Kalanggaman Island

Kalanggaman is a small uninhabited island off Palompon, on the north-western coast of Leyte in the Philippines. It is around eight hundred metres long, narrow, and has a sandbar running off each end that lengthens and shortens with the tide.

It is managed unusually well for a Philippine island of its fame. The municipality of Palompon runs access directly: numbers are capped daily, day visitors and overnight campers are counted separately, entry fees are collected at the port rather than by boatmen, and single-use plastics are restricted. Bookings are made in advance and the cap is enforced rather than nominal — which is why the island still looks the way its photographs do.

The island is white coral sand over a rock core, with palms along the spine and reef on both sides. The sandbars are the feature: at low tide they run several hundred metres into clear shallow water, and at high tide they largely disappear. Snorkelling on the reef is good and the drop-off on the eastern side is steep. The island's rock core is what keeps it in place; the sand around it is free to move, and it does.

Facilities are basic and deliberate: composting toilets, cottages for shade, ranger presence, and camping permitted in a designated area. There is no shop, no power and no fresh water; everything is carried in from Palompon. Malapascua, four hours by boat to the west, is where the thresher shark diving is, and the two are often combined on the same trip out of Cebu.

Book, because Palompon counts. A sandbar off each end of an islet the length of a runway, composting toilets, cottages for shade and nothing else — the cap is why it still looks like this, and anyone who arrives without one is turned around at the port rather than at the island.