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Siquijor Island · 4 to 5 hours · Private group (max 4) · Moderate activity
A private healing journey across Siquijor that connects you with traditional healers, local ritual practices, and the island’s evolving reputation as a place of cleansing and care.
During your healer experience in Siquijor, you’ll experience:
🌿 Begin with a traditional diagnostic
Visit a rare Bolo-Bolo healer for an initial consultation that helps guide the rest of your day and introduces you to one of Siquijor’s most respected healing practices.
🕯️ Continue with a personalized healing ritual
Based on the guidance you receive, continue to the appropriate healer for ceremonies that may include prayers, herbs, smoke cleansing, or other traditional practices.
🗣️ Understand what is happening as it unfolds
Travel with a guide and translator who helps you follow the process respectfully, ask questions, and understand the meaning behind each step.
🍽️ End with a home-style Siquijor meal
Share a traditional local lunch arranged specially for the experience, adding another layer of connection to the island beyond the healing ceremonies themselves.
Private groups only. This experience is kept intentionally small to allow for a more personal, respectful, and carefully guided day with the healers you visit.
Simple, transparent booking:
1. Reserve your date
Pay online to confirm your booking. Your reservation includes hotel pickup and drop-off anywhere on Siquijor Island, your guide and translation support, your healer consultations and ritual offerings, and a traditional local lunch with Siquijor treats.
This experience is fully prepaid online. Bringing cash is only recommended for optional extras such as drinks, gratuities, or personal purchases during the day.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Pick-up Point | Your Siquijor hotel (specified to us after your online reservation via email) |
| Drop-off Point | Your Siquijor hotel |
| Duration | Between 4 to 5 hours (depending on the distance of your hotel and the number of people in your private group) |
| Physical Level | Moderate (some basic hiking involved) |
| Cultural Rating | High – deep cultural exchange |
| Ages | 18+ (younger than 18 must be accompanied by an adult) |
| Group Size | Private – Max 4 people per booking |
Once considered a haunted island by many Filipinos, Siquijor is now increasingly recognized as an island of healers. We created this experience for travelers who want to move past the myths and step into the traditions with proper context, translation, and respect.
This is not a surface-level visit. The goal is to help you understand why people come to Siquijor seeking cleansing, healing, clarity, and spiritual support, and how these practices continue to evolve while still holding onto older roots.
You may come with a very specific intention in mind, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, or you may simply arrive curious and open to what the healers perceive. Either way, the experience is designed to guide you carefully through customs that can otherwise feel impossible to access or understand without local support.
Many people hear stories about the healers of Siquijor, but very few get the chance to visit them in a way that is respectful, translated, and grounded in a real cultural context. This experience is built to help bridge that gap.
The process begins with a diagnostic healer known as a Bolo-Bolo practitioner, one of the more specialized forms of healing still remaining on the island. There are only a few of these practitioners left, which makes the opportunity to visit one particularly meaningful.
Rather than visiting a healer blindly, the day unfolds more intentionally. Your first consultation helps guide the rest of the experience, and your local travel guru supports you throughout by translating, explaining, and helping you understand what is happening and why.
We get a fairly early start to beat the heat and the lines of others going to visit the healers, with a 9:00 AM pick-up from your hotel. From here, we head to a local bakery to try some of the special bread made only in Siquijor, Pan Bisaya, and wash it down with a unique corn-based coffee known as Pinagong, which was popularized during World War II while food rations were in short supply.
It is then time to make our way to your diagnostic healer, known locally as a Bolo-Bolo healer. This is a fascinating practice, which is also said to help begin cleansing your spirit and soul. There are very few remaining Bolo-Bolo practitioners on the island, so we are fortunate to be able to visit one of them for your diagnosis. Your travel guru, who acts as both guide and translator, helps share the information that the healer has to offer and brings you closer to the meaning of the process.
Upon completion of your diagnostic, we travel to the appropriate healer to continue your treatment. This may involve the removal of curses, support for healing, or deeper work, depending on what the first consultation suggests. The ceremonies vary depending on the healer you visit and the type of treatment required, but often include spells, prayers, a smoke cleanse using smoldering herbs beneath your chair, and occasionally a light massage. A special herbal tea may also be used to help with the cleansing of your insides.
Throughout the entire process, your travel guru helps guide you through the ceremonies, explains local customs, and translates any questions you may have. Without that support, much of the process would remain hidden behind language and ritual cues that most visitors would not be able to understand on their own.
Finally, once you have undergone the healers’ ministrations, we go for a local traditional meal, Siquijor style. It is often quite difficult to find home-style traditional food in restaurants, since eating together at home is common practice among Filipinos. With a special arrangement at a very special restaurant in Siquijor, a home-cooked Siquijor-style meal that is not normally on the menu is prepared for you.
With a cleansed spirit and a full belly, we return you to your hotel happy, grounded, and hopefully feeling lighter than when the day began.
There are dozens of healers located all around the island of Siquijor. After vetting nearly all of the healers on the island, we have selected a handful of different types of practitioners who embody the older traditions and offer the most meaningful experiences for guests interested in this ancient practice.
To receive proper treatment, you must first visit a specialized healer who can give you a diagnosis. This is the Bolo-Bolo healer. There are only a few left on the island, so depending on availability, we select the most convenient practitioner who is close to your pickup location and able to receive you on the day of your experience.
Once the Bolo-Bolo treatment is complete, the healer can suggest what type of further ceremony or treatment may best support you. Based on that suggestion, we visit your next healer to continue the process.
The practice of healing through potions, prayers, spells, and ritual has existed on the island for centuries, long before outside influences reshaped the wider region. Over generations, these traditions evolved slightly while still holding onto their core intentions and methods.
For a long time, the island was considered cursed or haunted by outsiders who misunderstood the healing arts and associated them only with fear or black magic. That perception has changed drastically in recent years as more people have learned about the island’s healing focus and the role of its practitioners.
That change matters because it allows visitors to approach the traditions with more curiosity and respect. With the right translation and guidance, what once seemed mysterious becomes something much more human, complex, and meaningful.
This experience works especially well for travelers who are genuinely curious about ritual healing, spiritual cleansing, island folklore, and local belief systems that still shape daily life in the present.
It is a strong fit for open-minded travelers who value cultural depth, translation, context, and a more immersive experience than a simple visit or photo stop. It can also be meaningful for guests arriving with a specific intention or simply wanting to understand what these traditions mean to local people.
If you are looking for something unusual, intimate, and rooted in a tradition that continues to attract people from all over the Philippines and beyond, this is one of the most distinctive experiences on the island.
This is a shorter experience than some of our other full island days, but practical preparation still helps you enjoy it more comfortably.
Your healing experience includes the essentials needed to help the day flow respectfully and comfortably.
A few things remain separate from your booking so you can stay flexible around the rest of your island stay.
If this feels like the kind of meaningful Siquijor experience you are looking for, you can reserve your private date using the booking section at the top of the page.
Because healer availability can vary and the diagnostic consultation shapes the rest of the day, it is best to book as soon as your island dates are set.
Email us with any questions you may have regarding this experience at [email protected].
A Bolo-Bolo healer is a specialized diagnostic practitioner in Siquijor who helps identify what kind of spiritual or energetic issue may be affecting you and what kind of further treatment may be appropriate.
No. Some guests come with something very specific in mind, while others arrive simply curious and open to whatever the healers perceive.
Often, yes. The first diagnostic consultation helps determine what kind of follow-up healer or treatment may best suit you.
Depending on the treatment, ceremonies may include prayers, spells, smoke cleansing, herbs, massage, or herbal tea. Each experience can vary based on what the healer recommends.
Yes. The experience is designed specifically to help guests approach the healers and their customs with more understanding, translation, and proper guidance.
Yes. It is one of the best ways to understand why Siquijor’s reputation has shifted from fear and mystery toward recognition as an island of healers.
We’ve created an interactive map below to help you find a place to stay while exploring this mystical island. You can enter your dates and number of guests to see a range of accommodations from hotels to short-term rentals, listed on platforms like Booking.com, Agoda, and others. We’ve pinned a spot close to where most visitors choose to stay. Not only is this area home to the best sunsets on the island, but it also has the widest variety of hotels, beach access, and dining options. Staying near the marker ensures you’re well positioned for pick-ups for your tour, and it’s a great base for your time on the island.
Please double-check the currency displayed, as it may vary depending on your device settings or the website you’re viewing.
For every TRiP that you go on with WSE Travel, we will donate 2% of the total sales price to an environmental or community-based project in the country you’re visiting. We want to ensure that every guest we help, in turn, helps support and preserve the destination we’re experiencing together as a direct result. We live by an ethos to Travel Responsibly & Impact Positively (TRiP).
For more information on the projects this experience supports, please visit our Philippines TRIP projects.
All tours, services, and experiences booked through WSE Travel are bound to our Terms and Conditions, which were modeled after most other travel services, such as flights, hotels, and other tour operators.
At Where Sidewalks End, your reservation is more than a transaction. It’s a direct contract with local professionals who rely on this work as a primary source of income. As such, we are obligated to honor the livelihoods of our local partners, including guides, Ajarns (masters), and drivers, who dedicate their time exclusively to your experience.
In many of the destinations where we operate, labor protections and fair wage commitments are upheld by local laws, and we are both ethically and contractually required to adhere to them. Once a booking is confirmed, the service providers committed to your experience are financially compensated for reserving their time, even in the event of cancellation. This ensures fair and dignified treatment for all involved in delivering your experience.
All bookings are subject to the following terms:
Your payment will be placed into a Lifetime Deposit (Safety Deposit Box). This can be:
Refunds are not available unless WSE Travel cancels your booking due to reasons beyond your control.
A 50% rebooking fee will apply. This helps offset the compensation obligations to your dedicated team of local guides and service providers, who have reserved their day exclusively for your private tour and may not be able to secure alternate work with us or others on short notice.
The full cost of the tour is retained. As this is a private experience, your local team’s time is fully dedicated to your session. A new team will be hired for any future rebooking.
These policies are a compassionate extension of our official Terms & Conditions, designed to support both our guests and the ethical standards of responsible tourism.
Because life can be unpredictable, and because we are required to uphold our commitments to local partners, all guests must either:
We highly recommend SafetyWing Nomad Insurance, trusted by global travelers for its flexible, affordable coverage and very competitive rates.
Travel insurance can help protect you from financial losses related to:
If you choose to travel without Travel Insurance, you will be required to fill out a Liability Waiver Form at the beginning of your trip.
We deeply appreciate your understanding and support of ethical tourism. Your booking directly sustains local communities and helps preserve cultural traditions in a meaningful and lasting way.
If you have any questions or need help rescheduling, please contact us – we’re always happy to assist.
April Beresford (verified owner) –
Myself and my partner attended the Siquijor healer tour and we both found it to be a worthwhile experience. We truly loved learning about these holistic healing approaches for maintaining health and wellness. It was fascinating to have discussions about the limitations of modern medicine and we encountered many locals on the island who swear by the traditional Filipino medical practice.
We received detailed commentary from our WSE tour-guide explaining each process of the traditional healing rituals. Without that guide, explaining what we were witnessing, we would have missed the essence of this beautiful cultural immersion experience. The Bolo Bolo diagnostic healer helped cure me of a curse that had been following me for some time and by the days end, my spirit did feel a great deal brighter. Such an interesting day and very relaxing as well! The second healer fed us beautiful local treats and furthered the removal of bad energy from our bodies through massage and aroma therapy. It was incredible to experience so much of these ancient Filipino practices and leave Siquijor with such a feeling of wonderment.
I can’t recommend this tour enough. What an eye-opening adventure! Thank you WSE travel!