ExploreTraveler · Free Philippines planning resources
Plan your Philippines trip with a free guide
Explore Leyte, Samar and Biliran with Eastern Visayas Uncovered: a 23-page English guide with flexible trip ideas and printable worksheets for your budget, route and offline notes.
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Inside your free guide
- Leyte, Samar and Biliran planning prompts
- Flexible trip ideas and local research questions
- Budget, route and offline worksheets
John and Karen’s original travel stories continue below. Verify current schedules, prices and travel advice before booking.
NEW · FREE 23-PAGE EBOOK · OCTOBER 2026
Get Eastern Visayas Uncovered
Plan Leyte, Samar and Biliran with a revised regional guide, local research prompts, flexible trip ideas and printable budget, route and offline worksheets. This edition credits Maryjane Gadin’s partial 2016 draft and adds new planning content checked against current official sources.
Enter your email to record your download request and get the PDF on the next page. Travel updates are optional. Tick the signup box once to subscribe; no confirmation email is needed. You can keep using the free planning resources below without subscribing.
Watch: The Singing Cooks & Waiters in Manila
Enjoy John and Karen’s Filipino food-and-music experience from our travel archive. Watch here, then explore the free Philippines guide and planning resources.
An archived Manila experience, separate from the Eastern Visayas destinations covered in the guide.
Start with our Philippines travel stories
An original island and landscape account.
Explore traditional homes and community context.
An archived cultural remembrance story.
Landscape inspiration; confirm current access.
Silent original underwater video; no spoken transcript.
An older guide; verify attractions and transport.
Use the free trip budget calculator · Build a map route and travel checklist · Research entry and visa rules · Explore more free downloads · Visit the shop
FREE PLANNING RESOURCES · ENGLISH EDITIONS
Turn a Philippines travel idea into a plan you can use. Start with our new Leyte and Samar trip starter, choose a few experiences that matter to you, and download the worksheets to make the trip your own.
Read the Leyte and Samar guide
The four-page illustrated starter planning pack and text checklist below remain free without signup.
Two free downloads for your next steps
PRINT AND WRITE · 4 PAGES · ILLUSTRATED PDF
Philippines Planning Pack
Choose your trip focus, sketch three flexible days, build a budget, record details to verify, and prepare a food and culture question list.
English printable PDF for handwriting. It has blank worksheets; it is not an interactive form or a fixed itinerary.
Download the free illustrated planning pack (PDF)
About 189 KB · Illustrated October 2026 edition
SAVE TO YOUR PHONE · PLAIN TEXT
Leyte and Samar Trip Checklist
A lightweight checklist for choosing a base, checking your transport, noting a budget and keeping practical questions together before you travel.
English text file. Open it with a text app, add your own notes and save a copy for offline reading.
About 2.4 KB · October 2026 edition
Begin with Leyte and Samar
The Eastern Visayas trip starter offers a simple way to organize a visit around food, culture, city stories or the coast. Choose one main area, leave time for transfers and keep something optional. The worksheets help you compare your own choices instead of packing every possible stop into one day.
Use current local sources to confirm the details that will shape your trip. The official Eastern Visayas tourism directory and Samar provincial website are useful starting points for local information. Check schedules, access and prices with the actual operator or host before booking.
Look closer at Philippine culture
Build context around the places on your shortlist. Our illustrated nipa hut story explains common features of the bahay kubo; the Filipino-language companion offers another way to read about rural life. Explore our Philippine mushroom food-culture story as cultural reading, rather than a guide for identifying edible wild mushrooms.
Continue with the Philippine travel photo album, then use the free trip starter to select the experiences that fit your own journey.
Explore stories from our archive
Use these older features for background and inspiration. Their travel details describe earlier visits and may have changed.
Tacloban: a historical city story
John’s account of a December 2013 visit after Typhoon Haiyan records people, relief efforts and the city’s early rebuilding. Read it as a historical account, then use current local information to plan today’s visit.
Read the Tacloban archive storySouthern Leyte and Panaon Island
Explore a feature from the archive about Panaon Island and Southern Leyte. Collect the places and questions that interest you, then verify current access and services.
Explore the Panaon Island featureBrowse all Philippines stories and videos
Philippines culture, homes and food stories
Explore related stories together, then return to this hub for island planning and free resources.
- Nipa hut and bahay kubo: traditional Filipino homes — architecture and rural culture.
- Wild mushrooms in the Philippines: food culture and safety — an archived photograph and cultural discussion, not an edible-mushroom identification guide.
Plan a Leyte and Samar visit and get the free Eastern Visayas guide. A travel guide does not establish whether a wild plant or mushroom is safe to eat.
Planning another part of Asia?
Our free Penang trip planner creates editable notes you can download. The free Penang workbook is a separate, 13-page English printable PDF, with day plans, food cards and budget worksheets. You can alsowatch the Penang stories before choosing an experience.
About the new resources: planning prompts and worksheets by ExploreTraveler, inspired by Maryjane Gadin’s partial Eastern Visayas Uncovered draft supplied in 2016. The new 23-page planning edition is available above. It builds on a recovered partial draft rather than presenting a restored original manuscript. Downloaded files can be read offline; linked websites and videos need internet.
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