Siquijor has been enjoying a tourism boom in the past few years. Visitor arrivals to the province increased nearly eightfold, from 112,658 in 2010 to 862,032 in 2018. Just under half of them are international visitors.

Acting provincial tourism officer Clebern Paglinawan credits this boom to local leadership. “For 25 years, we had a corrupt governor. During that time, tourism here was non-existent. But after [incumbent] Governor Zaldy Villa got elected in 2013, within two years we suddenly had a lot of visitors coming.”

Paglinawan says many investors came in after Villa got elected. One of Villa’s first projects was to fix Siquijor’s roads. “That attracted a lot of tourists, who would then go around the island on habal-habal (motorcycle taxis), or motorbikes,” he says. “Many of these visitors were European, and they would share photos on social media.”

Old lore about the island persists, however. The locals’ spiritual practices mix Catholicism – there are three heritage churches on Siquijor – and belief in the supernatural. The island is well-known for folk healers, who brew herbal potions touted to cure illnesses and bring luck in love and business.

An annual Healing Festival, celebrated during Holy Week, shows this seamless combination. Held at the Bandilaan Mountain View Park, the solemn event attracts healers and herbalists from southern regions of the Philippines, who perform rituals and prepare concoctions from tree bark, roots, herbs, insects, and other ingredients they have gathered during the seven Fridays of Lent.

According to villagers in nearby Cantabon and San Antonio, the festival started in the 1930s.

Misleading media reports in the 1990s about the healers’ mystic practices damaged the image of the festival. Filipino children learned about Siquijor through sinister Halloween television specials. A popular current affairs programme at that time introduced the phrase “Horror sa Siquijor”, with a segment about the malicious practices of the island’s mangkukulam (witches) and the otherworldly creatures that it purported inhabit the province.

In Manila, tales of a boat full of flesh-eating shape-shifters and tikbalang (tall hybrid creatures with horse heads) headed from Siquijor to the national capital struck fear into impressionable children.

“TV shows would tell of ghosts and spirits roaming the island, then they’d show one of our ruined roadside cemeteries as footage,” says Paglinawan. “No wonder people were scared to come here.”

When word of Siquijor’s beauty and increasing appeal to tourists began to spread through social media in the early 2000s, the provincial tourism office decided to put a positive spin on the island’s mysterious image, using the tagline “Mystic Island”. In December 2019 it debuted a new tagline, “Healing Paradise”, to promote the island’s traditional culture.

Today, tourists still come to enjoy healing sessions, then buy potions and amulets to take back home. They flock to a 400-year-old banyan tree in the town of Lazi, which has spring water flowing from its roots. There is no conclusive explanation for the water flowing, and islanders have refused to have the tree cut down because of the popular belief that a benevolent supernatural being lives inside it.

Visitors marvel at the reach of the tree’s canopy and vines while dipping their legs in the water, doctor fish nibbling at dead skin on their feet.

“A Filipino friend back in Chicago told us about Siquijor and how beautiful it is,” says Daiva, an American tourist taking a tour of the Visayas, the region in the centre of the Philippine archipelago where Siquijor is. “And yes, she mentioned the voodoo-like practices observed here. But I realised that is the way of life here, not just a gimmick for locals to make money from.”

By 2018, the composition of international visitors had changed from mostly European and American nationals to Chinese tourists, who made up nearly half of Siquijor’s overseas tourism market. Chinese investors have begun buying or leasing old resorts on the island.

Growth in Siquijor is at a point where a new boutique-style resort opens every year, whether it’s at the popular beachfront town of San Juan or up in the mountains. Construction of a domestic airport is also nearly complete at Cang-alwang, and it is expected to open this year.

With further growth expected, the local tourism board is working on a definitive tourism code to ensure the sustainability of progress and to avoid the environmental, economic, and cultural problems that affect popular tourist spots such as the island of Boracay.

As a former chairman of environmental preservation in the local government, Paglinawan is determined to strengthen Siquijor’s eco-tourism. He is studying a 10-year master plan developed by US Peace Corps volunteers and initially intended for implementation from 2016 to 2026.

The island has introduced a ban on single-use plastic bags, and Paglinawan intends to involve local communities in developing an environmental protection code for both long-standing tourist attractions and newer ones, such as the recently opened Sambulawan Underground River.

 “A model would be how a barangay (village) hall manages the Cantabon Cave spelunking, where the fees collected from visitors have become a source of livelihood for locals,” he says. This is key, as most hospitality businesses on the island are owned by expats.

The code will include regulations for tourists, among them, possibly, a ban on wearing bikinis when not on the beach out of respect for the islanders’ sense of modesty. “We’re still studying that, though,” says Paglinawan. He plans to finish the code by the end of February, just in time for the summer season.

“People come here looking to be healed,” he says. “They realise they heal themselves by experiencing the island’s beauty.”

Getting there: there are no direct flights to Siquijor, but there are regular flights from the international airports in Manila and Cebu to Dumaguete, from where ferries sail daily to Siquijor. Depending on the boat, the journey time can be anywhere between 50 and 90 minutes.