Mindoro Island

A Day in the Mangyan Village Lila held a handful of soil and let it fall through her fingers like sand through an hourglass. We sat under the shade of a massive dao tree, just outside the newly erected fence ...

The Trail That Told the Truth The guide stopped at a fallen tree, wiped sweat from his forehead with a rag that had seen better decades, and said something I didn’t expect: “My cousin cut this last month for firewood.” ...

Maria Santos sat on her bamboo porch, grinding rice with the same mortar her grandmother used. Three men in pressed shirts waited on the dirt road below, clipboards in hand, a white SUV idling behind them. They’d driven three hours ...

When Paradise Feels Like a Mirror You Didn’t Want to Look Into The dive boat rocked gently in the early morning calm. I watched a German backpacker, maybe twenty-five, stare out at the endless expanse of the Mindoro Strait. His ...

I stood on the deck of a small bangka as it cut through the turquoise water off Mindoro’s coast, watching a fisherman named Mang Tomas repair his net with the kind of patience I’d forgotten existed. This is Island Life ...

I stepped off the bangka in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, on a Tuesday morning that smelled like diesel and dried fish. The pier had more cracks than planks that didn’t creak. A trike driver named Mang Ernie waved me over with ...

I met Aling Lili on a humid afternoon in Mansalay, Mindoro. She is part of the Mangyan indigenous peoples of Mindoro. She sat cross-legged outside a bamboo hut, fingers moving across a loom with hypnotic precision. Geometric patterns emerged from ...

I was sitting at a carinderia in Puerto Galera when Ate Linda slammed a plate of adobo down in front of me and said something I’ll never forget: “If we become Boracay, we lose everything. You understand? Everything.” She wasn’t ...

The first time I stepped off the boat in Puerto Galera, a woman named Lita grabbed my bag before I could protest. She flashed a smile so wide it felt like sunshine, gestured toward her tricycle, and started speaking to ...

I watched Lola Teresa throw away her grandmother’s recipe for adobong manok. Not literally. She didn’t burn the paper or tear it up; she just ignored it completely while making Sunday lunch for her family in Calapan. She eyeballed the vinegar, ...

I met Mang Danilo on a humid Tuesday morning in a small barangay outside Calapan. He was sitting on a weathered wooden bench, sorting through dried bamboo strips with the kind of precision that only decades of practice can produce. ...

I sat across from Mang Tomas in his bamboo house perched on stilts above the water in Puerto Galera. His fishing net hung from the rafters, still damp from the morning catch. On the table between us sat two bowls ...