Palawan

Palawan's location between the Philippines and Borneo made it a zone of contact between Austronesian, Malay, and Chinese maritime cultures long before European contact. The Tabon Caves in Quezon municipality have yielded human remains dating to approximately 22,000 to 24,000 years ago—some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the Philippines.

Palawan has approximately 87 ethnolinguistic groups—the highest number of any Philippine province. Indigenous peoples include the Tagbanwa, Palawanon, Batak, Tau't Bato, Molbog, and numerous subgroups. The Tagbanwa of central Palawan are known for their indigenous script, which, like Hanunuo script, is a descendant of ancient Indic writing systems.

Cuyonon and Settler Cultures

The Cuyonon people, originally from the Cuyo Islands in the Sulu Sea, are among the largest lowland ethnolinguistic groups in Palawan. They were established merchants and fishermen before significant migration from other Philippine regions. Tagalog, Cuyonon, and Visayan are all present in the lowland commercial towns.

Puerto Princesa City has developed a self-conscious civic culture around environmental protection. The Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, created by a national law specific to Palawan, manages the island's resource use at a level of detail not found elsewhere in the Philippines. The city regularly enforces environmental ordinances that are considered strict by Philippine standards.

Palawan's food reflects its position at the intersection of Filipino, Malay, and Chinese culinary influences. Seafood dominates—the province's waters produce prized species including the giant clam (tahong piyansa), various groupers, and the blue-ringed napoleon wrasse that draws controversy due to its endangered status. Crocodile meat, from the Palawan crocodile farm, is a documented local specialty.

Palawan's linguistic landscape is the most complex of any Philippine province. Filipino and English are the languages of government and education. In Puerto Princesa and other lowland towns, Cuyonon, Tagalog, Ilocano, and Cebuano are all spoken. Indigenous communities speak Tagbanwa, Palawanon, Batak, and other languages that are distinct from the Austronesian mainstream.

Places to Visit

Eleven Men in the Water

On the night of December 14, 1944, American prisoners of war at the Puerto Princesa airfield were ordered into underground air raid shelters by their Japanese guards. The guards then poured gasoline on the shelters and set them on fire. One hundred fifty American soldiers died in the enclosures. Eleven men survived by breaking through the bamboo walls, running to the cliff above the bay, and jumping into the sea.

The eleven swam through the dark water to nearby barrios, where Filipino families hid them at great personal risk. Over the following weeks, the survivors were moved by Filipino guerrillas through Palawan's interior—through the forest and along the coast—until they could be evacuated by submarine. Their testimony when they reached Allied lines was the first documented account of the massacre of American POWs in the Philippines.

The massacre is marked by a memorial in Puerto Princesa. The Filipino families who sheltered the survivors are not marked in the same way, which is consistent with how these stories usually go. The historical record is better for the survivors who could speak than for the people who made their survival possible and who remained in Palawan long after the war, among the same population that the Japanese had also occupied.