Siargao, the surf island on everyone’s lips

Everyone I met on Siargao told me the same thing, and none of them could quite explain it. You can never leave. A jewellery designer called it black magic – it gives you a lot, but it takes something too. What it takes is you. This teardrop of an island off the east coast of the Philippines is all surf breaks and sudden rainstorms, coconut stalls and slow mornings – and one resort that ripped up the hotel rule book. I learned to surf here one flat dawn, an uncoordinated mum thrashing about while strangers in the water cheered me up onto the board. I went for a month with my baby son and wrote it up for Citizen Femme. The whole damn place is just so enchanting.

Ellie Fazan wrote about Siargao, the Philippine surf island, for Citizen Femme, drawing on a month travelling in the Philippines with her son.